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Ghost button presses on IPAC4 -- bad MAME key assignments?

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Roo5676:

Thanks for the responses - I haven't had time to test more thoroughly lately.

To answer the questions: I'm using the 64-bit command line version of MAME .142 on Windows 7.  I know I have vsync turned on; I don't think I've touched synchrefresh.  But I've never had any issues in single player, or indeed in any other circumstance other than I described originally.

It is a tough thing to test, though.  A friend and I later tried to duplicate the issue in NBA Jam with the two of us each controlling two players and pressing as many buttons as we could at once and weren't able to.  Yet when we were playing 4-player for real it was happening consistently enough over a period of 1-2 hours.  Probably happened 10+ times to me (as Player 1) in that time.

I will try to play with it more tonight and try out some of the ideas mentioned.

Roo5676:

Ok, I tried out the notepad idea.  No input when just left sitting there or when shaking it.  No stray input from any one player when using a different player's buttons.  I don't think it's something physical.  Besides, this thing was built by pros who make several control panels a week.  I'm not saying it would be impossible, but I trust their build more than I would trust my own (since I don't know anything about wiring) and it's been rock solid except for this one rare problem.

I can confirm my original settings were:

 - waitvsync: 1
 - syncrefresh: 0
 - throttle: 1

I had originally enabled vsync because I saw noticeable screen tearing otherwise.  The other two are defaults.  I cannot duplicate the lag problems that vagabound is describing, though, even with syncrefresh enabled and throttle disabled as mentioned.  I tried Bank Panic and 1941 and could not see any difference that either (or both together) of the settings made.  Both games ran smoothly with perfect input.  Note that I'm running on a brand new 3.6 ghz dual core i3 if that matters - maybe it would affect my results with these settings compared to an older PC.

Even if I had been able to duplicate it, it does not sound at all like what I'm experiencing.  We're talking one random button press every minute or so, not "input lags quite a bit and after only 10-20 seconds if you let go from the controls it starts to play all by itself".


By the way, forgot to mention that I'm shocked that Twin Galaxies allows any emulated games for records.  I thought those guys were pretty hardcore about having original, unmodified hardware.

newmanfamilyvlogs:

vagabound was the newest nickname of a guy who's historically been about 30% accurate and 70% flaming ---That which is odiferous and causeth plants to grow---. He's regularly banned on the boards. Usually he's safe to read, think about, but otherwise ignore.

Twin Galaxies has a special category for emulated high scores.

I wonder if you've got a 'shfit' key somewhere you don't know is set up. I'm about half-stumped at this point.

hoffy84:

I know this is an old thread, but it was never resolved,

So I PM'd ROO5676 to see if he ever got it fixed, and he said no. I was having the same problem as well, and I am pretty sure I resolved it (at least on mine).

So I am just posting this, in hopes that if someone else out there is having similar issues then maybe this will help....

Roo is using an IPAC4, which I do not know much about, but I will tell about my setup, and perhaps things can snowball off that:

Attached is a picture of my control panel, and as you can see, I have 7 joysticks, and a sh*tload of buttons. So the encoder I went with is a Hagstrom KEUSB108, since there are a lot of inputs availbale, and of course no possible ghosting. I have mapped it several times, using keyboard only (including SHIFT + keys, bc I was running out of inputs). That could have been one problem in itself (using SHIFT).
I then realized that my encoder had a "JOYSTICK" tab, that you could map most of those inputs to (4) POV hats and 64 JS button assignments. (I do not know if the IPAC4 has the same feature). (Attached is picture of my Hagstrom KEUSB108 GUI screenshots)

 So I remapped my main 4 joysticks to the 4 POV hats, and remapped most of my buttons to the JS buttons 1 - 32 (BTW the Mame sees those as 0 - 31) Also I have 33 - 64 JS buttons, but Mame doesn't see those for some reason.

So combined with that, whatever buttons were left over to assign, I adhered to HiTek's "Optimal Key Layout". (picture attached)

Lastly, When I set up the General Controls in the MAME Tab, ANYTHING that I would not be using I blanked out. (Things such as Analog Paddle , Player 1 button 16, and so on). I think this is important, because by default those functions are set up as what MAME determines are default keys on your keyboard. (So even though you reassigned it in your encoder, MAME, by default, sees it as the original key-press, and that may trigger one little stray movement during game-play.

I tested on Mortal Kombat (by myself) and interference is completely gone. I still have not tested a 4-player simultaneous game (Which will be the REAL test), so I will post my findings next time my buddies come over and we'll try Turtles in Time, Simpsons, NBA Jam, etc.

For now, if anyone is having the same issue, then I hope this helps narrow things down for you, and Roo, hopefully your IPAC4 lets you assign JS inputs. If not, then there has to be some plug-in that allows you to do so.



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