4 player CP Wiring Help!

[Ovalblue]

Ok you guys... this newbie needs your help.  Ok you guys... this newbie needs your help.

Ok my first problem: # of buttons to use for Player 3 & 4
I am about to wire up my 4 player control panel to a I-Pac.  For player 1 & 2, I am going for 7 buttons (3 on top, 4 on bottom for Neo-Geo controls).  As far as Player 3 &4, how many buttons will  I need?  I cant imagine it would also be 7 or 6, since I cant think of a fighter game that has 4 players.  Are there Neo-Geo games that have 4 players?

Second problem: Wiring Setup
When I hook these buttons up to my I-Pac, which buttons should be my 1 thru 7 fire buttons?  (exp. should the bottom row be 1 - 4 and the top row be 5 - 7, and I will just have to configure all my street fighter games to the set up)  

Hopefully I worded this good enough for you guys to help me.

Also... this is my first MAME project and have found this wessage board/links very useful.  THANKS!

[Tiger-Heli]

>Ok you guys... this newbie needs your help.  Ok you guys... this >newbie needs your help.

We'll try!  We'll try!

> As far as Player 3 &4, how many buttons will  I need?  I cant >imagine it would also be 7 or 6, since I cant think of a fighter game >that has 4 players.  Are there Neo-Geo games that have 4 players?

No Neo-Geo games were four player, AFAIK.  You need three buttons for player 3 and 4 for arcade games (four for the Dungeons and Dragons games only), but you might need up to 8 for them if you want to do console games with four players.

See the "Reality Check" section of http://www.fraggersxtreme.com/arcadepanels/encoder/ for more details.

>Second problem: Wiring Setup
>When I hook these buttons up to my I-Pac, which buttons should be >my 1 thru 7 fire buttons?  (exp. should the bottom row be 1 - 4 and >the top row be 5 - 7, and I will just have to configure all my street >fighter games to the set up)

You need 7 buttons, not 7 inputs.  Street fighter is looking for

1 2 3
4 5 6

For classics, many people prefer

4 5 6
1 2 3

And Neo Geo wants
   2 3 4
1

But it's up to you whether you use the SF layout and modify MAME for classics and NeoGeo's, or use the classic layout and modify MAME for SF and NeoGeo's etc.

More info available here:
 
http://www.fraggersxtreme.com/arcadepanels/faq.htm#I'm not sold on the multiple panels, is there a recommended button layout for a single HotRod style controller?

[cdbrown]

For me I used 6 buttons for players 3 and 4 because it looked better on my panel.  Plus I had the space available on the IPac4.

I wired my players 1 and 2 like this
  5 6 7
  2 3 4
1

I (will) have a number of ctrlr files setup for different games so that the layout will match (as closely as possible) the original game button setup.

[grafixmonkey]

Just got back from vacation and caught this thread...

Wiring button order was a big issue for me (I was even considering building a big nasty circuit to let me switch orientations) until I read up on Mame .ini files.  You can use those to remap your buttons for games very nicely.  (those are the ctrlr files cdbrown mentioned).  I've got them remapping very nicely between classics, 4-player-games, street fighter, mortal kombat, and miscellaneous now.