Problems with multiplayer/cocktail controls

[NerdyGirl]

Hi, I'm a newbie! I'm building a cocktail arcade with my son as a fun project to fill our long summer days. All has been going smoothly and I've learned a lot lurking here, but now it's time to ask for some clarification...

We are using MAMEUI 32-bit 0.146, Ultrastik 360 joysticks, and an I-PAC to connect our buttons. We've connected Player 1 and 2 controls and the computer recognizes them all just fine, and when we tried the Puckman ROM, it worked perfectly. (We used Tab on the menu screen and set the butttons and joysticks for players 1 and 2 and set the dip switch for cocktail -- beautiful! The screen flipped and player 1's controls worked for player 1 and player 2's worked for player 2.)

But when we did the same with Donkey Kong and Midway Pac-Man there was no flipping (or splitting) of the screen, and only player 1's controls worked, even when it was player 2's turn (after we'd set up player 2's controls and set the cocktail dipswitch in the menu for each game, of course). Is this an issue with the particular ROMs? Do some of them not support two joysticks? Or is there something we missed? Is there any way (for a non-programmer) to customize them? Or are we stuck switching back and forth between players on one side of the table?

Thanks!

[NOP]

sounds like you're doing everything correctly to me.  Lots of us (myself included) have cocktail machines with all the classics like you've got, and they do support screen flipping when the dipswitch is set correctly.

The only thing off the top of my head that I can think of is that the game must be reset (or simply exit MAME and start it back up again) for the new dipswitch settings to take effect.

You may also want to verify that the dipswitch setting got saved after it was set to cocktail cabinet mode.  Do that again by just exiting out of MAME completely and starting the game again.  Go back into the TAB menu and check to see if it has somehow been set back to upright cabinet.

[ahofle]

Resetting the game using F3 is the best way to make sure the change takes effect.  If you simply exit MAME and re-enter, it may resume where it left off if you have the state saving feature enabled.

[NerdyGirl]

Perfect! Thanks so much! Reset did the trick. And now I'm smacking my forehead for ignoring the first rule of troubleshooting (restart!) and not trying that in the first place.