Start game does not work.

[cmorris283]

Hello everyone. This is my first time here. I have my Mala setup (for the most part). I have it installed in an old cabinet that I restored. I have the controls running through a i-pac4. I have installed Mame.exe (command line version) as the main mame. under other emulators I have mame32, sega Genesis, NES and SNES. Everything was working fine, until I left my kids playing while I watched the football game. Now for some reason only the mame games will start. Nothing happens when I press "1" on the other emulators. I have checked the controller settings  and nothing seams to have changed. All the emulators work on there own without Mala. I'm sure it is something simple I just have tunnel vision at this point. Any help would be great. Thanks.

[harveybirdman]

Is The button responsive at all? I know with m kids the first thing I always check is to see if the ground has come loose.

[mike boss]

+ 1 - check the connection on the button.
I'd be willing to bet that is the issue.

[cmorris283]

Thanks for the replies. The connection is good. The main mama emulator still starts with the same button. For some reason the emulators listed under "other emulators" wont start. I feel like it must be a bad path or something, but I've checked all that. I removed one of the emulators and set it up again as new and the same thing happens.

[BadMouth]

With the controls that are there, would the kids have even had access to Mala options to change anything?

Couple shots in the dark:

Open up notepad and make sure the ipac actually posts 1 when you press the button.

Try refreshing the gamelists and see what happens.

[cmorris283]

They could have gone inside the Mala options. That's what I think happened. I will try testing the button with notepad when I get home today. Here's the thing that I can't figure out... In the control options in Mala, If I set other control options to that button, it works. If I change the "Start game" control to a different button than it still does not work. That tells me that it is not related to the button, rather it is the start game option that is not working. Again, only the "other emulators" are effected. The main mame emulator still starts up with the same button as before. Thanks for the relies.

[Oladon]

I'm having this same issue. Restarting doesn't fix it, and I've verified that the emulators/ROMs work fine when run directly from the command line. Specific emulators are zsnes and MESS, but that doesn't seem to be relevant here.

Any ideas?

[Oladon]

Just to add more depth and help troubleshoot this more, I tested a few different things.

Button works fine, both on keyboard and arcade input. Notepad, MaLa config, and running a MAME game all recognize '1' when pressed.

Oddly, my MAME game list has been changed somehow; I had all filtering disabled, but now you're forced to go through a filter menu when you select MAME from the emulator list. I've double-checked the config, and all the filters are set to "Off". This seems to have happened at the same time as the other emulators stopped functioning.

I've also checked the MaLa log, and the only indication therein that I'm trying to start a game are the Info lines about videos/pictures not being found. I've checked a log from when all was working fine, and those are still there -- so clearly, whatever's failing isn't being logged.

I'd be happy to provide any other information to get this figured out... my users love our cabinet and are begging me to get it working again!

[Oladon]

Ended up reinstalling, and was able to get it working again.

Then discovered the "backup" feature, so hopefully next time I can just restore the settings... but wasn't able to figure out what they had changed that broke it in the first place.