Software Support > controls.dat
Would anyone like to take over?
Howard_Casto:
--- Quote from: Jakobud on August 04, 2014, 01:38:31 pm ---What is the status of this project lately? Where did the database of games go? What % of games are complete with regards to their control labels?
I've been out of the BYOAC scene for a while. Are there local software solutions for this these days? Are the Mame devs still not labelling controls accurately?
What would be the ideal situation for you guys with regards to the way people update and add controls for games? Seems like it would be pretty easy to have a database of games and allow people to update controls for games. I am a web developer so I could help out if its not too big of a deal.
--- End quote ---
SirP still has the reigns. He recently removed the scripting from the site as it could be exploited and he said he wants to try and do a new site later on. Then again he says that roughly once a year (I'm looking at you SirP! ;) )
I'm sitting in a holding pattern because before starting up again we would have to seriously re-design the file format due to recent mame changes.
Headkaze wrote a stand-alone app... and people have added info to it, but I doubt it's accurate not because people don't have good intentions, but because when we used to do it we were "show your proof" Nazi's to make sure label names and what had you cam from some sort of official documentation.
So long story short, contact him... keep me in the loop as well because I often do a lot of the grunt work in terms of designing the format and doing entries.
SirPoonga:
The whole project needs a redesign because of the changes that have happened to mame. The big thing is how to handle the newer format of listing and map controls to it.
Howard_Casto:
Well, it looks different but they haven't changed a whole lot other than the formatting. You've still got generic control names like "dial" and then you have to go and look up what individual inputs "dial" has. If anything it is a bit easier to read now, so long as you ignore the flags inside the control node (which I think we could get away with).
Now on the physical mapping end of things, things have changed significantly. All analog controls have a digital + and - as well as the analog axis. That analog axis can also be mapped to a full axis or a split axis (more of a viewer problem in that case).
Since that needs re-designed we might as well add in diagonal labels as well. That's something I regretted. Yeah it's a pain in the butt to display in viewers, but I don't see how that is our problem.
Also you are going to hate this suggestion, but I think ditching xml might be a good idea as well. I'm not necessarily suggesting the ini format either, but now that mame has such a massive amount of roms, the xml size of just mame is out of control. It actually takes a minute or two just for mame to print it out, much less parse it or convert it via another app. So that is bad enough, but then to parse the controls.dat on top of that... well let's just say viewers could get sluggish.
Either that or start putting each game's xml in a separate file.
Howard_Casto:
Oh I probably need to point out that the mame output is STILL inaccurate, unfortunately.
For example run -lx on outrun. It says it has 3 buttons... I'm not sure how it got that number. You've got a gear shift toggle a start button (which isn't supposed to be counted) and two coin slots. So the number should be 1 or arguably 4, not 3. It shows a paddle... ok that's alright and a pedal, yup it's got that... but no second pedal?
SirPoonga:
I think what needs to happen is to not have controls.dat as mame driven. Meaning this it what I envision. Currently when adding a game to the dat the wizard would get all of the mame controls for that game and display them asking for the real label.
I am thinking about changing this. Instead you will have to manually add controls to a game. The mame entry will be listed as a hint. But you would add something like an 8 way joy or spinner or 49 way joy. There will be labels associated with that control to fill out. Then each label will be mapped to it's mame entry counter part. This way the game's co trols still keep proper labels even if the mame format changes. Then we would just need to change the mapping when mame changes.
Xml is fine if you know how to use it properly. You can either load it all into memory or use an xml stream. One you do at the beginning of the program during a splash screen, hopefully in its own thread. The other you can do on the fly and it will still be decent speed.
I would think about ditching the ini format and maybe using JSON instead.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version