need ideas for mapping controllers for Ipac4

[bizkonson]

Hello to all, i need your help i fished building my controllers i got 4X 8 way joysticks, Player 1,2 have 6 buttons each, player 3,4 have 4 buttons each plus 4 start buttons, 1 ESC button and 1 coin button.

ive been having problems with Mame crashing cause of combination of the default setup of Ipac4 and also i noticed that player 2 and 3 are sharing 2 mapped buttons. 

any ideas or suggestions on what is the best way to map my controller not to crash Mame and not to interfere with one another?

Photo of my controller (the coin button is hidden behind)



thanks 

[djm858]

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen a mirrored CP with left handed joysticks on the left and right handed on the right.

[bizkonson]

hehehe
 yeah i know its an experiment im doing on my friends,
i want to see if left handed people would prefer the right side and right handed people would prefer the left side or the other way around or hate it all together...

i never saw this before and as a left handed person i wanted to see if its more comfortable or not.

[Afterburner]

All I know is that my dominant hand is the one I use to smash buttons during vigorous game play.

[BadMouth]

First thing is to disable hotkeys in windows (google it).  That should keep combinations involving CTRL & ALT from doing strange things in windows.
That is probably what is causing MAME to crash.
Those keys aren't mappable in some other emulators, so I don't recommend using them for primary buttons anyway.
I'd use those connections for something like START or COIN that's not likely to be pressed at the same time as another key.
Or if you have enough inputs, don't use them at all!

2 and 3 player sharing mapped buttons can only be explained by having them both mapped to the same thing in MAME.
Check your mappings in MAME.

[bizkonson]

All I know is that my dominant hand is the one I use to smash buttons during vigorous game play.

and that is your left hand or right hand?

[bizkonson]

First thing is to disable hotkeys in windows (google it).  That should keep combinations involving CTRL & ALT from doing strange things in windows.
That is probably what is causing MAME to crash.
Those keys aren't mappable in some other emulators, so I don't recommend using them for primary buttons anyway.
I'd use those connections for something like START or COIN that's not likely to be pressed at the same time as another key.
Or if you have enough inputs, don't use them at all!

2 and 3 player sharing mapped buttons can only be explained by having them both mapped to the same thing in MAME.
Check your mappings in MAME.

yeah i know about the hot-keys i googled it and for some reason i couldn't find any straight answer on how to do it in Win Xp except writing some code and unfourtently im no code writer :[

regarding the same buttons mapped issue it came as default settings in the ipac 4 ?#!?!
so i have to change it myself

anyway you can give me a hint  as to an easy way to disable the hot keys in windows xp ?

[BadMouth]

(copied and pasted from google search)

To disable it you need to open your trusty regedit and create a new value under this key:
 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Policies
 
The value is: NoWinKeys (DWORD Value)

Set to 1 = Hotkeys disabled. Set to 0 = Hotkeys enabled

The default keys in MAME are the default settings on every keyboard encoder and they suck.
After rewired, it should only take you 5 minutes to remap your entire 4 player panel globally in MAME.
Some of the fighting games will require individual attention to get the right buttons in the right place,
but they would require the same if using default mappings.

Unless you have no interest in ever adding an emulator other than MAME to your cab,
ditch the default inputs now before you invest a lot of time in setting up individual games.

[fallacy]

hehehe
 yeah i know its an experiment im doing on my friends,
i want to see if left handed people would prefer the right side and right handed people would prefer the left side or the other way around or hate it all together...

i never saw this before and as a left handed person i wanted to see if its more comfortable or not.

You f*cked up your player two for what reason? Have they ever made an arcade with controls like that... Why does it even matter if you are right or left handed; since the NES everyone has used there left hand as the controller. I would not have bothered to say anything if the control pane looked like an all around piece of crap but it looks like you spent some time and a lot of money on parts making that thing… you idiot.

[bizkonson]

hehehe
 yeah i know its an experiment im doing on my friends,
i want to see if left handed people would prefer the right side and right handed people would prefer the left side or the other way around or hate it all together...

i never saw this before and as a left handed person i wanted to see if its more comfortable or not.

You f*cked up your player two for what reason? Have they ever made an arcade with controls like that... Why does it even matter if you are right or left handed; since the NES everyone has used there left hand as the controller. I would not have bothered to say anything if the control pane looked like an all around piece of crap but it looks like you spent some time and a lot of money on parts making that thing… you idiot.

you gotta love it when people give theyr opinion by calling you an idiot and hating in general hehehe,
so first of all dude i did not spent a lot of money on it the art design was done by me and a friend, the console itself is just plain wood structure that i constructed and the top is plastic that i had done by laser for $20 as to my autocad plans.

the hardware aka buttons and joysticks are removable dumass so if i decide to change it its no problem and the most important this i did this as an EXPERIMENT! yes there was never any arcades controllers like this but i was intrigued finding out if this setup will be comfortable for right or left handed people. the whole idea behind an experiment is to do something that might look crazy and stupid but it might be a great discovery as well...

and if i see it will not serve its purpose or will not be more comfortable ill just rebuild it hehehe that's the whole fun building and rebuilding

what a dummass you probably just download plans and give it to your carpenter and get you pre-fab controls online and dont do no actual thinking designing or handy work yourself...

if no one will have the balls to try something weird we would still be in the stone-age!

but thanks for the input anyways 

[bizkonson]

(copied and pasted from google search)

To disable it you need to open your trusty regedit and create a new value under this key:
 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Policies
 
The value is: NoWinKeys (DWORD Value)

Set to 1 = Hotkeys disabled. Set to 0 = Hotkeys enabled

thanks man! i appreciate the help ill do it tomorrow 

The default keys in MAME are the default settings on every keyboard encoder and they suck.
After rewired, it should only take you 5 minutes to remap your entire 4 player panel globally in MAME.
Some of the fighting games will require individual attention to get the right buttons in the right place,
but they would require the same if using default mappings.

Unless you have no interest in ever adding an emulator other than MAME to your cab,
ditch the default inputs now before you invest a lot of time in setting up individual games.

[Hoopz]

My first CP was like yours with the joy on the right and buttons on the left on one side and the opposite on the other side.  My kids told me that they wanted to play with their right hands on the joystick and hitting buttons with the left so I'm doing it that way.

Early machines often had the joy on the right and a button on the left or had a button on each side.  Later, hitting the buttons was more important (at times) than the joystick direction so CPs adapted. 

I'm guessing that most people have a preference based on what games they played the most growing up  And those much younger than us are probably more adept at using either hand for buttons since they are on various phones/handheld games/tablets much more than we were at their ages. 

And don't worry about people here liking what you did.  If you like it, great.  If not, change it until you do.   

[bizkonson]

My first CP was like yours with the joy on the right and buttons on the left on one side and the opposite on the other side.  My kids told me that they wanted to play with their right hands on the joystick and hitting buttons with the left so I'm doing it that way.

Early machines often had the joy on the right and a button on the left or had a button on each side.  Later, hitting the buttons was more important (at times) than the joystick direction so CPs adapted. 

I'm guessing that most people have a preference based on what games they played the most growing up  And those much younger than us are probably more adept at using either hand for buttons since they are on various phones/handheld games/tablets much more than we were at their ages. 

And don't worry about people here liking what you did.  If you like it, great.  If not, change it until you do.   

thanks man, yeah im not taking it to hart, i did wanted to hear some comments even if they are bad.
me and my friends, we are in our early 30's and so far the reactions varies...
me myself i was ok with the joystick been on the right but then the configuration of buttons i preferred to be left to right vs. right to left.
ill give it another month or so to see how people react and then decide to change it or to let it be.

i got enough headache with the software and the hardware questions this days.
with the 3D games not working well at all.
 i think my dual core amd been 2.4ghz is not enough for the Tekken and die hard
and i haven't even tried the ps2 emulator. 

im thinking of a quad core  with 4gb ram and an  ATI Radeon HD4670 1GB hopping that will do the trick.

any suggestions anyone?

[BadMouth]

any suggestions anyone?

Lotsa threads on the subject already.
Long story short, you need to get around 3Ghz for Tekken 3 to be playable, but that's still not fast enough to play NFL blitz and Gauntlet Dark Legacy.

I have 3.4Ghz Athlon X3s in two of my budget builds, but there is probably something better out there now for the price.
I can run the original Blitz with an occasional sound skip.  Still can't run Gauntlet Dark Legacy. 
If being able to run newer games is important to you, 3.8-4Ghz is more like it.
There will still be games that can't run full speed on your processor no matter how fast it is.
MAME is concerned with emulating the original system, not making it run full speed on current hardware.

The original Tekken game is playable on your hardware using Zinc emulator.

[bizkonson]

(copied and pasted from google search)

To disable it you need to open your trusty regedit and create a new value under this key:
 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Policies
 
The value is: NoWinKeys (DWORD Value)

Set to 1 = Hotkeys disabled. Set to 0 = Hotkeys enabled

hey man
so i did as you posted and i did some more minor searching by myself as well

this is what i did:
User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer]
System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer]
Value Name: NoWinKeys
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)

restarted to comp and still same thing the Alt is still going to the top menus and all :\
Value Data: (0 = disable restriction, 1 = enable restriction)

[Nephasth]

You f*cked up your player two for what reason? Have they ever made an arcade with controls like that... Why does it even matter if you are right or left handed; since the NES everyone has used there left hand as the controller.

Hey man, I was the Hendrix of the NES. I just turned the controller 180 degrees and adapted. Also, I could get completely through world 1 of SMB by playing with my teeth alone...





Not really, and you're right.

[CheffoJeffo]

Early machines often had the joy on the right and a button on the left or had a button on each side.  Later, hitting the buttons was more important (at times) than the joystick direction so CPs adapted. 

I'm guessing that most people have a preference based on what games they played the most growing up  And those much younger than us are probably more adept at using either hand for buttons since they are on various phones/handheld games/tablets much more than we were at their ages. 

And don't worry about people here liking what you did.  If you like it, great.  If not, change it until you do.   

Agree.

Both my 48-in1/4Way and 60-in-1/8Way have buttons on either side of the stick and I actually find myself changing hands depending on the game that I am playing.

Ignore fallacy ... he's a doucehbag.