newbie/contol panel question?

[ts]

I have my cabinet completed and am now tackling my control panel.  The woodworking part of this I am okay with and feel I have the wiring under control when the time comes.  However, I do have a likley very stupid/simple question that I must just not be getting.

For my controls, I hope to have:
 3 joysticks (1 4-way, 2 8-way)
7 buttons per player (for the 2 8-way joysticks)
side/pinball buttons (? how many)
a spinner
trackball

Here are my questions
1.) How many pinball buttons do I need on each side?  I have seen some with one per side and some with two.

2.)For my four way joystick is two buttons about right for most games (a "fire/jump" button and one other?)

3.) Do I need seperate buttons for the spinner controls and trackball.  And along with that how does a particular game know you are using the spinner or trackball versus a joystick.  Or would all three possibly work and you just have to be careful not to hit the other two while using one.

4.)Lastly for this type setup, do I need the I Pac or Opti Pac or both.

Very sorry for the long first post.  Hopefully once I get my build done I can contribute help as well.  Thanks for any advice everyone

[zero-one]

Hi ts. Welcome!

I'm no expert but I've spent enough time around here to answer the questions.

1) I believe 2 buttons per side is best. 1 is for the flippers and the other is for nudge (as least that's what I've read).

2) 2 buttons for the 4-way joystick is plenty.

3) This one always has much debate. I firmly believe that you do not need extra buttons for the spinner and trackball. Depending on the placement of these controls you can use the 2 butttons from the 4-way joystick for the spinner and the player-1 (8-way) buttons for the trackball. Adding extra buttons for every control just clutters the control panel and make it more difficult to use. It's better to design a layout that places the spinner close to the 4-way joystick and the trackball next to player 1 buttons.

In MAME you can configure the inputs for each game thus enabling the buttons you want to use and diabling the others. Press the TAB key while in a game and select the 'Inputs this game' option and you'll understand what I'm talking about.

4) A keyboard encoder such as the i-pac or a KeyWiz is what you need for the joysticks and buttons. Assumming the spinner and trackball don't come with PS/2 or USB interfaces, an Opti-Pac, a pre-made mouse hack (from Oscar Controls), or a DIY mouse hack, is what you'll need. With and Opti-Pac you'll be able to hook up both the spinner and trackball. Some trackballs and Spinners can be purchased with the interfaces to connect directly to the computer.

Have fun!

[Nailz]

1.  Not sure, not really a pinball guy

2.  2 buttons is plenty, it's what I use for my setup

3.  I have extra buttons for my trackball, but ONLY because they are setup to be my left and right mouse buttons.  For all games I just use the buttons that I have with my 1-player stick.

4.  You will need both

[The cranky hermit]

1: I'd use 1 per side, but that's just my own preference. I feel like if I can't nudge the table by physically shaking it, then I might as well not nudge it at all.

2: Two is fine.

3: MAME automatically decides whether a game uses a trackball, spinner, or joystick. However, games using spinners can be controlled with a trackball, and vice-versa. You see, both the spinner and the trackball are interpereted as mouse input data by the PC. If you use the optipac, then after touching either the trackball or spinner, all input from the other will be overrided by the other for a few seconds.

Another thing, some games use both a spinner/trackball and a joystick. For these, you will want to configure MAME so that the joystick does not control them. To do this, load any game, press tab, and select "input (general)." Then scroll all the way down to "Paddle," select it, and push Esc. This will clear any keyboard input, and only the mouse will control it. Do the same for the other "Paddle," both "Paddle V"'s, both "Dial"'s, both "Dial V"'s, both "Track X"'s, both "Track Y"'s, both "Lightgun X"'s, and both "Lightgun Y"'s.

4: You will need an IPac. There are alternatives, but I wouldn't use anything else. As for the Optipac, it depends what trackball/spinner you use. If they both come with a PS2/USB interface, then you don't need one. If one or both is lacking one, then you will need one.

[grafixmonkey]

For your 4-way joystick, you can just use position it close to the other 1st player joystick and use those buttons for it.  Course, then if you're walking up to the machine and haven't seen it before, you have to know what those buttons are, but you can usually put some artwork or labels on that fix that problem.

For pinball buttons, I know that I have a pinball machine in my basement that's my favorite, and it uses 2 buttons on each side.  (It's the Dark Knight game, from Williams I think)  The extra two buttons are used in the game to activate cool things like magnets that suck the balls in to their field as a safety, so you can prevent them from going down the side drains if you're quick enough.  So if I were putting pinball buttons on, I'd put two.  But, I'm not, and I haven't even seen the software that plays pinball, so feel free to ignore me.  

For the spinner and trackball, no you don't need extra buttons, you can use some of the player buttons for mouse buttons.  All you have to do to get this to work fine with Mame is either use CTRLR files to map your controls, or when you go into the TAB menu in Mame to manually remap controls you have to do it while the game is not paused.  I dunno why, but if you try to map any of alt, shift, ctrl, enter, or a mouse button while the game is paused, it comes out something wacky like "L-Shift AND R-Shift" or "Mouse1 AND Mouse2" even if you only pressed one button.