Question on .ini files

[botez]

I am creating a control panel that will have two 8-way joysticks with 6-buttons each and then a 4-way with 3 buttons in between the two 8-ways.

My questions pertaining to this is how to set up the cp so that the 8-way and 4-way will both be the default "first player" controllers.  I could wire them to the same keys in my keyboard encoder, but thought it might be easier to simply create a "gamefile.ini" for each of the games that I would use the 4-way joystick on.  My question is, what is the format for writing up the .ini file.  Any links and/or advice to this would be great.

Thanks, botez

[Lilwolf]

Are you using mame?

if so, copy around your mame\cfg\default.cfg file.  This way you can have one for all 4 player games and one for all the others.  

btw, JFront handles this automatically.... if I ever get to release it...

One last note.  DONT MAKE THEM BOTH THE SAME KEYS!  I had this going on my cabinet at one point and when I would play a fighting game with a friend, if I was about to beat him, he would grab the other joystick to stop me!  (what an ass......wish I had made it use the player 2 controls so I could get him!)

[botez]

Lilwolf

Thanks for the advice.  However, I copied the default.cfg file and it doesn't work.  I then went in to edit it, and its a binary file, so I can't view it.  What am I missing here?

botez

[Lilwolf]

no need to edit it.  You already have an editor for it (mame).

So, setup your defaults to use the 4way joystick.  Quit and copy it to a name 4way.cfg

Then go into mame and set everything up for 2 8ways... then quit and copy  it to a file named 8way.cfg.

then copy either 4way or 8way depending on what you want to use

[aramis]

...or, you could use the TAB menu and change the "input (this game)" settings. It will then save them to <gamename>.cfg in the cfg folder.

The pro of this option is that it once it's setup, mame will use it automatically, no file copying/renaming on your part.

The con of this option is that you have to do this for EACH game that you want to be different than the defualt config. But you only have to do it once...

As for .ini files (your original post topic)...the .ini files only contain info such as screen refresh, scanlines, frameskip, mouse enabled, etc. settings. If you want to change these things for a certain game, simply copy mame.ini to <gamename>.ini in the default mame directory.

[Lilwolf]

The trouble with that is on my cabinet its a major pain in the butt to change any settings (no keyboard where in reach of the screen).   So trying to generalize the settings as much as possible is great.

So you could configure 4-ways once and use them for all 4ways after that by copying aroudn the defaults.

[aramis]

I use an IPAC in my cabinet, so the shift key comes in really handy for going into the tab menu, changing keys, etc...

I haven't had to use a keyboard yet to config...except it always takes me a second to remember "ok, which joystick direction was enter?"...