Help me understand control panel viewers

[mike boss]

I don't know if it's late and just not sinking in..... but I'm lost when it comes to control panel viewers.
Other day I was playing NBA JAM and for the life of me could not recall how many buttons it used.
It's not hard to figure out, a lil trial and error, but as many of us know what might seem simple to us (our cabinets)
are quite daunting to others. We know what a frontend is, how to navigate it, etc. But to a family member or friend playing the machine it's not quite that simple.
Anyway this got me wanting to look into a control panel viewer....something that will work with MaLa as MaLa is my frontend of choice.

One of the areas in which I am lost is the creating of the panels, do I need to create a panel for every game in MAME ?
Or do I use one image that I have created and simply tell the program : I have 2 players, 6 buttons per side, here is button 1, button 2, etc etc.
Then once done the program knows B1 = L-ctrl, then the program looks and labels everything accordingly.
So for example if the game was Donkey Kong the program would show my panel, and button 1 would be labeled as JUMP ?
And if it were NBA JAM it would show button 1 = TURBO, 2 = SHOOT/BLOCK, 3 = PASS/STEAL ?

I've included an image of my control panel.

Any and all help would be appreciated.

I guess some of the other questions I have are :

What is the best one to use ? Simple, easy, fast ?
Are all the labels included somewhere in some file ?
- This part I have a hard time putting into words what I mean, so I apologize if I get anyone lost.
A button can do many functions depending on the game, be it TURBO, RUN, SOFT PUNCH, etc.
If there is some automation to the process does the program know what to put and where to put it.

[mike boss]

I made this in Photoshop.
Player 1 being the controls for NBA JAM, Player 2 being NARC.
I didn't look to see what actually does what in MAME, wasn't required for this visual.
This shows the look I'm going for.
Do any of these CP viewers provide a result like this ?
(ARGHHHHHHHHH...............I gotta get off the computer and go to bed!)

**** My guess being if it is automated and say ROCKET was recorded as BOMB, it would automatically know that button 4 is BOMB. ****
**** For what its worth my panel is laid out typical Street Fighter style, 3 over 3. Button 1 thru 3 on top 4 thru 6 on the bottom        ****

[Dawgz Rule]

CPWizard will do exactly that.  You can use the built in templates or you can create one of your own.  CPWizard can create all of the control panels for you through an export feature.  Alternatively, you can let CPWizard run as an application and it will create the appropriate panel images on the fly.   The nice thing about that is if you change a configuration in Mame, CPWizard will reflect the changes you made. 

The program uses your controls.xml file and colors.ini to generate the correct labels and colors.

[mike boss]

@ Dawgz Rule

Thanks !
That's what I was getting, but I found no clear explanation. (Could have been I was exhausted!)
I figured why not be sure and figure it out on BYOAC.
I'll need to try this out today.

This will work within MaLa, so from the font end a user can see the panel before playing the game ?

Truth be told I was motivated to figure this out for personal use, but a customer did ask me also.
So this could be great !

[Dawgz Rule]

Not sure about other front ends but it does work great with GameEx.  You can view the control panel as in the menu options for each game.  CPWizard also has options that it will display the control panel just prior to loading the game.

[secret80sman]

I spent hours designing my custom control panel in CPWizard but the program always selects the wrong buttons even thou they are correctly assigned in MAME. Any thought or ideas?

[mike boss]

That blows !
I still need to install MAME + MaLa on this PC again begin my testing.

[Dawgz Rule]

There could be a few things that could cause the CP not to display properly.  The first thing I would do is check how the panels are displaying within CPWizard itself.  Use the preview option and select some games.  If these are not displaying correctly, you have an issue with your template.  You can double check this by comparing against some of the prebuilt templates and also seeing if the buttons are showing up correctly.  Try that and we can go from there.

[mike boss]

Another question, perhaps stupid....................

So I get a control panel viewer, does  this use the control panel images that can be found on EMU Movies ?
I have the complete set for MAME and I'm wondering what I should use, my own image or the actual panels.

[Dawgz Rule]

EMU Movies has two sets of images:  One set is of the actual CP's (at least a good many of them) but they are photographs and some are of poor quality and difficult to read.  These would be placed in your MAME "CP" folder.  The other Control Panel set is for viewing button assignments and is a generic CP with two sticks and a trackball.  These would go in your MAME "Controls" folder.   About the only down side of these is if you change button assignments, they won't be reflected in your static images. 

That being said, there is no right or wrong answer.  All MAME cares about is the folder and file name.  So, you could put anything you want in these folders and as long as the name matches the ROM name, it will display.

[Howard_Casto]

Since I started these damn things maybe I should chime in. 

You've got three things that you seem to be muddling together... images of the actual arcade machine's control panels, images of a generic panel, and a control panel label viewer.

The first two are basically useless unless you have that exact same layout, which is unlikely.  A controls viewer like cp wizard or Johnny5 takes an image of YOUR control panel, checks YOUR button assignments and uses all of that data to match the proper label with the proper control on YOUR panel.  In other words, it makes a legend for you. 

That's your difference right there... if you are just looking for nice art to fill your fe, images of the original panels are probably ok, images of a generic mame layout are better than nothing but probably not as useful as you might think on those odd-ball games.  An actual viewer is your best bet, but it'll require a fair bit of setup. 

[mike boss]

I'd like to show my panel and what buttons are used on my panel for "X" game.
That to me would be the ideal out come.
Something clean, that looks good, that would open prior to game start and close with a button press.

Thats what I hope for anyway !

Suggestions ?



********** I should add, there are some great resources around, I know that. Things that tell you move sets, display more art, etc. However in my years of playing MAME I've never used these tools. I'm sure they enhance the experience, but I think I'd be ok without them. The button configuration however is a tool I ask myself why I didn't look into prior. I think this would be great for anyone playing my machine. And if I can display my panel mapped with the required buttons it would make things amazing for everyone ! LOL ******

[Dawgz Rule]

To add to what Howard said, the third option for CPWizard is that you can have it run at startup.  Mame options in the application include having it display the control panel for x number of seconds and then your game will load.  The up front work isn't really too difficult and the default template would suffice provided your key mappings match.  I was able to create a replica of my CP in less than an hour by seeing how the default templates were created and using those as a guide.

[mike boss]

Yeah I think I need to read more and spend a lil more time on this.
I'd really like to display my panel as it obviously directly relates to my cabinet, I think even a first time user would find this to be an awesome tool.
I also think they'd notice its my actual panel based on colors !

* crap photo of my actual panel attached/mock up seen above *