First cabinet - Getting 4 joysticks to work on a cocktail

[ThumperSoup]

I'm trying to finish up my first MAME/MaLa arcade cabinet, and I'm hitting a few minor roadblocks in getting all the joysticks to function properly. It's a cocktail cabinet that supports horizontal and vertical games, with joysticks and buttons on each end vertically, and two on one side horizontally. I'm running MaLa as the front end and I have the Lono 2 as the controller interface.

The 4 joysticks and buttons all show up correctly in Windows devices testing. And vertically, my "Player 1" joystick and buttons work fine. However, it's Player 3 and Player 4 (the two joysticks and button sets on the Horizontal side) that don't seem to do anything in the MaLa menu or in MAME. I'm trying to figure out if this is a MaLa setup issue, or a MAME configuration issue.

Any suggestions on what I'm missing? I'd like at least for one vertical (Player 1) and one horizontal (Player 3) to be able to control the menu in MaLa, and obviously I need Player 3 and Player 4 to play the horizontal games and Player 1 and Player 2 to play the vertical games (the vertical part seems to work).

Thanks in advance. I've found this forum to be incredibly helpful in everything I've done up to this point!

[CpCaveman]

are you making a 4 player cocktail cab, or a vertical cocktail cab (player 1 and 2 each end) and a horizontal cab (2 player side by side) in one? (see dodgy pic ) not sure if i`m saying it right , but if its the bottom one you could wire the joysticks and buttons in to the same inputs and that would do what you want.

if its a 4 player at once cab i think the reason is that mala by default accepts only one keyboard entry per list action (see other screen shot) there seem to be settings in that section for multiple joysticks/ controller sets, but I havent played around with them I`m on my first cab too

Thought i`d at least attempt an answer

[CpCaveman]

Just had a thought if you wire the player 1 horizontal and player 1 vertical to the same inputs (same with player two) it`ll work BUT theyre both active at the same time so if someones being annoying they can fiddle with the other (same player) controls youre not using at the time and it`ll control your game, if you want to stop that, loop the GND wire for each input at each station (all the joystick/button GND wires at player 1 vert looped, then the same with player 1 horiz looped, player 2 vert , player 2 horiz) separately then run a connection from each loop through a DPDT switch (double pole double throw) so with a flick of a toggle/rocker/key switch (your choice ) you can choose which stations (vertical or horizonal) are active, just a thought....

[ThumperSoup]

It's more like the second picture, in that it's intended to be a horizontal and vertical cab in one. However, it has Joysticks 1, 2, 3, and 4. I'm using the Lono2 board as the controller, and I don't think there is a way to wire things to the same input as you described. It has 4 spots for 4 different sets of controls, and it's a pre-made harness (which really saved me some time!). Currently I have Joysticks 1 and 2 at the vertical ends, and Joysticks 3 and 4 on the Horizontal side.

However, if MaLa allows Joystick 1 and Joystick 2 to control the menu (but NOT Joystick 3 or Joystick 4), I probably should have made it like your picture -- Joysticks 1 and 4 vertical, Joysticks 2 and 3 horizontal. Then I assume I could have 1 and 2 control the MaLa menu, and I would just need to configure the MAME inputs on the different games (1 and 4 for vertical, 2 and 3 for horizontal). I could probably switch how they are plugged into the Lono board, I'll see if that works.

[CpCaveman]

I put "Ipac" in the diagram, didnt read your post properly just to say where it was going to (I`m using a mini pac) , but the principle should be the same, INPUT one side of the switch and GROUND the other? you could wire (for example) the harness to "Player 1 Vert Button 1" then connect it from there  (same side of the switch not through it) to "Player 1 Button 1 Horiz" effectively putting them in parrallel so both buttons trigger the same input.

you dont have to use all the 4 player inputs just ignore the player 3 and 4 ones (free`s up a load of inputs you could use for something else if an idea crops up, gawd knows what errrr..  pinball buttons, volume , controls for a second screen jukebox/TV, other emulators), most mame games are two player and if you set up the defaults it`ll save you loads of time having to manually configure games.

Only player 1 controls mala, or rather only 1 input per option controls mala on that screen shot i posted, there may be another way of setting it up, but by wiring the inputs in parallel you`re basically making two Player 1`s at different seats and two player 2`s at the others (like the drawing). So you`ll be able to control it from the front or side as you wanted.

Only other thing i can suggest (with my VERY limited knowledge of mala and mame ) is if you have enough unused inputs make a mala control in reach of everyone, you just need up/down/left/right/start and exit .