Pressing two buttons to get third input

[iscariot]

Hey folks, is there a simple way to have two buttons pressed together act as a third?

[Seith]

Yes, but more information is needed to properly answer that question.  There are many ways to skin a cat.  Start with answering this:

What encoder are you using?

[Vigo]

Are you just talking about in mame? Then Yes, easily. When you map a control, you just press both buttons you want. The control settings will say something like "Q + W". and while in game, pressing Q and W at the same time will work as that input.

[keilmillerjr]

The iPac has a shift function where you hold one button down and press another, and it acts like a different keystroke. I'll be using that function to have a "secret" way of dropping coins without inserting an actual coin.

[RandyT]

The iPac has a shift function where you hold one button down and press another, and it acts like a different keystroke. I'll be using that function to have a "secret" way of dropping coins without inserting an actual coin.

In MAME, they are all "secret" unless you can get into the admin section.   

[keilmillerjr]

The iPac has a shift function where you hold one button down and press another, and it acts like a different keystroke. I'll be using that function to have a "secret" way of dropping coins without inserting an actual coin.

In MAME, they are all "secret" unless you can get into the admin section.   

By secret I just meant that there will not be a dedicated button for it. Unless I told some one how to do it, they would never know. That's all. Trying to keep it as authentic as possible.

[RandyT]

By secret I just meant that there will not be a dedicated button for it. Unless I told some one how to do it, they would never know. That's all. Trying to keep it as authentic as possible.

The MAME method does this as well.  In fact, MAME doesn't care how many buttons you use in a combo.  It could be two, three or more.  But obviously, you would want to assign them to combinations which wouldn't be pressed in the course of normal use.

[Vigo]

By secret I just meant that there will not be a dedicated button for it. Unless I told some one how to do it, they would never know. That's all. Trying to keep it as authentic as possible.

The MAME method does this as well.  In fact, MAME doesn't care how many buttons you use in a combo.  It could be two, three or more.  But obviously, you would want to assign them to combinations which wouldn't be pressed in the course of normal use.

Yeah, I agree. It is a really handy feature for people who don't want admin buttons....and for people with children. For my kid's machine, I use 3 button combos quite a bit for the admin functions to keep him from accidentally changing the settings or quitting the game when he slams around on games.

[brad808]

This reminds me I need to change the combination I use for pause on my candy cab. Currently I use start + button 3 but lots of shmup games use button 3 as bomb and when I un pause it wastes a bomb on me. Simple solution just to move it to start + button 6 but I haven't remembered around the machine yet.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

[Vigo]

I personally use start + Right on joystick for pause. Just throwing that out as an option because I know it can be a stretch to hit start + button 6 with one hand.

[brad808]

Good call, I always forget about the joystick for stuff like that. On my two player cab that a lot of guests play I tried to avoid it because I figured chances of someone having one hand on the joystick and one on start would be a lot higher than one on the buttons and one on start. Just to try and avoid accidental pauses and such.

I think I also had implanted in my mind long ago (probably wrongfully so) that I would need to use the joystick and start buttons for "secret" unlocks at the beginning of games. Things like alternate costumes for fighting games and stupid things. I can't think of a single game where I do that and it's been a few years now so it's probably safe to use the joystick on my 1 player cab haha.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

[paigeoliver]

And if you let a couple of grade school kids on your cabinet they will find every single key press combination in a matter of minutes. Usually resulting in them getting into the mame menu and messing up the default control configurations. I only combo insert coin now. For exit game and the tab menu I ended up installing a couple of buttons underneath the control panel where no one knows where they are.

By secret I just meant that there will not be a dedicated button for it. Unless I told some one how to do it, they would never know. That's all. Trying to keep it as authentic as possible.

The MAME method does this as well.  In fact, MAME doesn't care how many buttons you use in a combo.  It could be two, three or more.  But obviously, you would want to assign them to combinations which wouldn't be pressed in the course of normal use.

[iscariot]

Actually this is for a real arcade machine.  I was just hoping to have the third button utilized when I pressed two other buttons together.

[jasonbar]

MAME defaults Player 1 buttons to include Left CTRL & Left ALT. I assigned one of the Player 4  buttons to DEL.

This was fine until the first time I invite over people & 4 of us were playing Gauntlet & the Task Manager popped up! =O

I changed that immediately.

Now, when I have company over & want to protect my cab & keep people out of the MaLa settings menu, I turn off the right-mouse-click option on MaLa & assign DEL to pull up the MaLa context-sensitive menu, as I know that DEL is a key found only in the setup keyboard inside the cab, & not assigned to any switch on the outside of the cab.

-Jason

PS--I also made it difficult to exit to Windows from MaLa: right-mouse-click (Player 2 button 2), then "X" for the keyboard shortcut for "Exit" in the pop-up menu (Player 1 button 6), & then the AutoHotKey script requires that I immediately press & hold F10 (throttle, a dedicated button on the front face of my cab, under the panel's top face overhang) until the Windows desktop appears. If the 1st 2 keypresses occur w/out the 3rd, MaLa will exit & then immediately restart.