Happ Interface and Button Mapping

[uncJPOORE]

Hi,

I have the Happ UCGI USB Interface in my cocktail cabinet. The interface is working fine for all of the joysticks and unmapped joystick buttons.

When I attempt to map button seven as a 'coin' button (5), it appears to work fine. I can bring up notepad and press the button and a '5' appears each time.

I can bring up a game like Moon Patrol and press the button and a coin will be added to the game as you can expect. Unfortunately, the Moon Patrol game is the exception and not the rule.

I can bring up a game like Ms. Pacman and the coin button will not work at all. When I bring up the menu and attempt to map the key under Ms. Pacman, it sometimes will recognize that I pressed the 5 key and sometimes will not (defaulting back to none after many presses), however it will never recognize it as a coin button in the game. If I press a 5 on my keyboard, a coin will be added as you would expect. If I immediately exit and open notepad, the button continues to display a 5 when pressed.

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
John

[uncJPOORE]

Just in case someone else encounters this problem, I solved it last night....

Instead of using the key mapping feature of the Happ Control, I simply mapped the user button inputs for coin and player start in MAME instead. Now my coin 1 button (normally 5) is now Player 1 - Button 6.

I can only guess the problem is with how the Happ interface is pushing the key mapping into the Windows Input Buffer or how MAME is reading them out. It works in Notepad reliably but not in MAME. The IPAC doesn't have the problem, so I'll leave the blame with the Happ control.

On a similar note, I do not recommend the Happ Interface for a MAME cabinet. The available coin and player start inputs do not work without YOU having to write some additional code and as stated earlier, the key mapping feature doesn't work reliably in MAME. You are basically reduced to two joysticks with six buttons for one and seven for the other. I used four for each player, so that allowed me to map my other keys to my other required functions.

The IPAC is the most popular and is better than the Happ Interface.

Thanks,
John