U360 Automatic Direction Mapping

[EddieArcadian]

What is the best way to have the U360 automatically map the correct joysticks in my emulators (MAME and other consoles)?  I know you guys don't manually map the joysticks every time you play a game...

I do understand that it will "work" out of the box as analog, but Andy seems to think it's better to map the sticks if you can.  I've read posts from people who say that there are joystick maps pre-built that you can have automatically applied, via your Front End software, but I can't seem to find much info on them.  Andy acknowledges that the GameEx and Mala front ends might support this, but is unsure about HyperSpin - that's the front end I'm using.

Here's Andy's email to me:
Mame will automatically map an analog stick to the game and this applies to the U360. But its more accurate to send maps to the stick. I should really know what, if any, front ends support auto-sending of maps. I do know that Game-Ex requested the info on this and also Mala but I have lost track of what software actually implemented it. Sorry I don’t have much helpful info on this. I really need to research this and add the info to our site.

If anyone knows the best way I can utilize my U360 with HyperSpin, has info on automapping (I don't even know how to achieve this), or has any suggestions in general, I appreciate it.

-Eddie

[EddieArcadian]

I cross-posted this in the software forum, and got a couple replies for those who are curious themselves.

LEDBlinky seems to be a possible solution...

You will want to use LEDBlinky with Hyperspin to auto assign your U360 maps.  There is an option in HyperHQ for LEDBlinky, you will want to check that and enter the install path.  Then setup LEDBlinky to use with your U360 and Hyperspin.  Instructions and download are here:
http://dndw.com/ledblinky/ledblinky.htm
Hope this helps!  Hyperspin seems difficult to setup up, but the end result is amazing!
jason

[EMDB]

As I'm facing the same problem I decided to create a tool myself. I call it UltraMap4Mame. You call it from Hyperspin instead of calling mame.exe providing the same parameter (the game title).

It looks in it's configuration file which mapping should be used, calls UltraMap to download the map to the stick(s) and finally calls Mame to launch the game. My testversion runs fine but needs to be cleaned up a bit. No UI (yet) for the configuration but this can be done using your favorite text editor.

Here's the configuration file I currently use to test:

[Settings]
MamePath="f:\emulatoren\mame64\mame64.exe"
UltraMapPath="E:\UltraMap\UltraMap.exe"
ConfigsPath="e:\ultramap\configs"
DefaultConfig="8"

[Games]
dkong="4"
pacman="4"
qbert="4-diagonal"


I created a config folder with 4.ugc, 8.ugc and 4-diagonal.ugc for now. You only have to specify the games with alternative mappings. In my case the majority has 8-way mapping so only the 4-way and some special (QBert has 4-way diagonal) games have to be specified. When I'm finished I will provide a download link in the software section.

[UFO]

Subscribed

[EMDB]

And here's the preliminary UI for UltraMap4Mame:

[Peja]

EddieArcadian,

I was running 2 U360 joysticks as player 1 and player 2 with my hyperspin no problem.  I used LEDBlinky to have it automatically detect what the joystick needed to do for that game.....ie 2 way, 4 way, etc etc. 

How I did it, I do not remember.  I think downloaded a game list for LEDBlinky to use that told it what game was what and had Hyperspin point to LEDBlinky.



I just upgraded to Hyperlaunch 3 and now my 2 U360 joysticks no longer work.  I have no idea what happened but I can move them up, down, left, right when I get to the main wheel where you choose which system you are going to play and it does nothing.  My buttons still work but my USB U360 do not.


What version of Hyperlaunch are you using?  I have a thread open over at the Hyperspin forums but so far I have had 0 responses. 

Let me know if you find anything out.

Thanks,

[jilted]

Subscribed.

My pair of u360's will be here this week to build my first panel.  Planning to do the same type of setup (hyperspin, mame, some old emu's).  Also want to be able to use full analog mode to play the steam version of geometry wars  :-)

[gildahl]

The way mine works is that there is a default ugc profile that always works, but if you want to override it, you just create a new ugc file with the same name as the game and drop it in a folder. 

The application of the correct profile is made by an ahk script.

Here’s the technical stuff.

First I created a directory structure something like this off the root

Profiles
                UltraStick
                               MAME 
                                Atari_2600
                                Colecovision
                                etc.

In the MAME folder I place a default ugc file called MAME.ugc.  This defines all sticks as analog.  If a game-specific profile (such as qbert.ugc) is dropped into this folder, the ahk script will automatically override the default profile with the game-specific one when the game is run.  The advantage of this approach is that there are no configuration files to manage.  Just drop a profile into the folder and it works.  Delete it and the default is used.  Want to know exactly what games are using custom profiles, just look at the directory.

To make this work I created an ahk script that is called whenever a game is loaded by the front end.  When launched by the front end (GameEx in my case) it calls the script with the following command line

LoadProfiles.ahk “<emulator>” “<rom>”

Thus if I am launching, say, Space Invaders it will be called as

LoadProfiles.ahk “MAME” “invaders”

In this case MAME.ugc (the default profile) is used since there is no invaders.ugc file.

If I am launching Q*bert, then it will be called as

LoadProfiles.ahk “MAME” “qbert”

In this case the qbert.ugc profile is loaded since this game-specific file does exist.

Here are the essentials of the script (I do exactly the same for button config on my iPAC).

Code: [Select]

;This script loads game & emulator specific configurations into
;UltraSticks. If a game (ROM) specific profile
;exists it will be loaded.  If not, the emulator (EMU) specific profile
;will be loaded. If neither a game specific nor emulator specific
;profile exists, a default (DEF) profile will be loaded.

;Parameters are the emulator and ROM name. ROM name is optional.
;Emulator names should match the assets folder name.

EMU = %1% 
ROM = %2%

;--------------------------------------------
;Process UltraStick Profiles
ROM_STK_PROF := "D:\Profiles\UltraStick\" . EMU . "\" . ROM . ".ugc"
EMU_STK_PROF := "D:\Profiles\UltraStick\" . EMU . "\" . EMU . ".ugc"
DEF_STK_PROF := "D:\Profiles\UltraStick\default.ugc"

ULTRAMAP := "C:\Program Files (x86)\UltraMap\UltraMap.exe"

;Load the joystick profile
if FileExist(ROM_STK_PROF)
   RunWait %ULTRAMAP% %ROM_STK_PROF%
else if FileExist(EMU_STK_PROF)
   RunWait %ULTRAMAP% %EMU_STK_PROF%
else
   RunWait %ULTRAMAP% %DEF_STK_PROF%

[cmoses]

Need to try this out.

[EMDB]

UltraMap4Mame can be downloaded here: http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,134128.0.html

[EddieArcadian]

Wow, thanks EMDB!  I'm excited to try this out and post the results.  Thanks again!!!