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Author Topic: What does controls.dat do? How do you use it?  (Read 10618 times)

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benarcade

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What does controls.dat do? How do you use it?
« on: April 04, 2014, 11:29:39 am »
[Since no one answered these very basic questions, I'll try it myself.]

0. There is no controls.dat file. It's controls.ini or controls.xml, depending on the preference of your front end. MaLa uses INI. Isn't that obvious? Duh.

1. Where do you put controls.dat? MAME root? subdir? does it matter?
I put controls.ini (not DAT) in the MAME root, with the other info files (actual *.dat files), then pointed to it with MaLa front end. It doesn't matter where you put it, so long as you refer to it with a front end.

2. Once there, how do you use it? Is it a button in MAME? Which one?
In MaLa, select a game, then press [ALT]. Press [space] to cycle to each information file - there are other info files that are actually *.dat files, such as history.dat and mameinfo.dat. Why this is controls.ini and not controls.dat, I have no idea.

3. What will it show me? Does it show me the control panel in graphic format? Text?
Shows text descriptions of the original game control panel, like this:

Button 1=FIRE
Button 2=THRUST
Button 3=HYPER SPACE
« Last Edit: April 16, 2014, 10:23:18 pm by benarcade »