Spinner/Trackball setup and config file question

[bkrownd]

  I spent a couple of hours trying to get my new trackball and spinner working last night.  They worked as "mouse" devices in windows immediately after plugging in the minipac.  However, mame wouldn't recognize them, and the config for the game was getting screwed up as I tried to use the tabbed menu controller setup to add them. 

  Eventually after lots of web searching and reading I found a file "mame.ini" to download that wasn't in my mame directory before, and edited the setting "mouse" from 0 to 1.  (trackball is still set to "keyboard" instead of "mouse" but the comments I was reading suggested that was fine?)  Now I have to work on tweaking sensitivities. 

  Anyhow, I'd like to edit the individual <game>.cfg files manually, but until you start changing defaults these files are basically empty.  Can anyone point me to the best reference/example/tutorial page for doing this, listing and explaining all the .cfg file options?  Thanks!

[big10p]

For .cfg files (which are XML) you just have to tweak the settings in the MAME menu, as you say. Not sure why you'd want to write sensitivity settings directly to a cfg without first testing it in-game? Most games will need a different sensitivity.

If you meant ini files, most of the settings are listed and explained here:
http://www.mameworld.info/easyemu/mameguide/mameguide-options.html

[bkrownd]

  I just like being able to edit the text <game>.cfg files directly, and in the case last night where I screwed up all the settings while trying to get the trackball recognized it would have helped to be able to make proper changes to the .cfg files directly, but at the time I didn't have a guide to the valid options and syntax.  I'm sure a lot of the settings in the .cfg files can be copied between similar games, at least to get a starting point without having to go through the menu thing with each one.

  Thanks for the link for the other files.  I'm sure I'll want to tweak those as well.

[thatpurplestuff]

If I'm understanding your issue correctly, I think your best bet would be to modify the "General Settings" not "Game Specific" settings (I put them in quotes because I'm not sure I'm calling them by their correct name within the MAME menus).  That way, all games would have your ideal settings by default and then any games that need tweaking after that could be modified later on.  You'd probably want to delete all of your individual game settings files after you find the sweet spot for your general settings.

[bkrownd]

I'm just looking for documentation on the format and options of those <game>.cfg files so I can edit them if I like.  I like to know how things work in case I want to make use of them.   

I know that a really hard way to do that is just to change all the settings out of wack and study what kind of .cfg files are produced, but that's time consuming and probably doesn't provide all the possible information....

Cutting holes in some wood (or pseudo-wood) tonight so I can mount everything.

[PL1]

Eventually after lots of web searching and reading I found a file "mame.ini" to download that wasn't in my mame directory before

Are you certain that the file you downloaded is a perfect match for your version/compilation of MAME?   

To generate mame.ini, use the "mame -cc" command like Hoopz describes here -- if you aren't comfortable with typing in commands, scroll down to Quadrider1's reply for how to do it using a batch file.   


Scott

[bkrownd]

Eventually after lots of web searching and reading I found a file "mame.ini" to download that wasn't in my mame directory before

Are you certain that the file you downloaded is a perfect match for your version/compilation of MAME?   

Um....no, I'm not.  I didn't have that file in my installation so I gave it a try.  It's just part of the narrative of how I fixed the trackball problem. 

[PL1]

Eventually after lots of web searching and reading I found a file "mame.ini" to download that wasn't in my mame directory before

Are you certain that the file you downloaded is a perfect match for your version/compilation of MAME?   

Um....no, I'm not.  I didn't have that file in my installation so I gave it a try.  It's just part of the narrative of how I fixed the trackball problem.

The reason I asked is that there is a chance that the .ini you downloaded might have some different settings/variable names than the version of MAME you installed.   

Better to take 5 minutes (or less) to delete the downloaded .ini, generate a guaranteed good one, and re-edit it now rather than finding an error sometime later that might be hard to trace back to the .ini.

Generating a new .ini is a cheap insurance policy IMHO.  YMMV.   


Scott