cant get utrak to respond very well in mame. any suggestions?

[aldub516]

So i have a utrak on set up. Its configured correctly, and works fine as a mouse. If im on my desktop, and i roll the ball up, down left or right, or goes in a near straight line in each direction nice and clean. I cant seem to get this same reading in mame, and i dont know if its a mix of emulated roms trying to work with a generic analog trackball, or mame itself or what. For example, i test it in quantum because thats a game where i can use the cursor freely and get an idea of the settings. After endlessly toying with the analog settings (which really is only digital speed, reverse and sensitivity) i can never get smooth track play. If i roll the ball up, the cursor zig zags like its high on pcp. If i hit the ball hard like in a golden tee motion, it veers way off. Games like capcom bowling i cannot get to even NEARLY become playable with the trackball. Is this the game itself not working with the trackball? or what. With only 3 analog settings, most games are near impossible to play well with the trackball. I managed to get crystal castles comfortable, and missile command is OK, but even that, the cursor kind of skips around and such. What can i do to get better use out of my trackball? as of now id say its 50% functioning, and i cant really sit here with every trackball game spending 2 hours trying settings. Most bowling games are impossible, golden tee is iffy, and glitchy. Is there a database of  "recommended" analog settings for games? any help at all? it sucks having a 80 dollar trackball and not get it to work. Again, in windows the trackball works realllly smooth, i can slam the ball upwards and it goes straight up in a line.. in mame, its all over the place despite all settings.

[aldub516]

and i HAVE thoroughly played with the analog setting in various games. I spend an hour changing values, and the closest i can get is like 80% smoothness maybe. I also dont know how original games played. For all i know quantum controls sucked in the original game, so who knows. Any kind words would mean a lot

[BobA]

One group of settings never works with all the games.  You will end up fine tuning many games for their own settings before you can live with them.

[aldub516]

I understand that, thus me explaining that I've tried to tweak many individual games. I set the global settings for the mouse input in mame, then adjust the analog settings in a particular game. My question is why can I roll a straight line in any direction when in windows or my desktop, but after 2 hours of tweaking I can't get a steady circle on quantum, a straight line on missile command, and most bowling games are absolutely impossible. I know there's no one setting for everything, but it's feasible to have a database of suggested
Value settings for individual games with different trackballs. Of course it would be community driven. I'm just looking for any help on maximiZing my use of the utrak. I know when I enable vsync in mame, all of my analog controls and buttons lag like CRAZY. Is there anything else that might be giving me
Bad trackball control? I literally cannot play Capcom bowling at all. Can't even roll the ball near straight. Is It normal for trackballs to just suck at emulated games ?

[BadMouth]

Do you have multi-mouse enabled?

You should, even if only using one mouse.
With multi-mouse enabled, MAME will get input directly from the trackball and it won't be affected by windows mouse settings.

The only analog setting that has any effect is sensitivity.  (and reverse if you want to get technical)

All the ones labeled DIGITAL are for when substituting buttons for analog controls.
Also make sure nothing is mapped to Axis INC or Axis DEC.  Those are also for when substituting buttons for analog controls.
If you map those to the analog control, you're gonna have a bad time.
Only the axis itself should be mapped.

The sensitivity needs to be set on each game individually if you want the best experience.


The only other thing I can think of is if you have some kind of LED light show going on that's screwing with the sensors in the trackball.

EDIT: After re-reading your post, it's likely you have those INC and DEC options mapped in addition to the axis.
         This would have the effect of pressing the button or joystick for left or right if ANY movement left or right were detected, no matter how small.

[aldub516]

Sir, while I'm not currently at home and able to check, I am absolutely sure I have inc and dec set. I learned something new. When I go home I will remove those settings and I am so friggin excited to try this now. It makes sense what you said. Very happy now, thank you. I've asked this question a few times
Before and never got that suggestion. Thank you! Thrilled to try it. It's funny because I did do my research and read that the "digital" level is just for analog buttons taking place of the real control.. Yet it still affected my
Gameplay and I didn't know why
 Thanks a million

[aldub516]

dude, you nailed it.. Ive never put toooo much work into my trackballs or games as this is my first complete build that got as far as tweaking trackballs, but as much as ive learned about mame, ive never known that i was messing that up by adding the inl dec setting.. I almost came to accept that the trackball and mame just isnt supposed to be good.. I wish i had a video of the zigzagging and crazyness ive been dealing with. I just spent 20 minutes rolling my ball around in missile command just because i can   just picking spots on the screen and shooting my cursor right to it. Its funny how much you can know, and not know small things like that. You are a godsend and literally just made it possible for me to use my trackball. One question.. There was a handful of games i would always test on before you schooled me, like capcom bowling, quantum, etc. In that process i changed the settings around a million times. Im finding thus far the first few games i tried, my y axis needed to be inverted. The trackball works fine in windows so i know its plugged in right. Is it normal for some games to have had a default inverted y axis? I just want to make sure that i probably changed those in my previous attempt, and that i dont have a bigger problem. Thus far, missile command and quantum needed to be manually inverted. Do these games usually come default inverted? Otherwise man, thank you so much.

[BadMouth]

I would recommend deleting the cfg files from the cfg folder for the games you've already messed with so they go back to the default settings.
I currently don't have a trackball, but back when I had an x-arcade tankstick I just left most games on the default.

I don't think that many games needed inverted, but I didn't play that many trackball games.
IIRC it was usually more common to need to invert on flying games, also a lot of the pedals on driving games.