I just can't get Ultimarc Ultrastik 360 to work in Mala - help please

[crispux3]

I can't get the Ultrastik 360 to work in Mala. I've enabled the joystick tab, and I've enabled the ume.ini to use joysticks (I'm using groovyume).

I have the ultrastik plugged in via USB, but no buttons connected to it. My buttons are connected to a mini-pac.

The buttons seem to work fine as they are connected to the default wiring on the mini-pac, but the joystick will not work at all. I've downloaded the "analog" map to the joystick through the ultramap software.

Funny thing is, I've started an NES emulator (nestopia) through Mala using my keyboard, and the analog joystick and buttons work fine for it, but I cannot use the joystick to scroll lists in Mala nor control anything in MAME. Mala also doesn't seem to recognize the buttons I've assigned on the joystick tab to scroll through lists and switch emulators.

Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks.

[behrmr]

Try xpadder or joy2key

[crispux3]

I could do that. I haven't tried it yet. I have Xpadder on the PC I use, but would it pick up the joystick since it is analog? And wouldn't using a keyboard mapper defeat the purpose of having an analog joystick?

[behrmr]

I could do that. I haven't tried it yet. I have Xpadder on the PC I use, but would it pick up the joystick since it is analog? And wouldn't using a keyboard mapper defeat the purpose of having an analog joystick?

MAME will not read xpadder's key presses unless it compiled with direct input.

I used xpadder and setup a map of the analog movements to the up/down/left/right keyboard keys.  Then you make sure that you have xpadder start with Mala. I think I used a Mala startup plug-in for that.

[crispux3]

I've got the joystick working. For mala, it seems like had to disable "require ultrastik to be plugged in" and also disable "joystick always as analog" in the ultramap software. I also downloaded the ultrastik mala plugin, but I'm not sure if that made a difference or not. One thing it did do though is run the ultramap software and switch the stick (at least I think so) to a 4 way, and after that I was able to scroll lists in Mala.
 
In MAME it has to do with the device ID's windows assigns. The Mini-pac and Ultrastik 360 are both seen as game pads in Windows XP, and no matter what I do, the ultrastik will always be assigned an ID higher than the Mini-pac. So Mini=ID1 and Ultrastik=ID2. If I plug in an Xbox 360 controller, it seems to ALWAYS be assigned ID1 and the other two get pushed down the list. MAME was enabling joystick support, but all the controls were mapped to "Joy 1." Since the Mini-pac was assigned in ID 1 by windows, I basically had to assign all the controls manually in the MAME user interface. MAME recognized the ultrstik as Joy 2. After I did this, MAME games seem to play fine. If however, I plug in an Xbox 360 controller again, the ultrastik immediately gets assigned ID 3 in windows and MAME stops working again.
 
So I guess unless a person is going to use the input of the U360 and not use a keyboard encoder, MAME should work right away, but if a U360 and a keyboard encoder are both used, one will have to configure MAME manually as the U360 joystick ID will be something other than ID1.
 
I hope this had made sense.