My software setup diary (Formerly 'Would it be helpful? .......')

[Howard_Casto]

To do a step by step guide for the software end of a racing cab?

I'm kind of snowed in here, so I'll be indoors for a while.  I just got mine in a pseudo-playable state so it's time to setup the front end and ect.  It wouldn't be so much a set of instructions as it is a log of what I do.  Obviously things would vary from cab to cab, but I thought it might be helpful. 

[Slippyblade]

I'd be interested in seeing what you do.

[Howard_Casto]

One is all I need.    Moving forward....  I probably need to go ahead and explain what I've done so far. 

The first thing I do when installing software on any cab, not just a racing one is to get it running on the same network as my desktop pc.  I know some of you might not want your cab online and that's no problem either.  For this particular build I'm just using a cheapo usb wifi adaptor.  It's slow as can be, but it'll get the job done.  The second thing I do is make sure all the related folders on my desktop are shared on the network.  You see the most comfortable way to do a cab, especially one with oddball controls like a racing cab, is to do the bulk of the work on your desktop pc, or a pc where it's easy to sit and type for extended periods and then transfer it over.  If you do it on your racing cab it's going to wear you out..... balancing a keyboard and mouse on your legs isn't the most comfortable thing in the world. 

So what I do next is what most people do last... I set up a frontend.  The gamelist on a racing cab is going to be rather sort and depends heavily on the specs of the pc and the type of wheel you use, so it makes sense to get a working gamelist before you do anything.  You can also setup each emulator as you go and compartmentalize the work.  [cheap plug] For this cab I'll be using Checkered Flag, as the bulk of the gamelist and artwork is already in place as well as general emulator configs.  [/cheap plug]  I haven't done a release in a while, so things might be slightly outdated, but don't worry... I'll update the app as we go. 

Anyway.....

Something that makes things a whole heck of a lot easier, if you can do it, is to keep your file structure the same on your desktop and the racing pc.  For me I've got some general folders to organize things like:

Emulators
Games
Roms
CheckeredFlag

All on the C drive of my desktop and they are all shared on the network.  When I'm done with as much of the config as I can do on the desktop, I'll just copy them over. 

This is common sense stuff but I just want to get us all on the same page.  I'll transfer the front end and get started tomorrow, where I'll get in the nuts and bolts of things.

In the meantime.... On the racing pc I setup the things that it will need specifically.  The Logitech profiler, mamehooker and all the support junk.  A lot of my apps (and other people's apps for that matter) need the vb runtime files, the VC+ files, direct-x 9c, the dx8vb dll, and maybe a few oddball things that I'm forgetting.  So I install all of that junk to save myself a headache.  The links on this stuff is constantly changing and the install varies from the various versions of windows, so the best bet is to google it.  The dx8vb stuff will be taken care of by me if you use my stuff in future revisions of my software and 90% of the time the vb and vc+ runtimes are already included with your OS, so the main thing is direct-x 9. 

[Howard_Casto]

Sorry I've been busier than I thought I would be so this is going at a slow pace. 

Anyway first issue....  Checkered Flag was launching the game as soon as I turned the wheel!  It turns out this wasn't an issue with the FE but rather Logitech wheels being odd.  When you have the pedals split into individual axis, brake is Z- (off is 10,000 and full down is 0) and gas is RZ-.   All the unused axis in-between?  Those are NOT inverted and send a 0, like the pedal is being held down.  So if you have a function mapped to any of the unused axis, it's like it's always held down. 

The other issue is that the Logitech profiler doesn't exactly tell you the axis number/name.  I'll write a small utility later on to help us with that. 

Anyway, the front end is installed and working.  The next thing I'll do is look at my setup files for the emulator.  I've got the bulk of the games I want to play setup on my desktop pc, so I'll just transfer the emulators over one at a time and then look at the gamelists and transfer the roms.  Remember, the amount of working racing games in mame and other arcade emulators is quite small, so it's just easier to do this manually.  After I do this step I'll report back with any oddities setting up the emulators.

[Howard_Casto]

Ok... first thing on the agenda was supermodel tonight.  First off [cheap plug]  supermodel uses mame's output system, so you can use mamehooker to control the lights.[/cheap plug]  I'm going to do a mamehooker-centric entry later.  Anyway, supermodel, thankfully has a universal config file in the 'config' folder that handles all of it's games.  Unfortuantely, the setup routine for the controls is a bit clunky, so I recommend that you do it manually.  Buttons I'm sure you can figure out yourself, so the only thing you really need to mess with are the pedals.  You want split pedals for this emulator, so set that up in your profiler. 

Find  'InputAccelerator'. 

For Logitech wheels with split axis you will probably want the entry to look like this:

InputAccelerator = "JOY1_ZXAXIS_NEG"
InputBrake = "JOY1_RZAXIS_NEG"

Or at least that's what it defaults to for me.  Keep in mind that unless you change it in the profiler, pedals are inverted axis. 

For me at least I found Supermodel to be the one I had to mess with the least.  The wheel feels pretty good in the games with the default settings. 

In the next entry I'll go over setting up mame and some of the quirks involved.

[Howard_Casto]

Ok here is the tough one... mame.  I know Badmouth has emphasized this before as have I, but I can't stress this enough.  This stuff takes time and patience.  I only got the first dozen or so setup and I haven't even fine-tuned anything or setup mamehooker outputs yet and it took me around 45 minutes.  Be warned, you will have to manually adjust the settings of every single solitary game in mame. 

Anyway, mame's setup has it's quirks and although it has been covered before this stuff bears repeating.  There are a few steps you need to go through with each game so I'll just go down the line.

1.  Do NOT pause the game while you are setting up controls... mame doesn't like that.
2. Use split axis for mame, as some games need both pedals at the same time.
3. To set a pedal in mame, highlight the "pedal analog" entry in the menu, press enter, and then press the pedal down once. Do NOT mess with the INC and DEC entries.  As a matter of fact, once you set the analog one you might want to clear the dec/inc settings by pressing enter to set them and then pressing escape.
4.  If the game has a service menu, enter it and enter the input testing section.  Test your pedals... they should register 0 when they aren't pressed.  If they don't go into mame's analog settings and reverse the axis. 
5.  These days pedals are usually labeled in mame, but if they aren't typically pedal 1 is gas, 2 is brake and 3 is clutch. 
6.  For games that have digital pedals, there is a trick to mapping inverted analog pedals in mame.  Highlight the entry, hold down the pedal and THEN press enter.  Now release the pedal.  That should work for games like great thousand miles rally and the neogeo racers.
7.  Although this is going away, the dec/inc mappings for pedals are sometimes mapped to the same button as the shifter or other game buttons.  This is why you should clear all the dec/inc entires if at all possible. 

Anyway, I think that covers most of it.  If I can think of anything else in regards to mame, I'll add it later.

[PL1]

2. Use split axis for mame, as some games need both pedals at the same time.

In case anyone is confused by "split axis", it is the same as "dual axis" in this illustration -- one axis per pedal.   




Scott

[Howard_Casto]

What he said.  All Logitech wheels are wired to have dual axis, but the profiler software can merge them virtually, so don't get confused, this isn't a wiring thing.

[Howard_Casto]

Ok I'm still setting up mame games. 

Another thing that I noticed that will drive you crazy is the fact that some games don't behave properly when you first change the controls.  I've had a few games that the steering wheel becomes off-centered upon the first run of the game.  Sometimes resetting the game doesn't even help... you need to exit the game completely and everything should be ok the next time.

[Howard_Casto]

Mame is done except for the mamehooker part, so on to model 2. 

M2's setup is fairly easy actually.  The one annoying thing is you have to setup each games controls individually.  To do that, launch the game then press left alt + enter to go into windowed mode and then access the game controls settings.  You check the analog inputs to enable them and double-click on the label to set them.

Model two also has two annoying issues.  It shows the mouse cursor sometimes and you can't exit with escape.  I wrote a little ahk script to take care of this:

============================
Run, emulator_multicpu.EXE %1%
sleep 4000
MouseMove, 1920,400
~Escape::
Process, Close, emulator_multicpu.EXE
ExitAPP
return
============================

Obviously change the exe name if you are using the single cpu variant. 

Troubleshooter 2 exposes many outputs for these games, but that's a discussion for another day. 

[BadMouth]

Search the subforum for ffb settings for model 2.  The default ones are off on Daytona iirc.  Each game can have it's own section in the ini.  Should be an example in the thread I'm thinking of.  On phone, so can't find and link to it.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah I monkeyed with it a bit last night and I think I got it working pretty well, but I didn't know how much the settings would help everyone else.  I set the rumble gain to 2.0 and the spring effect to 0.7