Also, if you dont see any controls in the controls dropdown, (such as Joy8way), then make sure you placed the controls.txt file I posted, into the mala/plugins/ctrlchse folder.
Please give me some feedback on this, I would like to finish this project up but its been a long time since I worked on it. I think I dropped it when mame.xml problem arose with joychoose.
I just installed it on my win10 with an older version of mame on it, and it works for me, I called a program I have on my desktop.
If you still get the error try running a different program, one you know works, to see if it will run it.
You can try that with joychoose too.