Spinner/trackball/mouse support status in latest MAMEs

[gildahl]

I've been moving some games up to the latest mame and finding that I can't get x/y analog controls to work in certain titles that worked before like Cisco Heat, Cameltry, and Cube Quest while it works fine in other titles like Tempest and Centipede.  Cisco Heat and Cameltry allow me to set the analog axis to mouse x or y, but don't seem to read the controllers during play.  Has anyone gotten these titles to work in the latest versions of mame, say .227+?  Not a big deal if not, since I can stick with my older version for them, but if there's something I'm missing, I'd like to know.

[KenToad]

Cameltry probably has a dipswitch option to switch between digital and analog controls. I was wrong. Listen to Scott in the next post.

I don't know about Cisco heat, but it's not a spinner/mouse game, IIRC. I believe that it used a spring-centered wheel, although I only played it a few times back in the arcade. Remember to map controls by analog axis, not analog dec and inc, which are for using digital controls as analog controls in MAME.

Disclaimer: I'm still using MAME .201, so things may have changed.

[PL1]

I can't get x/y analog controls to work in certain titles that worked before like Cisco Heat, Cameltry, and Cube Quest while it works fine in other titles like Tempest and Centipede.  Cisco Heat and Cameltry allow me to set the analog axis to mouse x or y, but don't seem to read the controllers during play.

Tried Cameltry in v0.226. (latest version I've got)
- Default is spinner.
- There's no dipswitch to select joystick/spinner.
- There's no game setup menu to select joystick/spinner like there is in Puzz Loop.

Works fine with either mouse X or mouse Y axes.
- Changed axis mid-game with no problem.

There don't appear to be any recent taito_f2 driver updates that would cause problems, just a spelling error fix and new working clones.
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/commits/b1acdd57733ca7f1dc08dace744255233b4248de/src/mame/drivers/taito_f2.cpp
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The Cisco Heat driver doesn't have any recent updates.
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/commits/db2466cdd391271b48f9aff13c027330c384b864/src/mame/video/cischeat.cpp
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There are some notes regarding setup for Cube Quest . . .
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/30371b5717b3aa88da7f3d19235821f7eca0d429/docs/man/ldplayer.1

. . . but there are no recent driver updates.
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/commits/89dbabd04d00674a0c33d750fb381aba1d8cdf16/src/mame/drivers/cubeqst.cpp


Scott

[gildahl]

I'm using .227 and Cameltry, Cisco Heat, and others that don't work there work fine for me in .145 and .222; so if Scott is seeing these work in .226 I'm thinking that it might have something to do with the big C++ 17 update that came with .227.  Is there anyone who can try these with .227+?  Just curious.

[PL1]

Tried Cameltry in v0.229 and like you said the mouse axis shows up as the default control, but MAME isn't recognizing it.   
- Tried it with an analog joystick and it worked.

That's when I remembered deleting mame.ini before doing the v0.229 install to avoid possible problems from recent changes.   

Generated a new mame.ini (mame.exe -cc), checked the "# CORE INPUT OPTIONS" settings using Notepad, noticed that mouse was set to "0" (disabled), changed that to "1" (enabled), saved mame.ini, launched MAME again, and it's working.   


Scott

[gildahl]

Thanks for trying this out as it has put me on to the solution.  This seems to have definitely changed since .227 as I had copied ini setting forward and would have expected them to work the same.  I tried setting mouse to 1 as you did, but this didn't work for me (even with a newly generated mame.ini); however, on a lark I set "multimouse" to 1 and this did work. This is interesting and probably has something to do with the fact that I have multiple "mouse" controls (I have two spinners, one X and one Y, and a trackball which all behave as mouse controls).  Also interesting is that setting multimouse to 1 in mame.ini fixes Cameltry and Cisco Heat but breaks Tempest and Centipede.  This is easily dealt with by moving the multimouse setting into the individual game ini files, but is definitely a different kind of behavior than previous versions.  Anyway, looks like I'm back in business.  Thanks, Scott, for the information!

[PL1]

I tried setting mouse to 1 as you did, but this didn't work for me (even with a newly generated mame.ini); however, on a lark I set "multimouse" to 1 and this did work. This is interesting and probably has something to do with the fact that I have multiple "mouse" controls (I have two spinners, one X and one Y, and a trackball which all behave as mouse controls).  Also interesting is that setting multimouse to 1 in mame.ini fixes Cameltry and Cisco Heat but breaks Tempest and Centipede.  This is easily dealt with by moving the multimouse setting into the individual game ini files, but is definitely a different kind of behavior than previous versions.

Tried Cameltry in v0.229 with mouse enabled and multimouse disabled.

It worked fine switching back and forth between a keyboard trackball, a U-Trak trackball, and a TT2 spinner.   

No idea why it isn't working properly for your setup.


Scott

[gildahl]

Hmm.  Looks like you have the same trackball and spinner (though I do have two spinners--not sure if that would make a difference).  On the off chance something changed again between .227 and .229 I just compiled myself a .229 build, and find no difference.  I still need "multimouse" for at least Cameltry and Cisco Heat (and now Liberator too), but just "mouse" for others (now including Major Havoc).  Not sure why, but at least it works fine with the game file .ini file tweak.

[gildahl]

Well, after using the multimouse option for a couple days I've decided that I actually prefer it since it gives better control/isolation over mouse-based devices.  So I've turned it on universally in mame.ini for all games.  It's actually been kind of a serendipitous discovery.  If memory serves me right, I think I had tried multimouse years ago, but disabled it after finding that my controller ids changed every time I rebooted.  But with the newish "stable controller id" feature, it looks like that problem was finally solved.

[oldskoolcade]

I've run into a similar issue but I can't seem to figure out if it's on my end or if it's that MAME spinner support has been rejigged....

I have my TurboTwist OG (opti-wiz 1.0) connected and it works just fine and dandy in my .205 version of MAME.  I updated to .229 and now it's broken.   I can set the spinner up as "MOUSE Z" in the TAB menu, and it actually cycles thru the menu list when I spin it.  But the second I go back in game, it's as if it doesn't exist.    I've got multimouse set to 1, I've DIAL, Paddle, Trackball set to MOUSE in the ini...  I'm at a loss.  The only thing I can think of is that the Z-Axis has been pulled from actual control/in game use. 

Anybody have a suggestion as to where I may be missing something with this newer build of MAME?

Thanks!
OSK