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1st Post - Getting Started - General Advice
PL1:
--- Quote from: tk007b on October 03, 2025, 03:23:47 pm ---1. Is the ULITIMATE I/O and possible a U-HID the right way to go .. They are so expensive (comparatively) but if things just work, then it's money well spent
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It could be, depending on the details of what controls and features you want.
This is where the part of the FAQ that I linked to earlier comes in handy.
- Work your way through that step-by-step design process and you'll develop a list of controls and inputs.
- Once you have that list, you can start to figure out what encoders you'll need for those controls and inputs.
If you've got to have RGB LED buttons that light up to show what controls are active for a given game, the Ult. I/O (combination encoder and LED controller) makes sense.
If you don't need the fancy per-game LED lighting, you can get an IPac2 for a lot less.
--- Quote from: tk007b on October 03, 2025, 03:23:47 pm ---(I have created 2 spinners from rotary encoders, which work well and I am yet to add a trackball (undecided if I should use the expensive 3" Ultimarc one or get a cheapy 2" version for less than half of the price.
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The Ult. I/O and IPac2 can both handle a trackball and one spinner. (a total of 3 optical axes)
If you want a trackball and two spinners (a total of 4 optical axes), you'll need at least one other optical (mouse) encoder.
The 3" UTrak is WAY better quality and resolution than the cheap 2" one. The UTrak is far easier to install on a wood panel and is plug-and-play with the Ult. I/O or IPac2.
--- Quote from: tk007b on October 03, 2025, 03:23:47 pm ---3. I am connecting an awful lot of USB peripherals to my gaming pc (Lightguns x 2, rotary encoders/steering wheels/spinners (at least 2 maybe 3), foot pedals (gas pedals if you're American) , an additional joystick for a shifter (as it works better than the dedicated shifter I bought)
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For that many USB controls and encoders, you may want a powered USB hub.
Use the design process mentioned above to sort through and organize it all. After you develop the full detailed list of controls, inputs, and input types, we can look at possible overlaps like the Missile Command buttons.
Over the years, lots of guys have tried to make "one cab to play them all". None of them have ever succeeded.
More control types leads to more design compromises and more difficulty pulling it off.
The closer you can get to a short game list that requires minimal types of controls, the more likely you are to end up with a good setup.
Scott
tk007b:
Thanks everyone (this forum was such a brilliant find - really appreciate your input)
I'll try to answer all points above, in this post, so here goes ..
1. Track and Field, i had an unusual skill in the arcade and could make my player run at almost full speed (my trick was to very lightly press each button, so that the press barely registered and then concentrated on pure speed). I acknowledge the comments about timing but can't figure out how I could get it right in the arcade but not at home, with the same button pressing action .. more to experiment with. Unfortunately, the game does two things I really struggle with:
a. My Player/Athlete runs if I only press one button repeatedly (clearly this is just wrong) .. I've tried different ROMS and different emulators without getting this to stop happening. I'll keep trying.
b. I've noticed that my player runs super quickly initially, when I press both buttons quickly, and then it's like the game thinks I'm cheating, so slows him down, both annoying as I want to replicate my skill (or try to in my advancing years) ;-) I do still need to listen to BadMouth's suggestions - MAME's default dead zone is 30%!, reduce it to zero or near zero AND Increase saturation to 1 (100%).
2. Digital 'gas' pedals. I've managed to get Super Sprint working and it worked fine .. and I'll try it with Time Crisis 5 (which needs 2 pedals, unlike previous TC games) .. This makes perfect sense for my coffee table solution, with the middle section of the table reserved for all analogue equipment, such as Logitech's G29 steering, pedals and shifter. Maybe a flight stick in this section of the table too, if space allows and I get into flight sim games as I read I can use an analogue pedal in place of a digital ones, so using Outrun on my G29 set up should work too. Just a case of trial and error for now.
3. In regards to the Ultimate IO and U-HID, I need one trackball and two spinners as a minimum. I might install a 4PDT switch, to change between a control panel spinner and one of my super sprint steering wheels (but that's still 3). Given your comments about the 3" trackball, I might get the Ultimate IO and the ultimarc trackball and hold off the U-HID unless I need it in the future. The console specific LED facility is an attractive option, so I might get the ultimate IO solution and then get the RGB lights in the future. For now, I will use fixed coloured LED lights/buttons in an Xbox layout.
4. Lastly, I am very conscious about my LOTR "One console to rule them all" solution but so far things seems to work so I'll stick with it until I hit a wall I cannot climb.
Technical issues so far are fairly small:
1. Super Sprint, I have to disable my mouse, as all other spinners get assigned to P1, P2 and P3 steering wheels (otherwise my mouse changes to P1 steering wheel, which is not what I want) .. I am not sure of a way to make MAME ignore my standard mouse and use the other HID devices .. so minor inconvenience.
2. Getting the buttons to work, EXACTLY as intended, for Track & Field .. again only one game so not a biggie.
3. Switching between an 8 way and a 4 way controller. However, as I'm using a joystick for a gear shifter, I could put a 4 way restricting plate on that (instead of a 2 way which I currently have) and make it into a gear shifter/4 way joystick ??
I will of course use a powered hub and will turn off USB power to lightguns and spinners etc until needed but it's all looking very doable .. (he says)
Still full of naive optimism ... for now .. as you can see ;-)
Thanks again to all :-)
TK
Oh and PS - That Pinball controller looks amazing too :-)
BadMouth:
--- Quote from: tk007b on October 04, 2025, 11:16:55 am ---4. Lastly, I am very conscious about my LOTR "One console to rule them all" solution but so far things seems to work so I'll stick with it until I hit a wall I cannot climb.
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Plan on building and using a mock-up before building the real thing.
--- Quote ---1. Super Sprint, I have to disable my mouse, as all other spinners get assigned to P1, P2 and P3 steering wheels (otherwise my mouse changes to P1 steering wheel, which is not what I want) .. I am not sure of a way to make MAME ignore my standard mouse and use the other HID devices .. so minor inconvenience.
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If multi-mouse is enabled in MAME, then MAME should only respond to the spinner that you mapped for that control.
Check to see that the ini folder isn't write protected, but that is probably not it or the other mappings would not stay.
Some UIs in an attempt to be helpful automatically write controls to the ini file (overwriting what you actually want).
It could also be the non-official MAME build that you are using behaves differently than the official MAME build.
I am not familiar with Retrobat.
I'd recommend at least testing with the standalone official MAME build to rule out issues caused by the UI and non-standard MAME. https://www.mamedev.org/release.php
tk007b:
Thanks @BadMouth
--- Quote ---Plan on building and using a mock-up before building the real thing.
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Absolutely, Where my design may vary from other designs, slightly, is that I plan on having a group of USB switches, that will turn on / off for certain games. If I made 3x arcade machines, I would not have to do this but for now, certainly as far as prototyping is concerned, everything will done on cheapy materials until i'm 100% it will work repeatedly, reliably. It will be interesting to see how far I get with the multi-multi-machine attempt.
--- Quote ---I'd recommend at least testing with the standalone official MAME build to rule out issues caused by the UI and non-standard MAME. https://www.mamedev.org/release.php
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Again, good advice, I have done just that. In fact:
1. I got a standalone version of MAME 0.279 and loaded it with the roms I am testing.
2. At first the rotary encoders (presenting as HID/Mice) didn't work but once I'd enabled the MULTIMOUSE and set the MOUSE - ON (in Advanced settings), they behaved in the game way as they do in RetroBat, which is as follows:
When I run Super Sprint, it can handle up to 3 user controlled cars at once. When I start the game it automatically assigns the first 3 available mice to the steering for each of the three cars, so if I leave my mouse plugged in (or the trackball, when I get it), then they get randomly assigned. However, once assigned, I can turn the other mice back on and the settings stay the same until I restart the ROM.
What I would love to do, is to be able properly assign the rotary encoders to the cars, so that it would work correctly no matter what but I need to find someone with fung-fu master levels of MAME knowledge to help me, as just trying to spin the encoder, whilst waiting for an input control, just does not seem to work (unlike button presses).
Incidentally, there is a input devices table that shows me a bunch of HID devices but just shows zero values and offers to copy the device ID into the keyboard buffer in MAME but I have no clue, which device is which and what, if anything useful, I can do with that..
I have even searched for 3rd party software solutions that allow me to rename the HID devices to more meaningful names, such as Steering Wheel 1, Steering, Wheel 2, Spinner, TrackBall, Mouse etc which would be so much more helpful but sadly without success.
So for now, I switch off everything except the rotary encoders before starting Super Sprint and that goes the trick.
If there is anywhere I can better understand that specific level of "MAME - mouse to controller assigning", I'd be all over it.
One last thing I am planning on doing is to get an G29 or G290 steering Wheel +Shifter set. It will be interesting to see if that analogue set up will be better for Outrun and how it would work with Super Sprint. My hunch, for now, is that Super Sprint will always work best on the free spinning decoders, but I'm happy to be proven otherwise! :-)
Thanks again :-)
TK
BadMouth:
In general (at least as of the last time I messed with this stuff), most of the games that had optical encoder wheels that spun endlessly (referred to as 360 degree wheels) do not work well with potentiometer based 270 degree wheels that have endstops.
The reason is that an optical encoder can tell which direction and how fast it is spinning, but not what direction it is pointed. It has no center or endstop points to reference except for a few games where a second optical encoder and wheel slot were added to reset center. As a result when you crash in a game like pole position, wherever the wheel was pointed when you crashed becomes the new center point. The wreck usually occurs in a sharp turn where the wheel was turned all the way, so now you have to keep the wheel turned all the way to go straight and can't turn any further in that direction.
Some games had DIP switch settings to work with different kinds of wheels and there may be hacks out there, but in general a 270 degree wheel will not work on games that used a 360 degree wheel that can spin endlessly. Those will play better with a spinner. I had a nice driving cab and spent a ton of time getting as many games as possible to play. I never came up with a real solution other than swapping in a different wheel with an optical encoder for the 360 degree games.
There are some hacks out there to go in the other direction and get the 360 degree wheels to play better with the 270 degree games like Outrun. See the driving cab info thread or ask in the forum what solutions others are using.
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