mame button layout

[bluntfingers]

Hey, I've just finished my arcade controller  .
It works, but some games (especially fighters), do not respond correctly  
Each player has two rows of three buttons, and I have wired them as : top row 6 5 4
....................and bottom row  3 2 1.
Are these the correct defaults ?
C'mon...tell me I'm a fool, tell me it's all back to front...I can take it.  

[Tiger-Heli]

Yeah, it's all back to front:

If you look at the Hot Rod SE at http://www.hanaho.com/products/HotRodJoystick/faq.html and convert it to mamespeak, you get:

Top Row: 1, 2, 3, and
Bottom Row: 4, 5, 6

If you're not happy with your layout, you can either rewire your panel, or change the button inputs in MAME for the fighter games.

Personally, when I build my panel, I plan to use:

Top Row: 4, 5, 6 and
Bottom Row: 1, 2, 3

This works better for classic games, but I will have to reprogram MAME for SF, but I rarely play those anyway!!!

Basically, though, it's gonna be your panel, so it's whatever your happy with.

[Lilwolf]

Mame has the streetfighter buttons reversed.  It's VERY annoying for anyone who played it a lot in the arcade.

I ended up writing a crap load of code to fix this one problem.  I now take control over the default.cfg and copy them around depending on the game your playing.

so if you are playing 2p_8way_6buttons it will swap the 1-3 and 4-6 buttons.  If you are running a 4p game it uses another.  4way joystick... another again.

anyway, the one 'bug' in mame ended up to be a feature thats really nice other places for me.

Anyway, its jfront and you can fine a link on the side someplace

[Tiger-Heli]

Mame has the streetfighter buttons reversed.  It's VERY annoying for anyone who played it a lot in the arcade.

I ended up writing a crap load of code to fix this one problem.  I now take control over the default.cfg and copy them around depending on the game your playing.

so if you are playing 2p_8way_6buttons it will swap the 1-3 and 4-6 buttons.  If you are running a 4p game it uses another.  4way joystick... another again.

anyway, the one 'bug' in mame ended up to be a feature thats really nice other places for me.

Anyway, its jfront and you can fine a link on the side someplace

Hmmm, I played Street Fighter (SF2 in MAME 0.61) on the keyboard and didn't see any thing out of place.  MK seemed backwards for punches only.  Could you clarify this?

I don't play either one enough to really be able to tell, but I would like to know what the key assignments are and how they mess up?

If I understand correctly, this is the situation (buttons going Left to Right and top to bottom, default MAME keymaps):

For Street Fighter:

Jab - Arcade Button 1 - MAME  L Ctrl (but if I read you right, you are saying Spacebar in MAME)
Strong Punch - Arcade Button 2 - MAME L Alt (correct).
Fierce Punch - Arcade Button 3 - MAME Spacebar (but if I read you right, you are saying L Ctrl in MAME)
Short kick - Arcade Button 4 - MAME L Shift (but if I read you right, you are saying X in MAME)
Forward Kick - Arcade Button 5 - MAME Z (correct)
Roundhouse Kick - Arcade Button 6 - MAME X (but if I read you right, you are saying L Shift in MAME)

For Mortal Kombat:

High Punch - Arcade Button 1 - MAME L Alt (s/b L Ctrl)
High Kick - Arcade Button 2 - MAME L Ctrl (s/b L Alt)
Block - Arcade Button 3 - MAME Spacebar (correct)
Low Punch - Arcade Button 4 - MAME L Shift (correct)
Low Kick - Arcade Button 5 - MAME Z (correct)
Run - Arcade Button 6 - MAME X (Correct)

Could someone please verify this?

[bluntfingers]

Thanks guys, I have re-wired to a more 'standard' 123 top row and 456 bottom row, but as has been mentioned, I think the problem lies with the Mame defaults for the fighters. Looks like I will have to set up each game individually....aaargh...all part of the fun !!

[Lilwolf]

The trouble is its completely not standard.

you will find that only streetfighter games have buttons 1-3 on top and 4-6 on bottom.

also who wants to play games with the top buttons when the bottom aren't used.

I still think its a mame error in the sf driver.  they should swap the punch and kick buttons

[AlanS17]

I've been running MAME off of a Killer Instinct machine which uses the same control panel layout as the Capcom Fighting Games. When I plugged it all in it seemed to work fine for me. Perhaps the harness is wired differently for KI? I don't know, but I don't think so. To me it seems more natural for the buttons to be:

123
456

Like when you read across a page... left to right and then down to the next line. Feels comfortable to me, but I've noticed some of my friends couldn't figure out which buttons to press in games that only took 2 or 3 buttons. Upper left just makes more sense to me.

I did have one problem, though, but it may be my encoder. I have a J-Pac. Anyways,  the medium and high kicks (5 & 6) on the second player dont' seem to work right. If you press them individually they don't work at all. Press them both at the same time and both characters kick. I tested it out in notepad to find out what the output was giving me. It had a string of 3 characters, though I don't rememebr what they were. Has this happenned to anybody else? I love fighting games, so I really need this fixed if possible. Is it my encoder or a config setting?? I checked my wiring and it looked good. I have all my wires seperately color-coded.

[Tiger-Heli]

Ok, I'm lost here,  Doesn't take much!!!  

The trouble is its completely not standard.

Do you mean that SF2a uses a different layout than SF1 or SFTM, etc?  What do you mean?

you will find that only streetfighter games have buttons 1-3 on top and 4-6 on bottom.

But pretty much only streetfigter games have a "2 rows of 3 buttons" layout, so this point is pretty meaningless, correct?  (No offense, just trying to understand where you're going?)

also who wants to play games with the top buttons when the bottom aren't used.

Precisely why I was going to use a 4 5 6 top row and 1 2 3 bottom row, so GunSmoke and Ikari played with the bottom row and I would just reassign SF for the top row!

I still think its a mame error in the sf driver.  they should swap the punch and kick buttons

Your original post said that they should swap 1 with 3 and 4 with 6, which would be the jab and fierce punch buttons, and the short and roundhouse kick buttons.  I thought these keys were correct, but wanted someone to confirm.

Swapping punch and kick would be reaaranging the upper row and lower row, so the buttons are:

Short kick, Forward Kick, roundhouse kick
Jab, Strong Punch, Fierce Punch

This would be more convenient for matching what I did with Gun.Smoke, but the keys would be TOTALLY off compared to the original arcade machine.

Or did I misunderstand something again?

[Tiger-Heli]

I'm more familiar with the I-PAC than the J-PAC, but I'll try to help with what I can!!

I've been running MAME off of a Killer Instinct machine which uses the same control panel layout as the Capcom Fighting Games. When I plugged it all in it seemed to work fine for me. Perhaps the harness is wired differently for KI? I don't know, but I don't think so. To me it seems more natural for the buttons to be:

123
456

Like when you read across a page... left to right and then down to the next line. Feels comfortable to me, but I've noticed some of my friends couldn't figure out which buttons to press in games that only took 2 or 3 buttons. Upper left just makes more sense to me.

The real problem here is more generic with MAME.  Except for defender and a few other games, MAME defines inputs as P1Button1, etc, while the actual game has labels on each button.  If MAME had a input labelled JAB or HIGH PUNCH, you could set this up to match whatever button on your controller and everything would be okay.

I don't think you will ever see this change in MAME and it's not a very big deal anyways.

I did have one problem, though, but it may be my encoder. I have a J-Pac. Anyways,  the medium and high kicks (5 & 6) on the second player dont' seem to work right. If you press them individually they don't work at all. Press them both at the same time and both characters kick. I tested it out in notepad to find out what the output was giving me. It had a string of 3 characters, though I don't rememebr what they were. Has this happenned to anybody else? I love fighting games, so I really need this fixed if possible. Is it my encoder or a config setting?? I checked my wiring and it looked good. I have all my wires seperately color-coded.

I was on Andy's site and the JAMMA standard only support 3 buttons per player, which might have sth to do with the problem, but not likely.

Test in NOTEPAD again.  If you are using the default layout, you should get "i" for P2 B5, and "k" for P2B6.

If you're not using the default layout, make sure P2 B5 and P2 B6 aren't set to the same settings as one of the other keys.

If this checks out, start MAME start KI, hit TAB and inputs this game.  Make sure the inputs match what you expect.  Especially, make sure P1 --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--, 5 or 6 aren't set to something like "Z or I" or "I and k", etc.

If these are wrong, you can either fix it here, which overrides everything else, or create/fix controller.ini files to fix all the games.

If both of these are correct, then you need to look at wiring issues, or front end issues, but the steps above should troubleshoot most of it.

[bluntfingers]

Never thought my post would generate so much interest !

I understand what everyone is saying, and to be honest, it looks like the only way to get every game as YOU want it, is to alter the game inputs in MAME for every single game in your collection.
This is what I did with my last controller, but when I upgraded to MAME .61, the advice was to delete the registry key, and this wiped all of my 250 or so settings which had taken me 2 solid days to get right.
I can't face inputting them all again at the moment ! so I guess I'll just play pacman and ladybug while I pluck up the courage to do it all again.

[u_rebelscum]

I understand what everyone is saying, and to be honest, it looks like the only way to get every game as YOU want it, is to alter the game inputs in MAME for every single game in your collection.
This is what I did with my last controller, but when I upgraded to MAME .61, the advice was to delete the registry key, and this wiped all of my 250 or so settings which had taken me 2 solid days to get right.
I can't face inputting them all again at the moment !

No you don't.  I recomend using the ctrlr ini method.  You set the inputs in a test file, while can be copied (unlike most .cfg files) for different games.  Read docs/ctrlr.txt which came with mame for an explanation, and http://www.mameworld.net/easyemu/mamecontrolini.htm for an tutorial on using it.  

I haven't tried with mame32, though, so not sure how well it will work.  You might have to go into the games and make sure the inputs are "default" (not high-lighted).

[bluntfingers]

Thanks u-rebelscum (is it scum for short?), the link for usage of the ini files is useful.
For some reason I haven't got the ctrlr.txt file so if anyone can do me the honours.....
Yep, I think you are right, this will be the best way of going about it, but in my defence, the last time I did this, I don't think this option had been introduced in Mame. (that's my excuse anyway).

(Just thinking... Could anyone come up with a killer .ini file for a two player, 6 buttons per player controller that has all the fixes that everybody has been talking about.................)he he he

[SirPoonga]

Are you using the newest mame?  It's in the zip file with mame.

[bluntfingers]

The zip was called me32v61b.zip which came from fileplanet via the classicgaming page.
The file is not there, I just double checked ??

[Lilwolf]

btw, what I was saying is that SF keys suck and are wrong

why would anyone want buttons 1-3 on top?  Only useful for those games.

Then I was saying that my frontend takes care of it by copying the default.cfg files so you setup sf games once and your done.  For all other games the 1-3 are on the bottom.

thats all