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Has anyone thought of this?
neuromancer:
I've been thinking about this lighted buttons to help newbies with games idea. I love the idea of the used buttons lighting up, but I don't think it will help much with the problem at hand, because no one will know what they the buttons do any more than they did before.
Here are two solutions: 1) make 5 x7 cards with holes that are mini control panel overlays, one per each game. With 3000 games, that would take a while to sort through.
2) Draw up the control panel with the buttons labeled, and store them as .png files in the marquees folder. You would only need to make one base drawing of *your* panel, and many games would be the same.
bob
mc-escher:
--- Quote ---Coming from the software side, just to complicate things: ;) How would you handle games that you reassign the buttons you use?
Example: A four button game on a six-in-a-rectangle buttons control panel usually mapps to a sideways 'L'. But you remapped the buttons to a square for some games.
To work with this, you would read the .cfg files, or remap the buttons only using the ctrlr\*.ini files and read those files, no? Or is there a better way?
--- End quote ---
I see your point
Let's say that you have the following layout (with mappings in your
encoder)
* * *
1 2 3
* * *
4 5 6
Normally a 4 button game would be
Button1 => 1
Button2 => 2
Button3 => 3
Button4 => 4
but your change would make it
Button1 => 1
Button2 => 2
Button3 => 4
Button4 => 5
I suppose that since mame would have to be modified anyway
one could make a MAP of the encoders setup (perhaps done in a
config file or default.cfg)
Then when the driver loaded up, it would load the button configs as
part of it's startup. you could just lookup those keypresses in the
map to find out what lights they map to to send the approprate output.
Harder, sure, but yes, my thought didn't consider a geometry change for some games.
Carsten Carlos:
--- Quote ---PS Hangin out for the site update Carsten
--- End quote ---
Done! Made an extra section regarding LED's. If you need something to know about connecting LED's, take a look at my page under "LED's (how to)". If you are already familiar with it, you probable won't learn much more. ::)
--- Quote ---Here are two solutions: 1) make 5 x7 cards with holes that are mini control panel overlays, one per each game. With 3000 games, that would take a while to sort through.
--- End quote ---
Thought about doing something similar with an TFT-display, but discarded it for many reasons. Wrote that in the "Button Mapping Graphic Display" thread. The idea would have been cool though.
SirPoonga:
I like this idea. As reading it I thought to myself, either lighting up the buttons, or putting a small LED near each control and buttons (joystick would have 8, either 8 or 4 light up depending on if 8way or 4way). I keep track of all the info minus the roms and crcs from the mame -listinfo. So it isn't hard to find out what controls and how many players and how many buttons.
I was thinking then in my FE to put in a display of what controls are needed. Unfortunately -listinfo is entirely 100% accurate. Dotron says trackball. Since the mame people setup it up that a game has one control system dotron should have said dial/joystick. But I'd say at least 80% of the games are correct.