Main > Main Forum
Controls.ini and the GP-49
Todd H:
Finally, finally, FINALLY! 4-8 way switching in software! You're going to be a very popular man Toonces. ;)
Hoagie_one:
--- Quote from: Todd H on April 04, 2005, 03:09:14 pm ---Finally, finally, FINALLY!
--- End quote ---
Flinkly:
now i know some fe builders might jump into this one to solve all our problems, but what about till them?
Tiger-Heli:
This is Toonces baby, so he can correct me if I said anything wrong!
--- Quote from: Flinkly on April 04, 2005, 03:15:55 pm ---now i know some fe builders might jump into this one to solve all our problems, but what about till them?
--- End quote ---
My guess would be batch files.
--- Quote ---do you click on an icon on your desktop to switch it?
--- End quote ---
You could, if you put the command to switch it in the batch file and made a desktop shortcut to it, but then you wouldn't be using controls.ini.
--- Quote --- and what about overiding it, like if controls.dat is wrong, or wanting to use something different?
--- End quote ---
You can always manually edit controls.dat, or create a different file with the same name and format. The problem will be maintaining your changes when an updated controls.dat is released.
--- Quote --- how about mutliple 49-ways? could you just send info for the first player and connect it to both/all gp-wiz49s and then change all the 49-ways?
--- End quote ---
It would depend how they are wired to the relay board, but I would certainly hope this would be possible.
Toonces:
--- Quote from: Hoagie_one on April 04, 2005, 03:11:23 pm ---
--- Quote from: Todd H on April 04, 2005, 03:09:14 pm ---Finally, finally, FINALLY! 4-8 way switching in software! You're going to be a very popular man Toonces. ;)
--- End quote ---
*Rich arabian accent*
Yes. Toonces, you shall have pick of any one of my 700 wives for your work.
--- End quote ---
Thanks, I hope my wife doesn't mind :)
--- Quote from: Flinkly on April 04, 2005, 03:15:55 pm ---now i know some fe builders might jump into this one to solve all our problems, but what about till them? do you click on an icon on your desktop to switch it? and what about overiding it, like if controls.dat is wrong, or wanting to use something different? how about mutliple 49-ways? could you just send info for the first player and connect it to both/all gp-wiz49s and then change all the 49-ways?
now that we have a joystick that does almost everything, someone should come up with the best control panel layout to cover most games. joystick games that is...
--- End quote ---
Support from one of the FE's is already in the works. See http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?showtopic=155 for how the author plans to support it.
As far as how I switch modes now, I added my Application to the main menu of the FE and select the desired mode before entering the game I want to play. The drawback is that I can't yet select 2 way horizontal mode since it would keep me from navigating the FE menus. I expect that will change very soon.
If controls.ini is wrong you can simply change it. AFAIK, given the way Tom stated he wanted to support it in GameEx, it is a matter of the FE parsing controls.ini and making a map to the correct mode, 1-8 and passing that to the app to do the switching. On exit you just pass back 4,8 or 49 way mode. All of them work for navigating menus so it really doesn't matter which one you use. If there are errors in Controls.ini you can change it directly. The reason I started this thread was hopefully to get some standardized definitions to the controls.ini in order to make it easy to create a map of control type to joystick mode. It's nearly that way now. I just noticed that while H & V 2 way modes are differentiated in the file already, 4 & 4 Diagonal were not. The rest of the definitions should be fairly easy to figure out. Analog = 49 way, Stick = 49 way, etc...
My cab has 2 49's and I connected them both to the relay board. Both switch modes at the same time. You could easily do the same with 4 sticks. The difficult part is going to be when someone here decides they want player 1 & 2 at 8 way, player 3 at 2 way vert and player 4 at 2 way horiz. Just wait, someone will want to do that ;) They're on their own for that one.
For those interested, I posted some pics of the relay board and my cab as it is right now (there are also a couple of pics from Feb when I had just got my T-Stick+ installed). You can browse them here: http://www.pachislofun.com/cyberlead/
The files I put together to support this have the info and programs to support either the relay board or a straight connection to the GP-Wiz49. The parts are easily found at Radio Shack and cost about $10 for everything assuming you have to buy an ethernet cable to hack up. For the relay board hookup I bought 2 DB25 connectors, 1 M and 1F and used an other piece of CAT5 wire I had lying around. The DB25 connectors wer $1.79 and the hoods were $2.39. With a direct connection you only need 1 DB25 connector. I would reccomend the hood but it's up to you.
When I finish writing up the instructions on making the cables and how to use the programs, I will release them and everyone can join in the fun.
Toonces