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LED-Wiz USB LED and Output Control Device now available. *Blinky lights*
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Silver:
Thats exactly how i used controlDat for displaying game info on a LCD screen.

It parses both controlDat.xml and mameinfo.xml, then goes through all the games you own, and for each checks if its in controlDat, and if it is creates a lcd file (just a text file) for that game display the controls, buttons and what each button does (Fire/Jump).
If its not in controlsDat, it uses mameinfo.xml to display control and number of buttons.
As far as i can see, that is way to get the most reliable info available.

I am sure the CP view programs (Johnny5? CPviewer?) do the same process for displaying CP layouts with correct controls. Probably better than my proggy too...  :P

I dont think making such files is hard. You then need a program which will parse this txt file and send it to ledwhizz on game launch - so you could just get a frontend to do it for you. Of course, you still need clever programs (MikeQ's mame hopefully, or something with LSE in it?) to have really good stuff like flashing player start/in game light effects that I'm really hoping for....
JoyMonkey:
Yep, I can't wait for MikeQ's LEDMame to come out, thats why I thought generating CFG files that set unused buttons as NONE would be a help (since LEDMame will figure out which buttons are used by looking at the CFG files). Can you knock out a quick app that generates these cfg files?
MikeQ:

--- Quote from: JoyMonkey on January 27, 2006, 07:20:21 am ---Back to the 'how do we figure out which buttons light up if Mame doesn't really know which buttons are used' argument...

A thought occured to me on the way to work this-morning about how Mahuti's app works and how MikeQ's upcoming LEDMame chooses which buttons to light.

Couldn't a little app be written than generates CFG files for every game based on how many buttons is listed in controls.dat? It could check how many buttons xmlinfo says a game has, compare that to how many controls.dat says, then write a CFG xml file that sets the obsolete buttons to NONE.

Wouldn't help with games that aren't yet listed on controls.dat (like individual NeoGeo games), but it'd mean you'd have to manually configure less games.

--- End quote ---

The only games I've found that I light incorrectly (by default)  are the NEO-GEO games.  This really doesn't seem to be a problem though since the games show you a big picture with an X through the buttons that aren't used.  The first time you play one of these games, you can go TAB to input menu and delete the extra button assignment.  You do this 1 time and never have to do it again. 

I think most people are going to have to make some adjustments to inputs based on their control panel anyway.
MikeQ:

--- Quote from: JoyMonkey on January 27, 2006, 08:47:43 am ---Yep, I can't wait for MikeQ's LEDMame to come out, thats why I thought generating CFG files that set unused buttons as NONE would be a help (since LEDMame will figure out which buttons are used by looking at the CFG files). Can you knock out a quick app that generates these cfg files?

--- End quote ---

I don't actually look at the .cfg files.  I actually parse the input port structures in the driver and lookup what key sequences/analog devices are assigned to the ports.  There is more information in the structures than in the cfg files.  I can determine if some of the controls are for cocktail use or not as well as other info that lets me make a more informed determination than the cfg files.
JoyMonkey:
Ah! Now I understand. Okay, my bad.
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