Controls.dat

[HoopstarsGarage]

At the risk of having an new ---uvula--- ripped out for me, can someone please answer the following question for me? :

- Can control.dat be made to display some kind of "instruction card" on screen during a game to tell me what button does what?  Say for example you press a "HELP" button on your CP and  a little window pops up showing the "card"..

I HAVE tried researching this, but the more I seem to look, the more confused I seem to be getting..

Please be gentle 

[2600]

BuddaMAME does just this, of course after you configure your CP.
Better yet, you don't need an extra button.  Just press Pause.


There are also controls.dat viewers, that can be launched from FE's that show you the button layout before a game starts.  Some are more accurate then others.


Plus, I think there are even more things on the horizon.

[Lilwolf]

Also some front ends do (mine does... but I haven't uploaded the latest code to sourceforge yet)

But controls.dat is VERY limited.  Only about 1/50th of the games are in there.  Why?  They go for accuracy.  So if they aren't 100% sure what the names are, they don't add it.

So my frontend will first check controls.dat for an entry... If not, it will check mame.  So all games it will show the type of controls and highlight the buttons that it uses... but it wont label the buttons unless you have a controls.dat entry.  But you can override them.  So you have a game that your kids like, but they need to be reminded of the controls... Just pull of the edit screen and fill in the strings.

[SirPoonga]

Also some front ends do (mine does... but I haven't uploaded the latest code to sourceforge yet)

But controls.dat is VERY limited.  Only about 1/50th of the games are in there.  Why?  They go for accuracy.  So if they aren't 100% sure what the names are, they don't add it.

So my frontend will first check controls.dat for an entry... If not, it will check mame.  So all games it will show the type of controls and highlight the buttons that it uses... but it wont label the buttons unless you have a controls.dat entry.  But you can override them.  So you have a game that your kids like, but they need to be reminded of the controls... Just pull of the edit screen and fill in the strings.

The last time I looked 1/50th is 2%
http://fe.donkeyfly.com/controls/supported.php

I am seeing 14.4% directly supported, 20.9% indirectly supported (because clones tend to have the same controls), and 3.7% that could be related (because of romof, like
neogeo, but half of those might not use the same controls )  Remember, we are not going to put in clones that have same controls as parents, you can just look up parents info then.  And parent/clone info is readily available in mame.  no need to store redundant data and take up space.
Over 1/3 of the games in mame can be looked up via controls.dat.  That is a pretty large chunk considering mame got rid of the test driver status so games like dlair exist in mame with no control info defined in the driver (out biggest problem these days with entering in new games).  Even your FE is not going to filter those where they are suppose ot go.  So it is not VERY limited.  A large chunk of the games that are playable is covered by controls.dat.

To answer HoopstarsGarage's question.  Like 2600 said use buddamame for in game reminders, use something like jfront or mamwah with johnny5 to view the controls before you start the game.

[HoopstarsGarage]

Thanks guys for your help on this..

I am sure this is the beginning of a LOT more question from me on this.. but again, thanks.

[SirPoonga]

Feel free to ask questions on the controls.dat forum.

[Buddabing]

Howard is working on a way to display controls.dat infomation from the new version of his Johnny 5 viewer application, without a custom build of MAME.

I think SirP's 20.9% is actually a bit low for the average user who doesn't play mahjong or quiz games.

[SirPoonga]

I think SirP's 20.9% is actually a bit low for the average user who doesn't play mahjong or quiz games.

14.4 + 20.9 = 35.3%
and all mahjong games are in controls.dat (from .88), which is about 150 games, a small percentage of mame actually.
But what is there has control panel pics and resources to verify controls, which means it was a popular enough game that documentation about it is still around.  So, yes, controls.dat covers a large percentage of what people actually play.