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Guide: Button & Joy requirements/game specific layouts - formally "MAWS stinks"
Crazy Cooter:
I'm planning some modular stuff and was trying to get a starting point by looking through MAWS for "maximum quantities".
Minwah:
--- Quote from: Crazy Cooter on August 21, 2005, 01:14:20 am ---MAWS is so wrong it isn't funny.
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I dunno what you mean...it is fine. It can only rely on the info available from mame and other support files.
I use MAWS for this very use, for example when checking the max no. of buttons used by trackball, spinner and analog stick games. I found it very useful.
SirPoonga:
I know someone is going to say this needs to be added to contorls.dat :)
I think you are making it a bigger problem than it is.
First, most games if they have buttons on both sides of the tball, joystick, whatever, were designed to be played both left handed and right handed. For example, if a game had a joystick, 4 buttons, 2 on each side it probably is a game that only uses 2 buttons, the buttons are wired together.
You will find there is a game that is an exception to everything you come up with. In this case golden tee golf would be the exception.
Second, the layout isn't really an issue. If you aren't looking at other control panels when you design yours you are going at it wrong. Plus if a game had a specific layout and the person is a fan of the game that person will know the layout and design for it. Someone who hasn't played a game before with a different layout will probably not design something for that particulat game. For example if someone hasn't played asteroids on a real asteroids cabinet that person will probably not layout buttons that way.
Plus, how can you document specific layouts? The only good way is with pictures. So then do a quick search on google and you will end up
http://www.mameworld.net/mrdo/mamepanel.html
MAWS is only as good as the information it gets from mame. If they sould include info from controls.dat the accuracy would improve. The big reason controls.dat exists, see dotron at maws...
Crazy Cooter:
--- Quote from: SirPoonga on August 22, 2005, 10:09:17 am ---Plus, how can you document specific layouts?
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Minwah:
--- Quote from: Crazy Cooter on August 22, 2005, 01:21:42 pm ---Really? I kept getting incorrect information. I'd take the game list from there and look on KLOV and it would be different. Controls.dat is accurate, but is missing games still (partially my fault since I haven't contributed to it... yet :-[). If you look at Super Punchout for example, MAWS says it has 4 buttons, KLOV says 3, Controls.dat says 3 (all say 4-way stick). Searching the boards here, it's commonly said that a 4-way joystick panel needs either 4 buttons or 2 buttons... never 3. I think a thread like this would help clear the air for designing panels.
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Thing is, both MAME and KLOV are *very* inaccurate in these areas. That's what I meant by 'It can only rely on the info available from mame and other support files'. So, MAWS will report how many buttons MAME uses, but some of these buttons could be useless/hacks. At least in theory it should report too many rather than too little...
I expect MAWS will support controls.dat at some point, which will be much better.