PowerMAME and joystick support

[Brewser]

I was wondering if there is a way to map the second GPWiz49 way joystick to be used for single player games in PowerMAME?
Actually 2 questions:
1. Is there a way to map the second 49 way stick to be used by another person to play single player games in PowerMAME such as QBert & Packman so both people can use a seperate stick?
2. Is there a way to map the second 49 way stick in PowerMAME to be used for a single player game such as Sinistar? I would like to use my second stick for a few games since it is more towards the middle of my cab.
Thanks for the help.

[screaming]

That's close to something that's been requested before - having 1p/alt games use 2 sticks. MikeQ, what do you think is the feasability on that feature for PowerMAME?

[Tiger-Heli]

I was wondering if there is a way to map the second GPWiz49 way joystick to be used for single player games in PowerMAME?
Actually 2 questions:
1. Is there a way to map the second 49 way stick to be used by another person to play single player games in PowerMAME such as QBert & Packman so both people can use a seperate stick?

Gets asked a lot.

Can be done now by mapping UP to both sticks, but then P2 can mess up P1's game . . .

Could be done on games that support cocktail mode if there were a way to intentionally disable screen flipping.

Otherwise, I think it would need the LSE (or in-game event) engine to tell it whose turn it was.

2. Is there a way to map the second 49 way stick in PowerMAME to be used for a single player game such as Sinistar? I would like to use my second stick for a few games since it is more towards the middle of my cab.
Thanks for the help.

Ummmn,

Start Sinistar.
Tab - Input this game.
Map Up to Joy2 Up, Down to Joy 2 Down, Left to Joy2Left, Right to Joy2Right
Escape

Play Sinistar with second 49-way stick

Figured out what I am missing - You might need to disable the DRS switching or override it for Sinistar only.  Presume you can do this in the sinistar.ini file.  MikeQ ??

[Brewser]

Sinistar only shows J1 for joysticks, you can't change it for J2. I guess I was hoping you could do something cool like run 2 joysticks on single player games with PowerMame. Maybe this would be a good suggestion with a future release.
I know people have been asking for this in previous posts but with the new PowerMame project maybe this can finally be done. Let's hope.

[Tiger-Heli]

Sinistar only shows J1 for joysticks, you can't change it for J2.

That doesn't sound right to me.  With most MAME versions, you should be able to configure Player 1 to use any gamepad (which is what we are really talking about) as long as the device is connected when MAME starts.

[Brewser]

Take a look at PowerMame settings for Sinistar. It only shows J1 for GPWiz49Way stick. You can cycle through all the different joystick settings but only for J1.

[Tiger-Heli]

Take a look at PowerMame settings for Sinistar. It only shows J1 for GPWiz49Way stick. You can cycle through all the different joystick settings but only for J1.

This is a question for MikeQ . . .

[MikeQ]

Take a look at PowerMame settings for Sinistar. It only shows J1 for GPWiz49Way stick. You can cycle through all the different joystick settings but only for J1.

This is a question for MikeQ . . .

Sinistar is strange.  I don't know why it does what it does but it won't recognize J2 at all.  It does this with regular MAME as well.  I'm wondering if a game only has 1 analog input then it automatically gets mapped to J1.  If I find some time, (which is unlikely in the near future.  I'm not working on PowerMAME at all for a while)  I'll try to figure out what it is doing.

I just looked at after burner and it does the same thing.  MAME appears to only look for the first joystick it finds.  One way you can control which stick you map the controls to is to edit the games .cfg and only enable the joystick you actually want to use.  Don't enable both.  So if you really want to use J2, disable J1 and sinistar will only find J2.

Also, adding new ports for games I'm not sure about.  I know for sure you would have to modify the game code specifically.  I'm not sure if you exposed new controls though, how you would hook them up to the ROM.  The ROM would have to know to look for them I would think.   I'm just speculating though.