Terminator 2, MAME 106, Lightgun

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Derrick Renaud:

--- Quote from: Cananas on May 17, 2006, 12:26:24 pm ---[Yes, you are right about the RAWMOUSE limit. Thank you for your confirmation. But If you change DIMOUSESTATE to DIMOUSESTATE2 (and something more) you can reach this limit (5 buttons) that is also the Smog driver limit, that of course, is the Microsoft limit.

Actually, mame is limited to 4 buttons. I don't know if Mamedev would be interested to admit this modification I made.
This is what I wanted to ask you.

--- End quote ---

DIMOUSESTATE2 is only valid for DX7 and up. So you can not just add 2 to the end of DIMOUSESTATE. You need to check if DX7 is being used. So everywhere the DIMOUSESTATEs are used you need to check and use DIMOUSESTATE or DIMOUSESTATE2 based on if a DIMOUSESTATE2 could be created at runtime.

I personally do not see the need to support anything less then DX7, but others want us to support down to DX3 or so. So any patch needs to be tested on older DX versions.

D.

Cananas:

--- Quote from: Derrick Renaud on May 17, 2006, 01:09:03 pm ---I personally do not see the need to support anything less then DX7, but others want us to support down to DX3 or so. So any patch needs to be tested on older DX versions.

D.

--- End quote ---

Opps. I suppossed that this would not be necessary, because mame uses de DX8 headers and libraries to compile...

Derrick Renaud:

--- Quote from: Cananas on May 17, 2006, 02:14:08 pm ---
--- Quote from: Derrick Renaud on May 17, 2006, 01:09:03 pm ---I personally do not see the need to support anything less then DX7, but others want us to support down to DX3 or so. So any patch needs to be tested on older DX versions.

D.

--- End quote ---

Opps. I suppossed that this would not be necessary, because mame uses de DX8 headers and libraries to compile...

--- End quote ---

If you look at the input code it checks for DX7 at run-time, then falls back and trys DX5 then DX3.

D.

Howard_Casto:
I apologize then, I didn't realize that wasn't what you meant Derrick....

Now I've got to figure out who screwed up and get on their case then.

I think you believe that I have a problem with you, I don't, quite the contrary. Your poor attitude towards criticism got me mad at you, but that's another story.

I'm mad at the way the mame heads are letting in sub-standard code. And by sub-standard I don't mean bad code, I mean bad code for mame.... there is a BIG difference. I believe there is a quote over at mamedevs in their faq that knowing how to code well in C and knowing mingw has less to do with mame then knowing how the mame functions work and how emulation works. This is very true.

Is it the fault of a "part-timer" meaning well but submitting code that probably isn't the best way of doing it? Of course not. Is it the fault of the guys managing the builds who aren't thoroughly checking submissions to make sure not only that they function, but they don't break other functions and interfere with the documentation aspect of mame? Quite simply yes, it is.

If it were a u build then I could see it, but something this bad getting out in an official build is borderline shameful. Even if there was a note like (not all analog guns are defined correctly) or something like that would have been enough for me. But changing only half of the guns back without notice and without checking to make sure it is an accurate reflection? Come on guys, that's more than a minor slip up... especially considering, as I said, which guns are which are well-documented and there might be 20 positional gun games in mame, tops, lumped into 4 or 5 driver files.

I think what makes me the maddest about this is the fact that at one point they were correct (and were for the majority of mame's history). Everyone got a lightgun and some genius decided to hack the inputs for positional gun games to use the lightgun (mouse) inputs. Now this would have been acceptable to me for getting hardware to work, except for the fact that the frikkin hardware it was hacked to still couldn't play those games!!! At the time all lightguns for the pc were traditional and since regular lightguns can't constantly track it's completely impossible to play a game like terminator 2 (in any enjoyable fashion) with a lightgun. Now at least two years pass by, guns for the pc that DO constantly track are available and they change it back to adstick inputs. Explain the logic in that to me. Of course input names as it pertains to analog ports, for the most part, are superficial at this point due to that big analog re-write, but it's the principal of the thing.

Long story short, the inputs needed changed for a long time, I'm not fighting that one bit. I'm just a little ticked off because:

a. They shouldn't have been changed in the first place.
b. It shouldn't have taken this long to get them changed back.
c. Since it did take this long it's kind of hard to take only fixing half of the games as a simple mistake, especially considering there were like 10 "u" builds fixing inputs between .105 and .106

Derrick Renaud:
Howard, :censored:

You seem to know it all, but as far as I know, you have never submitted any usefull code. That's like complaining about politicians, without ever voting.

You still seem to take jabs at my recent mouse changes, despite that fact that I have shown you how wrong you are about your statements. Learn the facts. If you don't like how mice and joysticks are handled, complain to Microsoft. They made the bad set of interfaces. Once again, we are still awaiting this great code from you that shows the proper way.

As I have told you before, but you can not grasp it, my code did little to change MAME's multi-mouse behaviour. The code was already there. I just linked into it, if RAWMOUSE was available. But seeing how you did not grasp things the first time round, there is no sense it me rehashing it all again.

You really have got to learn to not let all the little changes bug you. MAME is an on-going project. Things change, live with it. Be warned. There are a whole bunch of MAME core changes coming that are going to piss you right off.

Personally I think it is time to remove the whole windows layer from MAME. Then let someone other then the MAME team handle it's upkeep. This way, the person who would maintain the windows OS layer could add any little -switches they want, as long as they do not go against the spirit of MAME, like removing warnings.

As for only changing some of the gun games. I never looked at the changes but I think only T2 was changed. Probably to test the water, so to speak. [edit] They should be all changed soon. But I will recommend to miss a few on purpose, just for kicks.

Myself I just have a gun.ini ctrlr file that defines my player 1 and 2 controls when I play a gun game. How amazingly hard is that? I also use a different ctrlr file for each control panel I use. Pretty damn hard to do.

I have no problems with criticism. I welcome it, if it is usefull. Unfortunately, yours is usually not. You always state you don't like something and then leave the impression you know a better way. This would not be so bad, but you go on and complain how things are done on a coding level, yet never supply any code.

On behalf of the whole MAME team, I apologize for not coding all your great ideas for you. We really should run any changes past you first. You paid us so much for the program, yet we keep not listening to you.

GET THIS THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULL. MAME is not a company. The whole program is written and changed when someone is interested enough to do so. If it pisses you off, then so be it. If things are missed, during a change, oh well. You say you know how to code, so instead of your usual whining, try submitting a patch, or shut up. It really is that simple.

As for me being a part time coder. MAME is full of them. Unfortunately for you, we all have lives and other jobs. Not to mention my discrete work requires a lot of non-coding time. I have to breadboard circuits and analyze how the circuit really works. Because (and this is all my fault of course) the schematics are usually wrong; the data sheets are usually not accurate enough and sometimes outright wrong; and SPICE programs are very inaccurate when it comes to the strange things designers did with discrete circuits. So I have to accurately work out what is really going on and write code that emulates the circuits in real time, which SPICE can not do.

To sum it all up, your whining is much more productive then anything I do for MAME.

:cheers:

D.

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