Please help me make a list of the max no of buttons used for each control type

[Bursk]

For a while now I've been looking to make a list of games sorted by control category e.g. 49-way, Analog Stick etc, with the maximum number of buttons used by these games.  For example, a year ago (guess I work slowly) I made a list of the 49-way games supported by MAME:

Arch Rivals
Blaster
Gauntlet: Dark Legacy
Gauntlet Legends
NBA Showtime
NBA Showtime/NFL Blitz 2000
NFL Blitz
NFL Blitz 2000 Gold Edition
NFL Blitz '99
Pigskin 621AD
Sinistar

I briefly tried out each one and found that none of them use more than 3 buttons.  I had been using MAWS, but the info there isn't always accurate so I decided to check in MAME instead.  I also found it very useful to check the control panel pictures you can download for MAME, since many of them are taken from the original cabs.

The purpose of this is to help myself (and others) know what kind of control setup they'll need for a particular set of games.  The above example illustrates that you wouldn't want to design a 49-way capable CP with only 2 buttons if you wanted to play all the 49-way games.  Make sense so far?

I've been looking at the other control types on and off, but it's such a big task that I've found myself putting off doing it, due to the amount of time it'll take.  It doesn't take too long to load up a game, check the control scheme and play it briefly to double-check things, but when you're doing it with game after game, it quickly becomes tedious.

So I thought I'd see if the BYOAC community would like to help me complete my lists.  Like I said, 49-way is complete (although I should check if any more 49-way games have been added to MAME in the past year) but there are some categories left:

Analog Stick
Rotary Joystick
Spinner or 360 Steering Wheel (thought it'd make sense to put these two together. I'm working on the basis that you'll be using a button and not a pedal to accelerate in racing games)
270 Steering Wheel (maximum number of buttons needed could be a factor when deciding what 270 degree wheel to buy)

I'd really appreciate it if the community could take a look at some of these categories and post the results here.  I've already made a start on the spinner and 360 steering wheel games, and here's what I have so far:

720 Degrees
Arkanoid
Arkanoid - Revenge of DOH
Arkanoid Returns
Aztarac
Bad Lands
Blasteroids
Block Block
Boxing Bugs
Buggy Challenge
Cameltry
Championship Sprint
Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat
Ironman Ivan Stewart's Super Off-Road
Ironman Ivan Stewart's Super Off-Road Track Pack
Mad Planets
Off The Wall
Pong
Puchi Carat
Puzz Loop
Road Blasters
Super Sprint
Warlords

None of the above games use more than 3 buttons.  Since I've already made a start on this category, it would make sense if I continue with it for the time being.  I believe there's at least 25 games still to look at.

Please let me know if there's any interest.

[NoOne=NBA=]

For spinner games, Star Trek will use 4 buttons.

[Bursk]

Thanks, NoOne=NBA=.  This is the kind of help that will make life a lot easier for me (and hopefully everyone else, too).

[ahofle]

Have you taken a look at the controls.dat project?  Not sure if that will help.
http://fe.donkeyfly.com/controls/controls.php

[Silver]

Even better, try this page on the Controls.dat project.

Lists games sorted by control:

http://fe.donkeyfly.com/controls/gamesbycontrol.php

Note that controls.dat is based on what the games actually had in the arcade, which may differ to how they have been added to the games driver in mame. Also note that controls.dat does not cover every game in mame, but it can be regarded as extremely accurate for the info it does have.

 A lot of analog controls have been "hacked" into mame, although I believe this is now a *lot* better than it used to be. In fact I think the analog input side of mame has just been re-written in the past couple of versions by the rather talented Derrick Renaud...

[Bursk]

But those pages don't list the number of buttons each game uses, do they?

[SavannahLion]

I don't think I understand what you're getting at.

I did an XML dump out of mame .111 to see what was in there and I believe it has that exact information. I'm not sure, I think that's how some of the drivers for the LEDWiz get the information on which buttons to light up for a particular game.

For instance, it shows Arch Rivals as being a two player game with two buttons each, two coin slots and a tilt (whatever that means). Also has some descriptive information for what looks like some kind of analog joystick, which is I guess what the 49-way is. 

Even lists driver status which is an added bonus since any front end can gray out the unsupported games.

[Bursk]

How do I do an XML dump, SavannahLion?  I'm using MAME32 Plus!

[NOP]

Hey Bursk,

See if this will do the trick for you:  (snagged from the other discussion about MAWS)

I took my ROMLister program, and with just a couple minor tweaks, I was able to get it to run with controls.xml

So, first grab this:

http://fe.donkeyfly.com/controls/controls_dat.php

snag controls.xml.0.111.2.zip

Then go here:
http://www.waste.org/~winkles/ROMLister/

and grab build 002 of the software.

ROMLister will let you build up search criteria based on anything in the database.
You can do stuff like how many 4 button (or less) games use dials?

According to controls.xml+my software, here they are:

720 Degrees (rev 4)
American Speedway (set 1)
APB - All Points Bulletin (rev 7)
Aqua Jack (World)
Arkanoid (World)
Arkanoid - Revenge of DOH (World)
Aztarac
Bad Lands
Bermuda Triangle (Japan)
Birdie Try (Japan)
Blasteroids (rev 4)
Boxing Bugs
Bradley Trainer
Buggy Challenge
Caliber 50
Cameltry (US)
Championship Sprint (rev 3)
Cosmic Chasm (set 1)
Crater Raider
Danny Sullivan's Indy Heat
Dark Planet
Demolition Derby
Discs of Tron (Upright)
DownTown (Set 1)
Exterminator
Final Lap 2
Fire Truck
Forgotten Worlds (US)
Gondomania (US)
Grand Champion
Guerrilla War (US)
Heavy Barrel (US)
Hot Rod (World, 3 Players, Turbo set 1)
Ikari III - The Rescue (Rotary Joystick)
Ikari Warriors (US)
Ironman Stewart's Super Off-Road
Ironman Stewart's Super Off-Road Track Pack
Kick (upright)
Konami GT
Kozmik Kroozr
Mad Planets
Mahjong Dial Q2 (Japan)
Major Havoc (rev 3)
Midnight Resistance (World)
Mille Miglia 2: Great 1000 Miles Rally (95/05/24)
Moonwar
Omega Race
Over Drive
Pole Position
Pole Position II
Radical Radial
Redline Racer (2 players)
Road Blasters (upright, rev 4)
SAR - Search And Rescue (World)
Sheriff
Speed Freak
Star Trek
Stocker
Subs
Super Speed Race
Super Sprint (rev 4)
T.N.K. III (US)
Tempest (rev 3)
The Tin Star
Time Soldiers (US Rev 3)
TouchDown Fever
Tron (set 1)
Turbo
Victory
Victory Road
Vs. Hot Smash
Wheel Of Fortune
Wolf Pack (prototype)
Zwackery


Currently there are 2 versions of the software.  One that uses MAME's XML output and one that uses controls.xml.  I just added controls.xml as an experiment yesterday and it was a hack job.  I'll be merging the two software versions together in the next release.

I think this should speed up your list making a bit. 

Granted, garbage in, garbage out, so if there are any errors in the xml files, the software will spew out bad results too, so you may still want to verify them.

-jeff!

[SavannahLion]

The above solution is most likely better . But I might as well answer the one directed to me.

How do I do an XML dump, SavannahLion?  I'm using MAME32 Plus!

I'm not on my dev laptop right now. But off the top of my head the command line is something like (make adjustments according to version you're using).

mamepp.exe -listxml > listxml.xml

Where mamepp is the mame software itself. Some people just have it as mame.
-listxml is the command
> listxml.xml dumps the output to a file in the same directory as mamepp called listxml.xml

It's relatively large and it takes a while to do the dump.

I think if you just type in mamepp, it'll tell you the usage syntax. I think it's
mamepp -help
I might be wrong. The output is pretty detailed, something like 5+ pages if you print it up. Dump that as well and look over the options you have to work with.

[DrFrag]

This is a good idea, Bursk. 

I was working on a similar thing a year or two ago to figure out the maximum number of buttons required for each player.  I found this very helpful:
http://arcadebelgium.be/nplayers/
As is separates, for example, 2-player games from 2-player-simultaneous games.  I combined this with data from MAWS.  As I recall, Bradley Trainer required something like 10 buttons, but was single player so the player 2 controls could be borrowed during gameplay.

Anyway, finding a way to automate this process is the way to go (such as controls.dat mentioned by othes).  It's way too time consuming to do it manually, especially with changes in each MAME version.