Getting U360 to work with Mame?

[LeedsFan]

I'm currently using Mame with MaLa frontend and I just want to test my U360s to get an idea of which restrictors/springs to go with in my CP. But I just cannot get the stick to work with any games. Because I'm just testing the "feel" of the stick for now I've been trying to get Pac-Man to work first (no buttons installed as yet).

I've gone into the MaLa options and I can see the U360 is installed fine. I have it set to a 4-way map and in MaLa I can test it and see that it's working. I can go into Mame/Config through MaLa and enable joystick there too.... but this never seems to get saved. If I come out of it and then go straight back in the check box for joystick is still empty. Is this a bug?

I've tried looking at my Mame.ini file in my main Mame folder as well.... but I see no controller settings there. Because the U360 is technically an analog stick I'm assuming I just need to enable joystick input somehow and then let the U360 mapping software do the rest for the actual behavior in any given game. Is this correct? 

[DeLuSioNal29]

I've tried looking at my Mame.ini file in my main Mame folder as well.... but I see no controller settings there. Because the U360 is technically an analog stick I'm assuming I just need to enable joystick input somehow and then let the U360 mapping software do the rest for the actual behavior in any given game. Is this correct? 

I don't have a U360 joystick, but I figured I'd try to help.  Did you try going into the options menu in mame by pressing tab and manually setting the joystick there for the Pacman game?  If all else fails, the mame.ini file that you can try to alter is in the mame root folder.  Try looking under the # core input options section.  Perhaps try fiddling with the # ctrlr option?  I think it defaults to <null> (not set).  This should work fine, but  you can point to what  ctrlr file you want (located in the ctrlr folder respectively).  I would troubleshoot it by substituting the slikstik controlller or xarcade, etc. to see what happens.  You could always change it back to null if it still doesn't work.  This will hopefully tell you if the joy is working or not.

Just throwing out ideas... not sure if they will help or not.

~ DeLuSioNaL

[DaveMMR]

You don't have this section:

Code: [Select]

#
# INPUT DEVICE OPTIONS
#
mouse                   1
joystick                1
lightgun                0
dual_lightgun           0
offscreen_reload        1
steadykey               0
joy_deadzone              0.3
joy_saturation            0.85
digital                 nonein your Mame.ini files?   I got this from .116 BTW.

[LeedsFan]

I've tried pressing TAB when the game is running to alter the controls. It doesn't work... the joystick is simply not being registered when Mame is running.

I've tried looking in my Mame.ini file too but there is no "core input options" listed. I've tried searching for this problem on Google and I keep seeing people saying go into Options > Default Game Options > Enable Joystick. Is this Mame32 they are talking about because I can't find this anywhere.

I just want to globally enable the U360 to all games as default. Then I just have to upload the correct map for whatever game I'm playing. 

EDIT:  We posted at the same time DaveMMr.... I'm using Mame v.88 if that makes a difference. I copied and pasted what you have there into my mame.ini file and it made no difference.

Am I looking in the right place? It's a text file I open in Notebook just called "Mame" in my main Mame folder.

[LeedsFan]

Hmmm... this is starting to annoy me now. I found this thread searching thru the site:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=73187.0

The guy had exactly the same problem I have but his fix won't work for me. When I check the same "enable joystick" box it doesn't get saved. I can exit immediately and go back in and it's unchecked again. 

[LeedsFan]

OK I've got a bit further forward now... but still a problem. I managed to create a new Mame.ini file. This is different to what I had before so it can't have been a proper .ini file. This new file has all the controller options. I changed the Joystick from 0 to 1 and that has enable the U360 in Mame... sorta. 

I can't move UP at all. I can move left right and down in Pacman.... but not up. I even tried my Sony Playstation gamepad and that is exactly the same. But when I check both devices in Windows they operate perfectly. 

[fatfingers]

This last issue seems like it must be a mame mapping issue?  Try modifying the input controls in mame again now that the stick is registering and make sure everything is set up correctly for the up action.

[LeedsFan]

Finally found the problem!  I was tearing my hair out because even when creating a new mame.ini file certain control options in the Mame TAB menu were not being changed. I could see that UP for example was just set to "Up Arrow" on the keyboard while the other movements were set to arrow "or" Joystick axis. I had to delete the default.cfg file and then make a new mame.ini to recreate everything from scratch.

That default.cfg file is what really threw me a curved one. That's taken me bloody hours to sort out. 

[DeLuSioNal29]

Did you try a more recent version of MAME, just to see if it works with that?  If it doesn't then the problem is not with MAME.  If it does, then it's a config file somewhere.

Install the newer version of MAME in a new directory and copy over the pacman rom to the rom folder (don't point the new version of Mame to the old rom directory, as it may overwrite file settings.)

Also, did you try running the command line version of Mame?  (without the Front end) and see if the joystick works.  i.e.  MAME PUCKMAN

~ DeLuSioNaL

[DeLuSioNal29]

Glad to hear that you solved the problem!

~ D