4-player setup problems -- button conflicts

[Jeff AMN]

Well, I'm 99% done with a current project. It's a MAME 4-player machine, using an I-PAC 4. My layout has buttons with six for players 1 and 2, and four for players 3 and 4. Is there any conflicts in the default I-PAC 4 button setup that might have us accidentally exiting games, alt-tabbing, or bringing up an odd menus or anything? When playing a 4-player game, we keep getting issues with the screen going black, and I think it's tied to something that's getting pressed with player 1 and 3 simultaneously, but I haven't been able to figure it out.

Any help? And if anybody does know off-hand, what would be the key to re-map.

If that wasn't clear, let me know and I can try to better explain the situation.

[lanman31337]

I had to disable the switching of windowed mode for mine.  Haven't had the screen go black on me.

[Jeff AMN]

Ah, windowed mode...I didn't consider that. That's gotta be it.

[lanman31337]

Definitely.  I have a buddy who regardless of what game it is mashes everything, and at times it would go into windowed.  Sometimes it would hang a bit.  Got that fixed real quick.

[Avrus]

Yah I had to remap a bunch of the default keys because they were shift, alt and ctrl and causing all manners of issues.

[u_rebelscum]

"Windows mode" is what? alt-enter?

Another way around the problem and other possible windows hot-key issues is to not use alt, ctrl, and maybe shift.  For Ipac4's defaults, that p1b2 (alt), p1b1 & p3b1 (ctrl), and maybe p3b2 & p1b4 (shift).  Some people find it easier than disabling X number of hot-keys.

(FWIW, I left my alt, ctrl, & shift buttons to the default without problems on my ipac2.)

edit: Avrus  beat me to it.   (However, my issues are with ipac's default shift key esc; I remapped that out any one too many accidental exits from in the heat game sessions.  And one is one too many.)

[Dazz]

Hopefully this can help someone else...  I too had issues with my I-Pac 4 and conflicting keys.  I sat down and looked at various windows function keys, default MAME keys, and other emulator keys and created this document.  For the most part is uses the default I-PAC mapping with a couple minor tweaks.  My 3/4 player on my I-PAC isn't working for right now so this mapping is untested right now, but plan on using this when I get my new I-PAC4 in the mail next week.

Feel free to look at this and use it.  If you find something that might work better then what I have please let me know.  

Download  It's in .doc format.

Also, I just come across this... I haven't tried it yet.  Its a registry edit for windows, so take necessary precautions if you are not familiar with doing registry edits.  They can screw up your PC.  I'm assuming this key needs to be created, not really sure.  Will try later.

You can disable all built-in Windows hotkeys except Win+L and Win+U by making the following change to the registry (this should work on all OSes but a reboot is probably required):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
NoWinKeys REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (1)

[DeLuSioNal29]

I had to disable the switching of windowed mode for mine.  Haven't had the screen go black on me.

How does one disable Windowed mode?  I am getting the same problem when playing 4 player games.

~ DeLuSioNaL