MALA LED HELP

[OnezerO]

I've designed a universal control panel to play as many games as possible.  I currently have the MALA hardware to control the individual game LEDS. 

The MALA Hardware is working great.  All of my LED's are lighting up when I test them under the MALA Hardware configuration option.  In the MALA game menu the assigned LED's are lighting up appropriately.  However,  I need to be able to override the default controls and assign specific LED's to be lit up for certain ROMS due to my keyboard layout.

Does anyone have any experience using MALA's LED Game Files option?  Do the files you use for this option have to be named exactly like the ROM you are trying to configure the LED's for or is it just one big file which contains a listing of several ROMS that you are trying to control the LED's for?  What is the syntax that these files need to follow?  Finally, what file extension, if any, needs to be used?

Any help or suggestions to accomplish this task would be appreciated.  Thanks.

[loadman]

I've designed a universal control panel to play as many games as possible.  I currently have the MALA hardware to control the individual game LEDS. 

I would love to see a picture of your MaLa hardware installed and your Controls 

The MALA Hardware is working great.  All of my LED's are lighting up when I test them under the MALA Hardware configuration option.  In the MALA game menu the assigned LED's are lighting up appropriately.  However,  I need to be able to override the default controls and assign specific LED's to be lit up for certain ROMS due to my keyboard layout.

Does anyone have any experience using MALA's LED Game Files option?  Do the files you use for this option have to be named exactly like the ROM you are trying to configure the LED's for or is it just one big file which contains a listing of several ROMS that you are trying to control the LED's for?  What is the syntax that these files need to follow?  Finally, what file extension, if any, needs to be used?

Any help or suggestions to accomplish this task would be appreciated.  Thanks.

OK.. I had not done that for a while so I had to test it myself.

So to overide how MaLa is handling the Led Lighting for Native MaLa hardware or Pacdrive support on a rom by rom basis:

You need to create a overide file for each rom you need to be custom assigned. I have attached a 'pengo' example. It is basically 1 line comma seperated text file. a '1' represents LED on.  The First number (from left to right) represents whatever is wired up as LED 1 in the config/hardware tab.  If no file is found for that Rom MaLa will handle it in the usally way (as most do)

If an invalid file is found no LEDS are lit. So use my attached example as a guide.

Also you have to tell MaLa what directory to find these files (whatever you like) . See pic Z1

THAT SHOULD WORK   

Also
Did you you know that the LEDS can light on the fly if you have the a certain checkbox attached.See Pic z2.  In my opinion the only reason you would not want that on is personal taste or you PC is too slow to handle it and it starts effecting scroll speed.

Have fun

[OnezerO]

As usual thank you for a quick and detailed response.

I would love to share some pics of my hardware installation and my control panel.  I am currently out of town, but I will post some pics early next week.

I do currently have my Mala hardware set up to light the buttons on the fly, but due to the layout of my control panel it is impossible, without overriding, to get MaLa to light up the correct buttons for every game that I have in my menus.  For example, I have two different games which have two different key codes assigned to P1B1.

Did you modify the Pengo file you sent me to better illustrate how an override file works?  I noticed that every other LED would be lit.

I can't wait to get back home and test this.  If I get this working I am pretty sure that I can write a VB.NET program that will read the mame.cfg files and automatically create the binary string files for each ROM that I have.  When I get to that point I'll share my app here; even though I don't think there are very many users that will be interested in a MaLa hardware app.

...I did find a rough pic of my control panel.  I will post mopre later.

[loadman]

I do currently have my Mala hardware set up to light the buttons on the fly, but due to the layout of my control panel it is impossible, without overriding, to get MaLa to light up the correct buttons for every game that I have in my menus.  For example, I have two different games which have two different key codes assigned to P1B1.

Try it again once you have the over-ride file working

Did you modify the Pengo file you sent me to better illustrate how an override file works?  I noticed that every other LED would be lit.

Yeah that was just to show you the file format that works for me (as a test) Indeed it is every second LED lit. Obviously you will do something different

I can't wait to get back home and test this.  If I get this working I am pretty sure that I can write a VB.NET program that will read the mame.cfg files and automatically create the binary string files for each ROM that I have.  When I get to that point I'll share my app here; even though I don't think there are very many users that will be interested in a MaLa hardware app.

...I did find a rough pic of my control panel.  I will post mopre later.

Yeah I would have written a program to create a bunch of these files but there is no demand.

Having said that If you program in Delphi asm well I can send you the source code for my test prog I wrote (to read these files) to get you started.

If you do make that utility (using whatever method) I would be happy to host it on the new mala website malafe.net

[OnezerO]

The override files are working!!! 

Thanks for all of your help Loadman.  The only issue now is that when I start a game with the buttons lit MaLa resorts to the default buttons and not the override files.  I can just tell MaLa not to light the buttons when a game starts, but I was hoping to be able to keep them lit.  If you have a solution to this problem please let me know.  Unfortunately, I think this might require an upgrade and it's my understanding that the MaLa developer has been out of the scene for a while.

I will start working on some code to automatically create the over ride files since this task is too tedious to do manually.  This app will be very useful since all you would have to do is configure your controls for a game and run the game at least once then run my app and the new override file will be created.  My VB.NET programming is a bit rusty so it will just be a matter of time before I get it done.

Also, I will be posting the pics you requested later in the week.  I need to repossess my camera from a friend.

Thanks again for all of your help!!!

[loadman]

I don't think you read this post:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=79974.0

[OnezerO]

No I had not read that post.  This is great news.  I really like MaLa it's great to know that it will be staying alive.  Thank you so much for taking on this project.

I know there are not many MaLa harware users out there but do you think that the issue of the buttons not staying lit with the override files will be fixed.  Hopefully, it will be a minimal effort to correct this issue... I'll repost this on the other thread as well.  Thanks.

[loadman]

The only issue now is that when I start a game with the buttons lit MaLa resorts to the default buttons and not the override files.

This issue has been fixed an will be in the next release

[protokatie]

The only issue now is that when I start a game with the buttons lit MaLa resorts to the default buttons and not the override files.

This issue has been fixed an will be in the next release

I knew you took on MALA; but how well do you understand the code? Just curious about your standing with the source (as the guy who "gave" you MALA will not let you outsource it) code. Have you read through it enough to do any real upgrades?

[loadman]

I knew you took on MALA; but how well do you understand the code?

Getting there as time allows

Just curious about your standing with the source (as the guy who "gave" you MALA will not let you outsource it) code.

Its his choice I guess as he is the one who spend his time writting it.  At least he did not keep it to himself I guess.

Why do you have "gave" in inverted commas? What is the deal with that? 

Have you read through it enough to do any real upgrades?

That's the plan.

[protokatie]

Why do you have "gave" in inverted commas? What is the deal with that?

because he didnt actually give the code to you. He still retains the rights to it.

[loadman]

Why do you have "gave" in inverted commas? What is the deal with that?

because he didnt actually give the code to you. He still retains the rights to it.

And I am happy with that

:-)