U360 Auto mapping Not Working??

[lettuce]

I was under the impression that the U360 stick should automatically change the map settings according to the game you were play. Im using mala and load say afterburner or space harrier, an analog based game, but the mapping doesnt seem to change at i cannot move across the screen smoothly, its as if its still in digital mode. Is there a plug-in ofr mala or something im missing?

[Ginsu Victim]

You're definitely missing something. What, I don't know (I use Mamewah), but you'll need to set it up to use the mapping.

[javeryh]

There is a plug-in for MaLa written by fatfingers.  Look in the software forum for it.   

[u_rebelscum]

Or just set the u360 in analog mode and let mame auto switch for you.

(However, mame currently doesn't switch for qbert and other rotated 4-way games.)

[NOP]

yeah, with mala, use the fatfingers plugin.
Make sure you're also using the latest map program from ultimarc-there was a bug in the previous version that didn't program anything other than the first stick.  I never noticed it on my cocktail machine until I started to SUCK when playing qbert as player 2!   

[lettuce]

Hmm still cant get this to work correctly have the stick set to analog in the ultramap program. But when play space harrier, if i try and move the character gently to the left nothing will happen if i more it slightly further then he'll start jumping from the centre of the screen to half way between the centre and edge of the screen, then if i move the stick a bit more he'll go far left of the screen. So i dont know if its the stick thats buggered and is in analog mode, or for some reasons its not switching modes

[NOP]

Leave ultramap up in the background while you're running mala.
When browsing through your list, alt-tab over to ultramap and move the stick around.  It should be in 4-way mode, and you can tell if you can't get the little cursor to go into the diagonals.

Then alt-tab back to mala and launch a game (any game, but space harrier will do) then with the game running pop back over to ultra-map and see what it's configured to then.  If it's not what it should be (you could look at the xml for that game) then either the plugin isn't working, or something has told it the wrong config map to load.  Try a few other games to check to see if any of them are getting programmed properly and report back here.

[cmoses]

What front ends can you use the U360's mappings?  Do they all need plugins? 

[TPB]

What front ends can you use the U360's mappings?  Do they all need plugins? 

As urebel has mentioned above, recent versions of Mame have built-in mappings compatible with all analogue joysticks, including the U360.  These mappings are part of Mame itself, and can be used without any front-end.

In terms of front-ends with their own U360 mapping plugins (which are entirely separate from the Mame mappings), there's MaLa (Fatfinger's plugin), and GameEx (Oggalz's plugin).

[pie taster]

yeah, with mala, use the fatfingers plugin.
Make sure you're also using the latest map program from ultimarc-there was a bug in the previous version that didn't program anything other than the first stick.  I never noticed it on my cocktail machine until I started to SUCK when playing qbert as player 2!   

Can i get more info on this?  When was this update?  You said it was the ultimarc map program?

[NOP]

yeah, with mala, use the fatfingers plugin.
Make sure you're also using the latest map program from ultimarc-there was a bug in the previous version that didn't program anything other than the first stick.  I never noticed it on my cocktail machine until I started to SUCK when playing qbert as player 2!   

Can i get more info on this?  When was this update?  You said it was the ultimarc map program?

yep, ultramap.  ok, maybe it's not as new as I thought (I was an early adopter of the U360) but if you don't have 1.0.19 from aug of 2007, you really should update it.
http://ultimarc.com/download.html#ultramap

update notes:
http://ultimarc.com/UltraMap_ChangeLog.htm

[u_rebelscum]

... space harrier, if i try and move the character gently to the left nothing will happen if i more it slightly further then he'll start jumping from the centre of the screen to half way between the centre and edge of the screen, then if i move the stick a bit more he'll go far left of the screen.

Sounds like one of two things:
A - the analog joystick is (incorrectly) mapped to the (digital) "... dec/inc".  This makes mame treat the joystick as a digital stick.  Solution: unmap the stick from the "... dec" & "... inc" ports, and make sure the stick is mapped in the "... analog" ports.
B - the -joystick_deadzone is set too high, and the -joystick_saturation is set too low in the mame.ini file.  Decrease the deadzone to ~ 0.03 (3%) or lower, and increase the saturation to closer to 1.0 (~I'd guess ~95%).

Or more likely both, as mame defaults like that.