Configuring a Quad Panel

[ever1458]

This is probably a foolish question, but I'm trying to configure my quad controller panel to work with mame and I've having trouble getting the diagonal directional commands for the joysticks to map properly for player 3 and 4. I am mapping each movement to a command, ie up=q, right=r, up/right=p and so forth, but I believe I have ran out of commands for up/right, up/left, down/right, and down/left for players 3 and 4. My question is 1. Is there a easier way to do this than doing each command by hand and 2. Any suggestions on how I can get around the keyboard limitations? Can I map to Shift+letter like I know you can do in some PC games?

[Ginsu Victim]

Do you mean left/up, left/down, left/left, left/right and right/up, right/down, right/left, and right/right?

[Hoopz]

Are you using a keyboard hack or an encoder?  You only need 16 total inputs for a four player panel (for the joys).  The diagonals aren't using a separate entry; they are a combo of the two cardinal directions (ie up/right is a combo of Up and Right, not a third entry).

Or am I missing what you are doing?   

[Ginsu Victim]

That's why I asked for clarification, because it sounds more like the Left/left, right/right, etc controls for games like Robotron, Smash TV, Total Carnage, and whatnot.

[ever1458]

Yeah, sorry about the confusion Ginsuvictim, it is left/up, left/down, left/left, left/right and right/up, right/down, right/left, and right/right. The games I tested it on were X-men and TMNT.

I bought the panel from a guy and he didn't give me any info on it. I just plugged it into my pc and hoped for the best. It does work, but the configuration was all screwed up so I manually went into mame and set each direction and button. I tried doing what you had mentioned as far as combining the two, ie left=r, up=t therefore left/up=r+t, but it didn't work. The character on screen simply wouldn't respond, so I each direction got its own keyboard button. I figured there has to be a better way to do this, but I am a newb at this and couldn't figure out much on the web from my search, so I thought I would post and get some help from this community.

[CheffoJeffo]

Interesting ... a picture of the encoder (circuit board that plugs into the PC and the joys/buttons) would be worth eleventy12 words.

It definitely should be easier than what you are going through.

[ever1458]

ok, I will take a pic and post it tonight.