offscreen_reload in .ini to blame! (Glitchy Button on Happ 3" Trackball--Help!)

[jasonbar]

(off_screen reload in my MAME 115 .ini is to blame--please see bottom post.  Thanks, -J)

Howdy-

I just sent the below mail to info@suzohapp.com. Is that my best route for getting help from them? Anybody have experience w/ their customer service/technical support? Anybody seen my specific problem & know how to fix it?

Thanks,
-Jason


Hello-

I purchased a SlikStik Quad control panel about 2 years ago for my MAME cabinet. It came installed with your Happ 3" Trackball.

I don't see a model # on it, but it looks like your 56-0100 series (see attached pic).

I am using its 3 "mouse" buttons for player 2's 1st 3 buttons: 1 (hooked to brown wire), 2 (hooked to orange wire), & 3 (hooked to white wire).

I get a consistent glitch every time I press button 2 (hooked to orange wire). When I press it, MAME registers that I'm pressing button 2 and *also* pressing button 1, even though I'm not. MAME also often registers random trackball movements when I'm assigning button 2 to a function in a game. For example, if I have button 1 set to jump & button 2 set to punch in a game, when I press button 2 alone, the character not only punches but jumps too, as if I'd pressed buttons 1 & 2, even though I pressed only button 2.

I get the same glitch whether I'm using the PS2 connector or the USB connector.

Tracing the wires back to your trackball, and referring to your exploded diagram with part numbers (http://happ.com/trackballs/560100e.htm), I see that the 4 button wires (3 buttons + ground) all connect to the A052-1010-00 circuit board (at top in my attached picture--you can see the 4 wires going up the left side of the trackball & into the PCB there). I suspect a problem with this little circuit board, since the USB cable to my PC also comes off of this board.


Is it possible to return that board for repair or replacement or obtain a replacement board to try? I'd rather not send back the entire trackball, as it's a bit difficult to remove (you may have noticed the extra LED attachment on its bottom to make the ball glow).


Please let me know what my options are in correcting this problem. (The trackball has always exhibited this behavior--I've just been extreeeeemely slow in trying to troubleshoot it & finalize construction of my cabinet.)


Thank you very much,
-Jason

[Kevin Mullins]

From their installation instruction:
http://happ.com/trackballs/565600xx2.htm

Supports up to three buttons. (Three button functionality will require the use of a driver that supports three buttons. The standard MS driver supports two and the MAC OS supports one.)

So maybe you just have a driver issue.
Needing an updated driver that supports a three button mouse.


Kit parts for converting an existing trackball:
http://happ.com/trackballs/56011300k.htm

[jasonbar]

Thank you very much, Kevin.

Good catch on reading the fine print about the driver.

I did a little test.

I also have an X-Arcade Trackball (for player 2): http://www.xgaming.com/trackball.shtml

It also has 3 buttons

It also exhibits the very same glitch when trying to assing button 1 (when counting them as 0, 1, 2): I just tried assigning the button & MAME thinks I pressed Mouse 4 Button 0 Mouse 4 Button 1 Mouse 4 X- Mouse 4 Y+


So, I bet you're right about the 3-button driver.  No way both of my trackballs (from different companies) have the same exact problem w/ the same button.


Now...where to get that 3-button mouse driver...


A google search gives: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGIH_enUS255US255&q=3%2dbutton+windows+mouse+driver

I'm a little overwhelmed w/ the various options in that list--can somebody more computer-savvy than I point me in the correct direction, please?

Looking in the hardware manager on my MAME PC, it says that I've got a Microsoft mouse driver dated 7/1/2001, version 5.1.2600.0.  Oddly, I have the same exact driver (filename, file location, date, & version) on my laptop too, which uses a 5-button (plus wheel) MS optical Intellimouse...

Thank you very much,
-Jason

[jasonbar]

[begin blathering background story--skip to bottom for my actual question/comment/discovery]

OK, after an insightful e-mail from David at Apache Controls (yes, my Blackhawk push/pull spinner was doing it too...), I compared the different revs of MAME that I have on my cabinet.  (Hooray to Apache for fast customer service on the weekend!)

 
The right & left clicks on the various mice *appear* to work fine in Windows (though I don't have an accurate way of testing, beyond looking @ the Windows desktop & seeing if a menu pops up or disappears on a push or a pull--it could still be doing one click & then the other...).
 
I'm running a number of different MAMEs on my cabinet (to handle some of the oddball games that don't all work in the same MAME):
.82
.105 optimized for my processor & patched w/ a spinner patch
.108
.115 optimized for my processor & patched w/ the high score & no nag patch
.115u2  optimized for my processor & patched w/ the high score & no nag patch
 

.115 is what I use for 99.9% of my games.  That MAME exhibits the strange mouse button behavior.  I tested the key assignments in .108, .115u2, & .105, & they all worked perfectly with those executables.
 
 
So, I seem to have something funky with my MAME .115.


I use .115u2 only for Missile Command.  Comparing my .ini for 115 & 115u2 back-to-back, the only difference was in the INPUT DEVICE OPTIONS section.  115u2 had only mouse enabled, whereas 115 had all devices enabled.

I turned off all but mouse in 115 & sure enough, the mouse buttons started behaving again.

I turned the devices back on one at a time until the middle mouse buttons started glitching again & found that offscreen_reload was the culprit!


[end blathering--start of actual post meat]


Soooo, can somebody please explain how offscreen_reload works?  I guess the 2 buttons on my 2 ACT Labs guns are mouse buttons, and this toggle in the .ini tells MAME to send a button 0 *and* button 1 code when button 1 is pressed alone, and this tells MAME to reload the gun in certain games...

Is this a feature that I want/need to play my gun games properly?

Does anybody else have this same compatibility issue with trying to use mouse buttons & offscreen_reload simultaneously?

Is this a known bug in 115 that's fixed in another rev?


Thanks,
-Jason

[jasonbar]

OK, replying to my own post--great forum etiquette, eh?  :]

From ACT Labs' site on setting up their guns (http://www.act-labs.com/LightGunSetUp/LightGunSetUp.htm):

"If you are running a game that needs you to shoot off screen, you will still need to use the -offscreen_reload command.  This will change the functionality of button 2 to simulate firing off screen, thereby reloading."

BAM!


So, for the few games that are gun games that need offscreen reload, I just need to insert a line in my mame.bat file (which I run from MaLa, which decides which emulator to run if it's not going to be run on my default 115), I just need to update the command line sent & add a -offscreen_reload to the end of the command line to have this functionality just for those gun games, overriding the line in the mam.ini file.


Woohoo!!!!!      (Yes, I'm congratulating myself).

-Jason