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Trackball / Spinner Issues
Farb:
Hi all,
Hope everyone had a great holiday!
I'm seeing a strange issue with my MAME cab using a Happ trackball / spinner with an OptiPac board via USB. Some games work just fine with the trackball or spinner (e.g. Tempest, Arkanoid, Missle Command). Certain games, however, have issues. They respond sporadically or with significant lag and it's almost like the control signals are "queueing up." For example, in Simpsons Bowling:
1. Spin the trackball right.
2. Character moves right.
3. Spin the trackball left.
4. Character continues to move right for two seconds then begins to move left.
5. Hit the exit button to quit the game.
6. Character continues to move left for four seconds.
7. The game exits.
I'm seeing it in Simpsons Bowling (trackball) and Pole Position 1/2 (spinner). I'm sure it's a problem with other games too but haven't found any additional ones yet. What's strange is that it's only specific games. I've tried adjusting the sensitivity settings in the MAME config and it doesn't seem to help. Has anyone seen this before?
Thanks and have a happy New Year!
daywane:
--- Quote from: Farb on December 27, 2008, 01:41:23 pm ---I've tried adjusting the sensitivity settings in the MAME config and it doesn't seem to help. Has anyone seen this before?
Thanks and have a happy New Year!
--- End quote ---
what version of mame are you using?
what frontend?
when you adjusted settings in mame did you try this game only?
how far did you adjust? small adjustments ar did you try large adjustments.
spy hunter is the only one I have had problems with
Farb:
I was using MAME 0.124 but also it tried 0.128. I was starting the games directly from the command line to take my frontend out of the equation. I adjusted the settings for Simpsons Bowling and Pole Position individually. I took sensitivity down by half (100% to 50% I believe).
turnergw:
Sorry to dredge up an old topic, but I'm having very similar problems as the original poster here, and was wondering whether anyone ever got to the bottom of this. I'm using MAME 0.130, with a minipac connected with an ultimarc U-Trak and Spintrak. They both work perfectly in Windows, and some games work fine (no problems in tempest, tron, marble madness) but others have this 'queueing problem'. Worst offenders seem to be arkanoid and cameltry - they both work fine for 20 to 30 seconds, then suddenly hit the slowdown issue seen in the above posts. I've tried all sorts of ranges of settings in MAME, but can't seem to get rid of the problem. Also tried in mame 0.129 to see if it was a specific version, but this had the same problem.
I don't really understand why the problem only occurs on some games - it's as if the polling rate is too low and the inputs are producing a large stream of analog positional data that's filling up a buffer (although I haven't delved into the MAME code at all).
It happens with both versions I've tried, running direct from the command line, or from a front end (hyperspin)
Has anyone else seen (and hopefully solved!) this kind of problem?
turnergw:
Just in case anyone else does run into this, it seems to be caused by the vsync in MAME - Switching off triple buffer and vsync makes the problem go away. Having either of these options switched on seems to cause the "input-queueing" effect. Hence, I presume MAME isn't polling the analog inputs whilst waiting for the video sync.
It may be caused by the input rate of the devices I'm using - using http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Miscellaneous/Mouse-Rate-Checker.shtml indicates that my mouse is polling at 125hz, whilst the spinner and trackball connected via the Minipac are polling at 250hz. I wonder whether the increased rate is causing the problem - I've tried resetting the rate using various tools, but for some reason this only seems to disable the minipac completely.
Anyway hope this helps someone - At least the trackball and spinner games are playable now - unfortunately they're left with the screen tearing caused by not being able to vsync on :(