do I NEED a keyboard encoder? plus a question on trackball interfaces

[severdhed]

hey guys, i'm getting ready to place an order for the rest of my control panel parts, and i'm trying to decide on the best way to do this.  ideally i want to go as inexpensive as possible, since i have already put a ton of money into this project....  i am replacing an x-arcade 2 player unit that i gutted and placed into my own panel.

i already bought new buttons, and two Ultrastik 360s with the wire harnesses.    The panel with be a 2 player panel with 6 buttons each, plus start and coin.  i really want to have dedicated pause and exit buttons, since they get used heavily. I will also be adding a trackball.

 i was planning on using the u360 inputs for all of my buttons.  but this will not leave me with enough to have the exit and pause buttons.  so my next plan is to wire up  2 or 3 of player 1's buttons as mouse buttons, which would free up the inputs on the u360 for my pause and exit.    like i said, i am trying to do this in a cost effective manor, so if i dont need to buy something, i dont want to. 

i want the utrak trackball due to it's awesome mounting method, however their usb interface does not support mouse buttons..so

here is what i plan on ordering:

Ultimarc:

 Utrak trackball, with trim ring (just in case), illumination kit,  and the wire harness -

GroovyGameGear:
OptiWiz No Solder version, with the trackball cable.  i have a CDROm audio cable that looks like it will work for the button harness


so, here are my questions:

will everything work OK even though i dont have a keyboard encoder?  I generally only run mame on my cabinet, with the occasional PC game.  i dont want to have to use my wireless keyboard unless i need to type something...  my cabinet boots up with MALA as the shell and i play mame games...do you guys see any reason that i would not be able to use my cabinet normally using only the gamepad inputs on the u360?

is there any reason that the optiwiz would not work with the utrak?  the optiwiz is a little more than the utrak usb interface, but it has mouse button support, plus it is less expensive than the optipac.  i need to get some happ buttons to match the ones i already have, so i need to order from both places no matter what...i just want to get the best setup for the least ammount of money.


i'd like to keep everything connecting via usb...if i do this as planned, i'll have 3 usb cables, one for each player, and one for the trackball. 


my only concern is that i may be overlooking something and dont want to need a keyboard encoder and not buy one..


 

[u_rebelscum]

Why don't you reuse the xarcade encoder?  You already paid for it, and it (hopefully still) works for pause & esc, plus room for other stuff.

[severdhed]

i thought about that...but one of the main reasons for ditching the x-arcade was the horrible wiring mess associated with it.   plus i thought about putting it back together in it's original shell and using it for console gaming.  I guess i could just go with my original plan, and if i run into a snag with needing a keyboard encoder, i could always use the x-arcade until i could put some money back for an ipac or keywiz.

[isucamper]

I'm currently running my cab with mala and I have no keyboard encoder.  I've got the wiring harnesses for my U360s, GPWiz for players 3 and 4 and the admin buttons, usb trackball and usb spinner.

I ran into two issues with this setup.  

1.  There are a few MALA inputs that you can only use with keyboard strokes (such as the shift key for fast scrolling).  To get around this, I ended up having to use the page up/ page down functions set to my gamepad buttons in order to scroll through the list fast.  It works, but my original intention was to scroll the list with the trackball and press and hold shift to scroll fast.  You cannot do this without a keyboard encoder.

2.  Both Mala and Daphne are pretty peticular about which joystick they recognize.  I've got 4 joystick devices on my cab (2 ultrasticks, the GP wiz, and a USB flightstick).  By default, Mala and Daphne will only recognize whichever device name starts last alphabetically (which is the device that will get mapped as "Joystick 1" in windows XP).  For me, this was my flight stick.  I had to go into the gamepad properties and set my Player 1 ultrastick to be the preferred gamepad device, then both Mala and Daphne would recognize it.  A workaround, but since Daphne now only recognizes my Ultrastick, I can't use my flightstick for flying games in Daphne.

[severdhed]

awesome, thats what i wanted to hear.  i dont have a flight stick, i will only be running two u360s, and i dont use daphne..so no big deal there

[severdhed]

well, i just placed the orders, ended up dropping another $200 into this thing...

i got:

from Ultimarc:
utrak trackball, wire harness, trim ring, led kit

from groovygamegear:
optiwiz no solder, trackball wire harness, some more pushbuttons (2yellow,2blue, 2black, 1blue novagem, 1yellow novagem), pause and exit button inserts and a pack of difusers

i cant wait for this stuff to come

[ideft]

I'm currently running my cab with mala and I have no keyboard encoder.  I've got the wiring harnesses for my U360s, GPWiz for players 3 and 4 and the admin buttons, usb trackball and usb spinner.

I ran into two issues with this setup.  

1.  There are a few MALA inputs that you can only use with keyboard strokes (such as the shift key for fast scrolling).  To get around this, I ended up having to use the page up/ page down functions set to my gamepad buttons in order to scroll through the list fast.  It works, but my original intention was to scroll the list with the trackball and press and hold shift to scroll fast.  You cannot do this without a keyboard encoder.

2.  Both Mala and Daphne are pretty peticular about which joystick they recognize.  I've got 4 joystick devices on my cab (2 ultrasticks, the GP wiz, and a USB flightstick).  By default, Mala and Daphne will only recognize whichever device name starts last alphabetically (which is the device that will get mapped as "Joystick 1" in windows XP).  For me, this was my flight stick.  I had to go into the gamepad properties and set my Player 1 ultrastick to be the preferred gamepad device, then both Mala and Daphne would recognize it.  A workaround, but since Daphne now only recognizes my Ultrastick, I can't use my flightstick for flying games in Daphne.

These problems can be solved with joytokey or xpadder.  For my Daphne setup i just setup a profile in joytokey and mapped my joystick to the default keys and it works great.

For the first one just map the preferred button to the shift key.

For the second one just map both joysticks to the same keyboard inputs, then you can use either one for whatever type of game you are playing.

I have learned when using gamepads that joytokey and xpadder are essential considering that we are playing in a "keyboard based world".