Happs Rotary joysticks - Two Player?

[Eddie Fantastic]

To give you a feel of my machine - it's running mame frontendend by arcadeos in pure dos outputting directly to an arcade monitor. The joystick and button controls are routed through an Ipac, where the optipac gets it's power.

I have just added the optipac to manage the controls of a happs trackball and two happs optical joysticks.
I wired it all up to the optipac - trackball to trackball player 1, optical joysticks to rotary player 1, and eventually got everything working, the trackball moves the Marble Madness ball perfectly, and on the arcadeos menu the left rotary jostick moves the curser left to right and the right one up and down. I have even played Midnight Resistance the way I used to - but only player 1.

The problem I have is when using player 2 rotary joystick within a game - the optical side of things just don't work.

I'm not using a second serial port. The rotary joysticks are wired to the x and y axis of the player 1 rotary inputs

All I need to do is tell mame that for player 1 use the x axis of the mouse and for player 2 use the y axis. Job done.

I know this is not a fault of the hardware, and it is mame that needs to be configured, but I have tried and tried and I can't find where to change these settings, if it's at all possible.

Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Ed

[Lilwolf]

Mame doesn't allow this with the default build

but analog mame (I think thats the name) does!  

Its the build that allows for mulitple usb mice and a few other features.

good luck

[u_rebelscum]

Since you are running under dos, I would recommend either

The EMU+ way out lined on Oscar's spinner support page.  (link from http://oscarcontrols.com/index_spinner.htm)

or use the dos version of Mame:Analog+

You probably will be more satisfied with the EMU+ way because I haven't added saving the mouse axis settings to the dos version yet.  Sorry.

[SirPoonga]

You probably will be more satisfied with the EMU+ way because I haven't added saving the mouse axis settings to the dos version yet.

[u_rebelscum]

Get your lazy arse out of bed....
Hehe.  Just kidding.  Great work...

Thanks.  

But I do think I would get more done if I had a laptop computer . . . so I didn't have to get out of bed.

[Todd Kelley]

I used to be possible to set emu+ up and then change the name of the config file from (game name).emu to (game name).cfg and then you could use dual spinners in the newest version of mame. I tried it with .58 and this doesn't seem to be possible anymore. Any idea why guys?
Thanks Todd

[u_rebelscum]

It used to be possible to set emu+ up and then change the name of the config file from (game name).emu to (game name).cfg and then you could use dual spinners in the newest version of mame. I tried it with .58 and this doesn't seem to be possible anymore. Any idea why guys?
Thanks Todd

I'll look into it, but it sounds like the game changed it's .cfg file.  Does it not work for all games, or just a couple?  If the game has changed it's inputs or order of the inputs, the EMU+ .cfg file won't match it anymore.

EMU+ uses a old .cfg file format.  Mame has changed the .cfg format about 3 or 4 times since EMU+ last was updated, but has had the ability to read "legacy" .cfg files, like those created by EMU+.  So another possiblity is that mame has removed the "legacy" code.

Like I said I'll look into it and see if it's the second reason, and if it's just a few games, if you tell me the games, I'll see if it's the first.

EDIT: I looked at the source, and the legacy code is still there and looks like it is still compiled in by default (so still in the distributed binary).  Can you list some games you are having problems with?

[todd kelley]

It seems to affect all games. The 2 that i play the most(and would like a config file for) are ikari warriors and boot hill(i used to use rotary joysticks for boot hill, works really well!). This may sound like a stupid question but how hard would it be to writeconfig files for games? (off road for 1, emu + didn't support it). that would solve all the problems.
Thanks Todd

[u_rebelscum]

It seems to affect all games. The 2 that i play the most(and would like a config file for) are ikari warriors and boot hill(i used to use rotary joysticks for boot hill, works really well!).

Okay.  I don't know why then.  If I have time I'll look into it.  (Some other stuff has just grabbed my interest, and I mean ten minutes ago.  Analog+ related, but won't be visable for a little while, if anyone's interested in what grabbed me)

This may sound like a stupid question but how hard would it be to writeconfig files for games? (off road for 1, emu + didn't support it). that would solve all the problems.
Thanks Todd

Well, each game has it's own .cfg file "layout".  The layout of the file depends on:

• what inputs the game uses
• how many of each input
• the order they are listed in the game driver

This is very game dependent.  Also, the .cfg file is not saved in text, so editing by hand, while possible, is hard, needs a hex editor, knowledge of what the hex numbers mean to mame, and you need to know the layout of each .cfg file you want to edit so you can edit the correct spots.

If someone wants to write a mame .cfg file editor, though, mame already has the layouts of the .cfg files (in the game drivers), functions that get the info out of the game drivers, and functions to load and save .cfg files (in inptport.c and input.c), so you can steal a lot of the needed code.  And the .cfg file layouts will be updated for you with each release of Mame, if you don't edit the code from you use.  You just need to design a (G)UI that edits the information.  I have thought about doing this, but don't have the time and experence in user interfaces, and I'm using my free time (what little I have) in Mame:Analog+.  Any takers?