4 Player control panel Mathematics

[Aabra]

I'm finalizing my 4 player control panel but I have very little experience with this and thus would like to know if it's possible or if any of my information here is incorrect because the setup is a bit weird.


Electric Ice T Trackball - includes connection points for 3 mouse buttons - connected to pc via usb

U360 Joystick x 2 - these include 8 connections each for normal buttons - connected to pc via usb

Happ Competition Joystick x 2 - connected to keywiz

KeyWiz40-ST - connected to pc via ps/2

several pushbuttons - connected to keywiz


My question really is if it's possible to wire this.  Can I connect 16 buttons for player 1/2 to the U360 joysticks?  If so how do I ground them?

The same question really with the Electric Ice T Trackball - can I wire 3 normal pushbuttons to it and have them act as the mouse buttons?  Same question with regards to grounding.


The Keywiz 40 connections...  minus 4 per joystick connected to it leaves me with 32.

So the total number of buttons I can have is:

32 from Keywiz
8   from U360 1
8   from U360 2
3   from Electric Ice
______

51!!!


Is my math correct here or is there a serious flaw that I have overlooked?

[bkenobi]

Mouse buttons are not exactly interchangeable with standard buttons (either keyboard or gamepad).  They can be used more or less so in MAME, but other emulators are going to give you headaches!

[Aabra]

Well, I wanted to put them next to the trackball for navigating windows, playing various windows based games, as well as the mame trackball games. 


Are there any trackball games that might have a problem with using mouse buttons instead of standard buttons?  They would principally be used for games like Golden Tee, Bowling games, Shuffleboard games, etc but could there be a problem in faster paced ones like missile defense or rampart?
 

Also, what other emulators have trackball games?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Ultra_Minigolf_Adventures  - This game is pretty fun but it only supports clicking the mouse to swing.  No trackball motion. 

[angryred]

I have a 5 button array on the top tier of my panel, set up in an Asteroids type formation.  The left two buttons are my mouse buttons, working in tandem with a U-trak trackball and Optipac.  I haven't had any problems with the two mouse buttons acting as proper arcade buttons in any games in MAME. 

I did have to enable the mouse in all games to make sure the buttons worked; at first I couldn't get them to work in Asteroids (using MAMES32 v112) because the option to enable mouse was greyed out in the Asteroids-specific preferences, but it worked once I enabled it in the control preferences for all games. They work fine for left/right in Golden Tee, for example.

I was a bit hesitant to put the mouse buttons on the left-- the buttons are reversed, as though for someone left-handed-- but putting them on the right meant I would be moving the trackball with my left hand, and that didn't feel right at all.  However, once I tried the left-handed buttons, I found that I didn't even have to think about them being reversed.  "Left-click" is still the index finger, but for whatever reason, I didn't expect it to feel that natural. And it's perfect for Centipede.