Software Support > controls.dat
Unofficial Controls.xml Update - Preliminary Release
headkaze:
There are only 11 games which have different labels defined for player 2. As people say though just set mirrored to "0" when defining separate labels for each player but it's not that common to have a game without mirrored controls.
Howard_Casto:
--- Quote from: SirPoonga on September 30, 2009, 12:53:28 pm ---Once I get the site up to date I will look at this and look into getting the data into the project.
Verified means you have a source like aa manual or control panel pic that verifies the correct labels. One goal of controls.dat is to label the controls as how you would see them in the arcade. That's why we are a little strict on accepting entries.
As for clones since most clones use the same controls as the parent there isn't a need to enter the clones in. Anyone using controls.ini should first look if a game is in the file, then if it isn't check if there is a parent entry.
Once I get the site up and going I would like a couple of volunteers to help verify entries. It's simple, just take a quick peek at the resources given to make sure the labels are correct.
--- End quote ---
I've ben patiently waiting to resume my work for over a year now. ;) Seriously though, if it's donkeyfly that's giving you the issues let's just move the whole thing to saint's servers, he's got room I'm guessing.
Howard_Casto:
Btw garwil, I wasn't ignoring your efforts, I just haven't posted in like 6 months. ;)
You've got a impressive list there, but if you didn't bother to document your verification I'm not sure what we can do with it. :( Like sirp said verification requires actual documentation of some sort.
To paraphrase mame "Controls.dat is a documentation project. The fact that you can use it in your control viewers and front-ends is just a nice side effect."
Hopefully we can use some of it though, but it'd be helpful if you'd gather up any images and manuals you used as a guide when you did it.
Space Fractal:
I guess his project is not really being made officiel, hence the title, just really nice alternative, and as he wrote in reply 14#:
Like I said in my first post, I'm not going for 100% authenticity, just enough to be able to filter games accurately in RomLister and show appropriate info in CPWizard.
I would do something the same if I have the time, but just let the tick on changed games let unverifed....... This one really need somewhere a update, verifed or not. If some data can been used in the officiel, why not use it anyway?
Howard_Casto:
Well although he says that, he goes right along and posts a mention to Sirp in another controls.dat thread saying something like "I've continued your work." and links here.
Replying to your other questions, and this is a YEARS old broken record here:
If there is an "unofficial" entry then volunteers are far less likely to make a proper one, thus why we'll never include "unverified" entries in the controls.dat project. As you said, there's no real harm in making a seperate one though.
Some data probably can be used in the official, IF garwil has some documentation so that we can verify the entries. If he doesn't then we have to track down documentation (if available) and verify every single control, meaning that we might as well just do them over. I hope this isn't the case.
I know nobody uses it anymore, but the last version of johnny 5 had an "best guess" feature that showed a missing entries controls' with generic labels. That is the best solution for such filtering since if you don't have any labels, ALL of the mame-side control data can be retrived from mame itself, simply by reading the listxml entry for the game. What I mean to say is if you don't have any info on a game mame already has as much data as you can get that can be used for filtering. Before you ask, no, there is no reason to bulk up the dat with said generic entries. Any app that uses the controls.dat should also be reading mame's listxml.
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