IPAC-like Shift key behavior in Mame?

[GaryMcT]

Does anyone know of an existing patch to make Mame treat shift keys like the IPAC does?  I want the shift key to only emit its own function upon release and only if it wasn't ever used to shift another key.  If such a patch doesn't exist, I'm going to look into writing one so that I can use the Ultrastik in Mame like I can use my IPAC4.

thanks!
Gary

[Ginsu Victim]

There isn't one. Get on it.

[GaryMcT]

There isn't one. Get on it.

Dammit.    My arcade habit todo list is getting really really long.

[Bender]

no, not technically, but maybe in practice, you can set a function to require 2 keys(or more) to work,

You could have one of those two always be the same and you'd essentially the same thing?

I'll try it out later and let you know

[Hoopz]

no, not technically, but maybe in practice, you can set a function to require 2 keys(or more) to work,

You could have one of those two always be the same and you'd essentially the same thing?

I'll try it out later and let you know

Yes, this works.  Here are some thoughts about it from eightbit from a few years ago:

This is an unfortunate side effect of using that key combination. But its simple to remember and easy to use.
 
I prefer a less button panel and usually don't do any extra buttons.

A thing that is often forgetten is that you can use shifted buttons inside of mame. You can program just about any key combination to do something. You can set key combinations to just about anything even set it to more than 2 keys to do something. I don't know what the limit is. You don't have to define one as the shift button, any button can be shifted to do a different function. Then the only extra buttons that you would need on your control panel for admin functions would be those that you would use outside of mame. I have a cabinet with a gamepad hack set up with shifted functions even though the gamepad doesn't support custom configurations.

I, for example, refuse to have special "mame keys" on my control panel.  If I have to have a "shift key" put on special then I'm not getting it.  The idea is I want my cp to look like it could actually be on a real arcade machine.  If I have a row of function keys then it ruins that.  I figure a lot of people with faithful mame conversions of arcade cabinets feel the same way. 

In mame you can avoid the use of having to program your encoder to do a shifted function by programming any combination of buttons to do a certain function. You can even have a dedicated shift button if you want. You can even do more than 2 button combos if you want it to be difficult to get into your game setup menu you could set it for 3 keys.

In real arcade cabinets there were additional buttons for free play or credits or configuration. They were usually located inside the coin door. I definately agree with the less clutter philosphy. If keeping your panel authentic is a priority you could mount your shazzam key there. If you don't like reaching inside the coin door you could mount it on the side, under the marquee, under a overhang on the front of the cab.

Using Randys method you could squeeze out enough inputs on the 2 player keywiz to make an acceptable 4 player panel and still save money over buying a 2p Ipac. I would like to see it done, I'd like to try it even but I have a few projects right now consuming a lot of time so I don't know how soon I'll get to it.

On a related topic lets hear from those that have ordered and received keywiz's. Some of you must have gotten them by now. We can continue to speculate ad nauseum how good they are, but I want to hear from the people that have them.

@ OP:  Play around and see what you want it to do and what you can make it do.
@ Ginsu:  NOOB!   

[Ginsu Victim]

Mame doesn't have an IPAC-esque shift function, so I said no. If it did, the IPAC probably wouldn't have one.

The way MAME does it still sends the signal for the individual buttons, plus the combo you press.

[GaryMcT]

no, not technically, but maybe in practice, you can set a function to require 2 keys(or more) to work,

You could have one of those two always be the same and you'd essentially the same thing?

I'll try it out later and let you know

That definitely does work, but not without still applying the shift keys output all the time. For example:

button 1: player 1 coin
button 1+button 2: tab

I want to hold down button 1 and then hut button 2 and get just "tab", not "coin+tab", which us what you get now. I want to get "coin" only if you release button 1 and it hasn't been used for some other shifted combination.

[Ginsu Victim]

See, Hoopz. 

[Hoopz]

I'm at work so I can't test it but from the Mame FAQ:

How do I configure the keys?

Press Tab in-game and choose "Input: This Game". Select the input you want to configure, press enter followed by the key you want it mapped to.

More fancy key combinations can be made. To map this key OR that key, set one of the keys as before, wait until mame accepts it, then repeat for second key. To map so two keys have to be pressed at the same time, press both (or more) keys (or press them with a second of each other) after pressing enter. To map a not (key1 only if key2 is not also pressed), enter, press first key, then quickly press the second key(s) twice.

"Input: General" can be selected to change all games inputs, and mame's UI buttons.

This remapping will also work for joystick or mouse inputs if joystick or mouse support is enabled (see below).

How does the sentence in bold get treated by Mame?  GaryMcT, is that an option as opposed to hitting one button first and then the other?

[Ginsu Victim]

The "NOT" statement has always confused me about MAME. I'm not sure how it works exactly.

[GaryMcT]

The "not" feature might fix my problem.  Will try it out now.

[Ginsu Victim]

Anyone have a better explanation of using NOT?

[GaryMcT]

That does exactly what I want!  Got it to work with the keyboard so far, but not with the U360 as an input device.  Might have to manually type in the bindings for that.  Will try now.

I'll write up an explanation once I have that working.

[u_rebelscum]

The "NOT" statement has always confused me about MAME. I'm not sure how it works exactly.

I was going to post info, but looks like garyMcT is going to try it, so I'll address this point.

The default example is hard vs soft reset.  Mame defaults s soft reset to the F3 key (* see below), and a full hard reset to F3 + leftShift keys.  For mame to know not to both resets, though, the soft reset is mapped to "F3 + NOT leftShift".  So you press and hold the leftShift key then F3, and mame knows to hard reset instead of soft.

Note that the leftShift key is sent, so if you're using the defaults on a 4+ button game (leftShift is P1B4 by default), the game will get the P1B4 signal (unless paused).

In short, with the "AND" and "NOT" features, shift keys (plural) can be simulated, as long as you're aware that the shift key is also sent.


edit: looks like GaryMcT got it working while I typed.

[Bender]

well just was going to report that it does work, but you need the NOT function programmed too....

but you all have figured that out already, Nice

[Ginsu Victim]

Thanks u_rebelscum. (still confused about using NOT though...)

Ok, Hoopz, now you call me a NOOB. (Even though I've been using MAME since 1997)

[Hoopz]

Thanks u_rebelscum. (still confused about using NOT though...)

Ok, Hoopz, now you call me a NOOB. (Even though I've been using MAME since 1997)

It's that pesky ole Mame FAQ....  We all learned something from this thread.   

[GaryMcT]

I can write more later (need to get to work), but basically for any key that you want to have double-duty (shifted and non-shifted behavior), you need to specifically map that input in one case to both buttons, and in the other case to one button and not the other one.  Here's an example:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- This file is autogenerated; comments and unknown tags will be stripped -->
<mameconfig version="10">
    <system name="pacman">
        <counters>
            <coins index="0" number="71" />
        </counters>
        <input>
            <port tag="IN0" type="COIN1" mask="32" defvalue="32">
                <newseq type="standard">
                    JOYCODE_1_BUTTON3 NOT JOYCODE_1_BUTTON2
                </newseq>
            </port>
            <port tag="IN1" type="START1" mask="32" defvalue="32">
                <newseq type="standard">
                    JOYCODE_1_BUTTON2 JOYCODE_1_BUTTON3
                </newseq>
            </port>
        </input>
    </system>
</mameconfig>

In this case, JOYCODE_1_BUTTON3 by itself is START1, where JOYCODE_1_BUTTON3 with JOYCODE_1_BUTTON2 held down is COIN1.

I can write up a tutorial later on how to set this up.

To set it up the "not" for anything keyboard/keyboard encoder based, all you have to do is hit the key that you want to be "notted" twice.  Unfortunately for joypad devices like the Ultrastik 360, this method doesn't work.  I manually changed my pacman.ini above to test this.

YAY!  I can use my U360 as a button encoder without losing this functionality and I can continue to be lazy and write no code!

[Ginsu Victim]

Thanks Gary. I'll try this out this weekend.

[GaryMcT]

Hmm, I have to work through an example.  Seems like it may not be exactly what I want, but it might do anyways.  Seems like you might have to hold down the play button and hit the shift button to get it to work, if that makes sense.  Not exactly the same as the IPAC behavior I don't think.  More later.

[Ginsu Victim]

Hmmm, okay. I'll have to see how it does.

[severdhed]

am I understanding this right?

I have a u360 that i use as my button encoder.  joy button 8 is my player 1 start button in mame.  button 8 is the shift key for the u360.  i have it set so that in mame, joy button 9 is coin1 (button 8 [shift]+ button 1).  when i do this it works, but when i release the shift button, it launches the game.  will using this not command fix this?  sometimes i'd like to dump in a bunch of coins and then start a 2 player game, and this way i cannot do that.

how do i accomplish this?

[GaryMcT]

You can get Mame to do exactly what the U360 encoder does now, which isn't all that great compared to the IPAC by binding combos.  The "NOT" support makes it so that you can hold down your play buttons, stick, etc, and hit the non-game button (player start, whatever) to do shifted functions.  This isn't ideal. . what you really want is what the IPAC does where it doesn't apply the function of the shift button until you let go of it.  That way it will only emit the function of the button by itself if you haven't hit any other buttons.

I'm going to look into adding support to Mame for a shift button the way the IPAC does it this weekend.  Hopefully it isn't too much work to get it working.  Stay tuned.

[Ginsu Victim]

Stay tuned.

Oh, you better believe I will.

[GaryMcT]

Stay tuned.

Oh, you better believe I will.

You need this to work too?

[GaryMcT]

For me, this is holding up wiring the rest of my control panel!

[Ginsu Victim]

Stay tuned.

Oh, you better believe I will.

You need this to work too?

Kinda. I'm thinking of doing a rewire that would involved removing my IPAC and using the U360 encoder, so it would help me out, that's for sure.

[GaryMcT]

Made some progress into understanding the Mame input system.  Pretty darn clean stuff!  I don't have the shift behavior working yet though.

[GaryMcT]

I figured out how to get a button/key to trigger on button release only.  Now I need to add code to do the "and only trigger it if it hasn't been used in some other key sequence" part of it.

[Ginsu Victim]

Glad to hear you're having success thus far.

[GaryMcT]

Got it all limping along.  If a key is a modifier key, it only fires that it has been pressed when it is released if and only if it hasn't been used in any other sequence while it has been held down.

There's a bunch of cleanup work to do before I put the patch up.  I'm probably going to only support one modifier key in the first version.  Not quite sure where to define what the modifier key is yet.  I'll get it into the ini file first, and then figure out how to get it into the tab-key UI.

[Beretta]

wow i never knew about the "Not" feature..

thats pretty handy because you can actually use mame for a matrix style setup.

the project im doing i only have 4 inputs left over after controls and was trying to rack my brain how to squeeze all the service controls out of 4 inputs, and the only workable solution i could come up with was to cut it down to the min.

this will definitely come in handy now i dont have to compromise.
i can have  dedicated button for things like tilt (yes a few games actually need this, example arch rivals requires it for navigating it's service menu) and volume up/down.

wiring might be a bit messy but i can handle that.

[ckas2]

Hello @GaryMcT - just wondering if you ever solved this issue and if you ever wrote a plugin or patch for MAME that will emulate the IPAC style shift keys. I have recently moved to a joystick style controller and have used IPAC in the past forever and really wanted to get this going.

Please let us know if you ever made this work (14 years later!!  )!

Thanks!