Question for LED blinky users

[reko19]

I have the following controls on my CP panels: 4-way joy, 8-way joy for player 1, 8-way joy for player 2, and a trackball. Was wondering what input codes you assign to these controls to get the best results with MAME. I tried different combination and was curious to see what everyone else is using. Thanks.

[arzoo]

are you having any specific problem?

[reko19]

No problems, was able to get it to work 99% with your help. Just trying to see what is the best setup for MAME. As I mentioned I have 4-way joy, p1&p2 8-way joys, and a TB. I tried assigning joy4way and joy8way respectively. This works fine except for a game with 8-way both 8-ways are ON all the time even if only P1 is selected. Tried using P1 & P2 up, down, etc. Works well except for Centerpede and Millipede P1 Joy is ON together with a TB. So like I said no perfect way short of messing around with controls.ini.

I am having some issues with PC games though. Haven't played around with it enough to nail it down.  For some reason name of the game (which for mamewah is atarted via windows shortcut) is not passed properly to led blinky. Eliminating spaces in shortcut names took care of some problems but not all.

All for all great plugin. could not imagine accomplishing the same if it wasn't for your creation.

Regards.

[arzoo]

No problems, was able to get it to work 99% with your help. Just trying to see what is the best setup for MAME. As I mentioned I have 4-way joy, p1&p2 8-way joys, and a TB. I tried assigning joy4way and joy8way respectively. This works fine except for a game with 8-way both 8-ways are ON all the time even if only P1 is selected. Tried using P1 & P2 up, down, etc. Works well except for Centerpede and Millipede P1 Joy is ON together with a TB. So like I said no perfect way short of messing around with controls.ini.

I am having some issues with PC games though. Haven't played around with it enough to nail it down.  For some reason name of the game (which for mamewah is atarted via windows shortcut) is not passed properly to led blinky. Eliminating spaces in shortcut names took care of some problems but not all.

All for all great plugin. could not imagine accomplishing the same if it wasn't for your creation.

Regards.

For centipede and millipede - open the mame tab menu for the game controls and make sure the joystick inputs are not used.

As for the PC game names with spaces - make sure you have double quotes around [name] in the mamewah pc games ini file;

Code: [Select]

pre_emulator_app_commandlines  c:\ledblinky\ledblinky.exe "[name]" pcgames {nowait}

[reko19]

For centipede and millipede - open the mame tab menu for the game controls and make sure the joystick inputs are not used.

lost you there. don't i have to edit controls.ini to turn the joy led off even if I open the mame tab menu and remove the joystick inputs?

used double quotes for pc games, took care of all windows based games. however for some games such as wolfendstein, doom, lego star wars, duke nukem, etc blinky stays in the FE start animation even after the game is loaded and never gets into game start mode?

[arzoo]

For centipede and millipede - open the mame tab menu for the game controls and make sure the joystick inputs are not used.

lost you there. don't i have to edit controls.ini to turn the joy led off even if I open the mame tab menu and remove the joystick inputs?

LEDBlinky will read the centipede.cfg file in the mame cfg folder and if you have the game configured to use digital or analog joystick inputs then that might be why the joysticks are lighting up for the tb game. Send me the debug log after you've run one of those games and I can tell for sure why the sticks are lighting.

used double quotes for pc games, took care of all windows based games. however for some games such as wolfendstein, doom, lego star wars, duke nukem, etc blinky stays in the FE start animation even after the game is loaded and never gets into game start mode?

I'll need the log for these games also.

[reko19]

will do tonight. for my understanding what is the process for mame? how exactly controls.ini, game.cfg, mame.xml or any other files affect which leds are lit? sorry if this is covered in the manual.

technically, blinky does what is supposed to, mame lists trackball and joy8way under controller type millipede. I tried editing mame.xml and removing joy8way from controls list, but it is still showing as available control in mame. I need to dig around to figure out where mame gets available control  info. as long as joy8way is one of the controls it will be lighting up i think

[arzoo]

will do tonight. for my understanding what is the process for mame? how exactly controls.ini, game.cfg, mame.xml or any other files affect which leds are lit? sorry if this is covered in the manual.

technically, blinky does what is supposed to, mame lists trackball and joy8way under controller type millipede. I tried editing mame.xml and removing joy8way from controls list, but it is still showing as available control in mame. I need to dig around to figure out where mame gets available control  info. as long as joy8way is one of the controls it will be lighting up i think

Mame doesn't use the controls.ini at all - that's a user/byoac created file. Mame.xml is created by mame for external applications to use but I don't think it's actually used by mame - all the control drivers are in the code. It does create and use the game.cfg files.

Blinky uses the controls.ini and mame.xml files to determine the controls for each game, then it uses the cfg files to determine the input codes mapped to each control. It's a bit more complicated than that but that's the basic logic.

The primary purpose of the controls editor is to assign the controls and input codes for other emulators (not mame). It can be used to alter the controls for mame games also.

Back to millipede - I do see that mame.xml has joy8way listed for the game, but the controls.ini does not. Blinky only uses the mame.xml when the game is not found in the controls.ini. If you import millipede into the controls editor you'll see that only the P1 Trackball is listed.

Here's what I think is happening - mame assigns default input codes to most controls. For the trackball (X axis), here's the defaults:
MOUSECODE_1_ANALOG_X
JOYCODE_1_ANALOG_X
KEYCODE_LEFT
JOYCODE_1_LEFT
If you've got JOYCODE_1_LEFT assigned as an input code to one of your LED ports then that’s going to light for any tb game (due to mame's defaults). So to prevent this from happening you need to override the mame default control mapping. That has to be done while running the game from the mame Tab menu. Hope this makes sense.

[reko19]

If you've got JOYCODE_1_LEFT assigned as an input code to one of your LED ports then that’s going to light for any tb game (due to mame's defaults). So to prevent this from happening you need to override the mame default control mapping. That has to be done while running the game from the mame Tab menu. Hope this makes sense.

i think this is exactly what is going on, as soon as I remove  JOYCODE_1_LEFT it takes care of the issue, was pretty late last night so not 100% sure. I will try to override the mame default control mapping by using tab menu. Tried doing it from the controls editor.  It looks like I could have LEDs on IN ADDITION to the default mapping, but can't turn the default buttons off if this makes any sense to you. Will do some more playing around tonight.