MameHooker - FFB Effects

[bdam]

I'm trying to get MameHooker working with my FFB wheel.  I've tried testing with just 'dff 0 1 -1' and working through various joystick IDs but that hasn't brought about any results.  The supported devices function lists nothing.  Between the wheel driver's test screen and other FFB games I can confirm that the wheel itself is functional.

dxDiag tells me:
XP Pro SP3
DirectX 9.0c
Logitech WingMan Formula Force GP USB on ID 0 with a FFB driver.

Any ideas?

Edit: Has Howard released source code for the recent releases?  His site only lists source code for version 2.1.

  Bryan

[Howard_Casto]

Well if the supported devices function doesn't list it then it isn't supported. 

Truth be told the force feedback support is iffy right now simply because the only force feedback devices I own are rumble pads (which work fine).  If you guys want to start a collection to buy me a cheap ff wheel then maybe we can get better support, but for the time being there isn't much I can do.  You might want to play with the ffa command though just in case.... your wheel probably supports TRUE force-feedback in which case you don't get rumble but rather the wheel gets moved via offsets.  I doubt it'll work though.

As for the source, I haven't released it in a while because it's a mess.  Every major release since 2.1 has involved re-writing the core of the code.  After this next version it should be stabalized and I can start releasing the source again.

[bdam]

Thanks for the reply Howard. Kind of what I was expecting; tough to say what's going on from there.    I had first tried the ffa command but thought to test with teh ddf command since it's simpler.  If you're feeling charitable and willing to send me the current source I can try and figure out what the problem is and see if there's a generic fix for the next release.

Might I suggest the use of a code repository like SVN or GIT?  I use sourceforge's SVN and have found it well worth the initial setup effort.  Better backup than I could do myself, easily browsable online repository, and should I take some fatal step in front of a bus my latest commit is there for anyone else to continue.

[Howard_Casto]

............. and should I take some fatal step in front of a bus my latest commit is there for anyone else to continue.

What chou talkin bout Willis?  I'm going to be buried with my source code!  The line ends with me!   

Anyway sit tight.  a new release of mamehooker will hopefully be out this month... I'm ironing out some pacdrive issues.  The ff code has been changed a lot to be less strict on what kind of devices it supports.  That might fix your problem right there.  I'll be releasing the source with this revision as well. 

[bdam]

Excellent, thanks Howard, looking forward to it.

One last question then regarding scripts for FFB.  Can the values be multiplied or divided from within MameHooker to make them fit within the range of the FFB calls?

[Howard_Casto]

Excellent, thanks Howard, looking forward to it.

One last question then regarding scripts for FFB.  Can the values be multiplied or divided from within MameHooker to make them fit within the range of the FFB calls?

Sort of....

Mamehooker supports seperate commands for each value via "|" seperation.  You can make a command with the appropriate ff value for each mame value. 


Multipliers will be supported in the future though.

The reason I don't is because right now any mame driver with "real" force-feedback that has been hooked up has been done so by yours truely.  I've noticed a trend.... although seemingly analog, most games simply had 7-15 positional settings for the motors/rams.  Since the steps are so large, it makes more sense to tweak each individual value for maximum effect.

[bdam]

most games simply had 7-15 positional settings for the motors/rams

About that.   Similar to your initial push for gun games I've started looking at driving games.  The midway driver (ex. crusnusa) has a very smooth progression from 0 to 127 for it's force feedback.

[Howard_Casto]

most games simply had 7-15 positional settings for the motors/rams

About that.   Similar to your initial push for gun games I've started looking at driving games.  The midway driver (ex. crusnusa) has a very smooth progression from 0 to 127 for it's force feedback.

Well yeah I know, but I'm not at the point to where I can get crusin hooked up yet.  I've still gotta get my old drivers submitted.  Stupid mamehooker release is holding me up. 

[bdam]

To be clear, that wasn't intended as a prod for you to get crusin working.  Rather, that I have been working on midway/crusin, found the bits responsible, and they seem to have a linear progression.  I might have made some sense of hardrivn as well which is what prompted me to try and hook up my wheel.

[Xiaou2]

Hard Drivin may be a tough one, considering that a HD arcade wheel turns like 3 times in each direction, and uses what looks to be a dryer motor for the forced FFB effect.  (Truly Awesome!)

 You might have to make two modes for a game like this.  One which allows a true controller / replica.  And one setting for a typical FFB wheel with less degree of travel and power output.

 Its been so long, I cant recall if thats how the MH worked or not.
Ive been busy with too much else of late.

[bdam]

I'm fairly sure that applies across the board in terms of FFB wheels.  The consumer-level stuff will generally have a fraction of the power that their arcade counterparts do.  So there's no way you're going to replicate the exact feel of Hard Drivin's FFB, or most other games for that matter, on a cheap FFB wheel.  That being said, I've seen guys pay a couple thousand bucks for a commercial-grade wheel for use with the Model 2 emulator.  That's part of why the current solution is the only one the MAME devs would accept: MAME will output arcade-accurate figures and it's up to some middleware (ex. MameHooker) to make sense of it.

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah it's one of the reasons that I just give people an evil look when they mention hooking up harddrivin'  That was one of the most sophisticated ffb rigs ever made!  Assuming we can even figure out the data format I'm not sure what you could do with it.  Even with the original data outputted, it would take some serious thinking to figure out what to do with the data to make it 180 degree wheel friendly.  Simply multiplication and division of the data probably wouldn't cut it. 

Plus HD barely runs on most rigs.  Same for crusin really.... it runs if you like stuttery music. 

But like I said, multipliers are in the code already, I just need to go ahead and expose them before this next release.

[bdam]

it would take some serious thinking to figure out what to do with the data to make it 180 degree wheel friendly.

Speaking from ignorance here, how does the amount of wheel travel come into play?  MAME is already handling this on the input side or at least they seem to be properly scaled.  On the output side of things aren't we just looking for direction and amount of force?

[BadMouth]

I was lurkin' and following this thread, but as I can't code jack, figured I had nothing to add.
eh, I'll throw in my $.02 now anyway.

Hard Drivin' used a 10-turn potentiometer, but it's still just a potentiometer.
A 180 degree one can accomplish the same thing and the sensitivity and saturation adjustments in MAME already have it covered.
There are other issues with the controls on hard driving (mainly the analogue joystick shifter), but they don't really pertain to FFB.


Cruisin' USA and World both run at full speed on a modest modern PC.
I only spent $250 on the pc in my driving cab.  It originally had a 2.7Ghz Athlon X2 and Crusin' did occasionally experience a small slowdown, but it was still very playable and the sound didn't skip.  Newegg had a deal on a 3.2Ghz Athlon X2 for $65 a while back, so I upgraded to that and haven't experienced any slowdown since.  That's what I paid for the original 2.7Ghz processor, so I'm still sticking to my story that it's a $250 pc.

Now California Speed is on the verge of running at full speed.  Judging from my test pc(2.9Ghz X3), a switch to a 64bit OS should get it running at 100%.


It's horribly incomplete when it comes to outputs, but I made a spreadsheet of all the driving games in MAME.
You might find it useful if you're messing around with the driving games and want to see what uses what driver, etc.
There are three sheets based on their emulation status.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArE1chsgHXQodDd2ckdjLVY3Ujlad2tZWUpteDNtcXc&hl=en&authkey=CIrIhMwE
I was mainly focused on collecting shifter information, but that's one for another thread.

[Howard_Casto]

it would take some serious thinking to figure out what to do with the data to make it 180 degree wheel friendly.

Speaking from ignorance here, how does the amount of wheel travel come into play?  MAME is already handling this on the input side or at least they seem to be properly scaled.  On the output side of things aren't we just looking for direction and amount of force?

Well force feedback on a wheel isn't like "turn on motor to 75% power" it is more like "move the wheel to 5 o'clock"

Even taking scaling into account when you have a wheel that makes 10 rotations vs one that doesn't even make a full rotation you are essentially going to get ffb effects firing when the wheel can't even go any further.  We can compensate for this of course, but what you are going to get are some very inaccurate ff effects on a generic wheel.  And by inaccurate I mean so terrible they might potentially be distracting from gameplay.

[Howard_Casto]

I was lurkin' and following this thread, but as I can't code jack, figured I had nothing to add.
eh, I'll throw in my $.02 now anyway.

Hard Drivin' used a 10-turn potentiometer, but it's still just a potentiometer.
A 180 degree one can accomplish the same thing and the sensitivity and saturation adjustments in MAME already have it covered.
There are other issues with the controls on hard driving (mainly the analogue joystick shifter), but they don't really pertain to FFB.


Cruisin' USA and World both run at full speed on a modest modern PC.
I only spent $250 on the pc in my driving cab.  It originally had a 2.7Ghz Athlon X2 and Crusin' did occasionally experience a small slowdown, but it was still very playable and the sound didn't skip.  Newegg had a deal on a 3.2Ghz Athlon X2 for $65 a while back, so I upgraded to that and haven't experienced any slowdown since.  That's what I paid for the original 2.7Ghz processor, so I'm still sticking to my story that it's a $250 pc.

Now California Speed is on the verge of running at full speed.  Judging from my test pc(2.9Ghz X3), a switch to a 64bit OS should get it running at 100%.


It's horribly incomplete when it comes to outputs, but I made a spreadsheet of all the driving games in MAME.
You might find it useful if you're messing around with the driving games and want to see what uses what driver, etc.
There are three sheets based on their emulation status.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArE1chsgHXQodDd2ckdjLVY3Ujlad2tZWUpteDNtcXc&hl=en&authkey=CIrIhMwE
I was mainly focused on collecting shifter information, but that's one for another thread.

The crusin games just have problems and I think it has less to do with horsepower and more to do with the drivers.  My desktop pc is faster than that, running win7 64 bit and it STILL skips a little.  It might be you can't hear it because the audio is so low in MAME. 

Nope Cali Speed still won't run 100%.  It averages around 95% for me.  The audio or video don't skip though so it's playable. 

About hard drivn just look at my reply above.  As you pointed out anything can be compensated for, but as I pointed out when you water it down that much I don't know if the effects you'll get are even going to be worth it.

[Howard_Casto]

I couldn't sleep tonight so I went ahead and hooked up the multipliers.  I've got to admit, I'm really liking them.  It pretty much makes the old buffers pointless, but I'll leave them in for text and serial usage.

[bandicoot]

Hello
I've got a LOGITECH DRIVING FORCE EX , mamehoover see it
But when i try test mode no reaction ( one time it's seem to work very weaker )
does any one have sucess with a logitech wheel ?
thanks

[bdam]

Since this was bumped, what are the chances of releasing the latest MH code?  I'm fairly certain the problem is just a matter of axis selection and I'd love to be able to test that theory out.

[Howard_Casto]

Since this was bumped, what are the chances of releasing the latest MH code?  I'm fairly certain the problem is just a matter of axis selection and I'd love to be able to test that theory out.

It's not... the problem is already fixed... I just have two more features to button up before a release.  If I released the source right now it would crash on most machines due to the incomplete functions.

[isamu]

Good to know you're getting close and making progress Howard. We're all grateful for your work. Looking forward to the next release.

Oh and @ Bandicoot...don't worry my friend, Howard will have the next version of "MameHoover" out in no time 

[retrorepair]

What drivers are currently hooked up for FFB though? I know outrun was done ages ago but as of the latest MAME release (144u7) it still has no outputs.

Virtua Racing is the one I'm holding out for but I doubt that's even on the to do list. On a side note though, that will be useful for all model 2 games too since they used the same drive boards/motors. For future reference obviously considering the state of the model 2 driver right now.

I think it's about time someone stepped up and helped Howard out hooking up outputs. If I knew what I was doing I'd help out myself.

[bdam]

You posted to Howard's Mame Output WIP thread and the answers to most of your questions are there.  Howard did most (all?) of the gun recoil games.  I had begun work on documenting other outputs but I'm mostly interested in driving games so there's not much more I can do until MH works with FFB wheels.  For what it's worth, model 2's inputs don't appear to be properly connected yet although I think I have VR mostly figure out.

Howard explained what's involved in finding outputs in his WIP thread so if you can compile MAME (it's not hard) then you can help look for outputs.

[retrorepair]

Compiling MAME and hooking up outputs are worlds apart. If I could help believe me, I would.

For what it's worth, model 2's inputs don't appear to be properly connected yet although I think I have VR mostly figure out.

I'm not surprised, the driver barely runs right now. I was just saying that the drive PCB and motor are identical for VR, Daytona and SR. Touring Car and later may have a different drive board though and the feedback motor is definitely different (it's a direct drive motor and heavy as F*!@$).

Good job on this btw: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k5GSS9l264KzBuYguQwt3PWY5spPAk6tFjsr_R46nvE/edit?authkey=CJe-tdUG&pli=1

[isamu]

Good job on this btw: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k5GSS9l264KzBuYguQwt3PWY5spPAk6tFjsr_R46nvE/edit?authkey=CJe-tdUG&pli=1

Rave Racer (raveracw)
AM_RANGE(0x60004000, 0x6000bfff)
Offset 8
lamps?
Offset 16
FFB 

Hmmm.....does this mean there's a good chance FFB for Ridge and Rave Racer could be supported in the next build?

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah everybody's waiting on me I'm afraid.  The reason outrun never got included is shortly after I got that driver figured out, somebody else updated the driver, so now it isn't submittable.  I'll have to sit down and take the time to completely re-code it.  It isn't hard, the memory addreses are still the same, but it will take time.

Mamehooker's update is a bigger priority atm.  As bdam said, it's pretty hard to troubleshoot when your wheel doesn't work properly. 

I've been working on a visual pinball project atm, but it's nearly done and MH is my next priority.  THEN maybe I can get outrun and all it's clones/brothers submitted. 

As far as model 2 is concerned.  RamJet is working on FF for those games via the model 2 emulator.  I've sent him a crude guide telling him how to "fake" mame's output server, so hopefully when he gets time hs can implement it and model 2 will work with mamehooker just like mame would.

[isamu]

Yeah everybody's waiting on me I'm afraid.  The reason outrun never got included is shortly after I got that driver figured out, somebody else updated the driver, so now it isn't submittable.  I'll have to sit down and take the time to completely re-code it.  It isn't hard, the memory addreses are still the same, but it will take time.

Mamehooker's update is a bigger priority atm.  As bdam said, it's pretty hard to troubleshoot when your wheel doesn't work properly. 

I've been working on a visual pinball project atm, but it's nearly done and MH is my next priority.  THEN maybe I can get outrun and all it's clones/brothers submitted. 

As far as model 2 is concerned.  RamJet is working on FF for those games via the model 2 emulator.  I've sent him a crude guide telling him how to "fake" mame's output server, so hopefully when he gets time hs can implement it and model 2 will work with mamehooker just like mame would.

Thanks for the progress report HG That is VERY exciting news!!!  Tell RamJet we all thank him and appreciate his efforts on the Model 2 front, and that maybe perhaps if he gets a chance he can take a look at the Namco System 22 driver(?)

[retrorepair]

Do you mean lamp outputs per chance? He didn't mention FFB to me last we spoke

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah.... just lamps for now, but with the system in place somebody else (or possibly RamJet himself) can figure out and implement the rest.

[tony.silveira]

hi guys,

i'm a complete newbie when it comes to mame hooker so please forgive my ignorance.  i downloaded in the hopes of being able to use my FFB wheel (an old avb wheel, also have an official 360 ms wheel i will be trying) on games that would support it.  ran thru the tutorial as mentioned on the site but none of the testing seem to get the wheel to move.

when running hooker in the background and starting a game, i get the vocals of the new outputs but they all seem to be lamps.

sorry for the ignorance on my part, tried the tutorial, i guess i'm just the right amount of dense to not get mame hooker

fyi, i was trying out "hard drivin'" but am willing to try any game and any walk thru.  once i get a handle on one game, i'll be able to follow suit on my own for the rest.

thanks for reading

[BadMouth]

hi guys,

i'm a complete newbie when it comes to mame hooker so please forgive my ignorance.  i downloaded in the hopes of being able to use my FFB wheel (an old avb wheel, also have an official 360 ms wheel i will be trying) on games that would support it.  ran thru the tutorial as mentioned on the site but none of the testing seem to get the wheel to move.

when running hooker in the background and starting a game, i get the vocals of the new outputs but they all seem to be lamps.

sorry for the ignorance on my part, tried the tutorial, i guess i'm just the right amount of dense to not get mame hooker

fyi, i was trying out "hard drivin'" but am willing to try any game and any walk thru.  once i get a handle on one game, i'll be able to follow suit on my own for the rest.

thanks for reading

You are a bit early.  No games have the ffb outputs hooked up yet.

[tony.silveira]

You are a bit early.  No games have the ffb outputs hooked up yet.
[/quote]

cool!  i'm not as dense as i thought!