Multiple Mice in xmame: Got it working!

[jerryjanis]

Can anybody offer me any advice as to how to make this work?  I'm using RedHat Linux 9 (Shrike) and multiple USB mice with X-MAME v72.  I have been looking around for how do do it and I can't seem find the right answer.  The XMame site claims to support it.  If anybody can even tell me that they have seen it work, it would be a start.

Thanks in advance,
Jake

[jerryjanis]

Well, this is sort of a one-sided conversation, but I got it working and wrote up exactly how  I did it:

http://jstookey.com/arcade/xmame_installation/

I connected 4 usb mice and 4 player Warlords, Atari Soccer, and Atari Football 4 player.  PS/2 and serial mice will also work together with USB mice.  I used XInput which I'm pretty sure relies on XWindows.

[SirPoonga]

Hence why my cocktail might end up being linux  Don;t even needs a newer mame for my cocktail either.

[u_rebelscum]

Cool.  Looks like I'll have a look at xmame source to see if they have any cool tricks.

[Jakobud]

Whoa!  This is huge!  I knew that someone was gonna figure this out someday with Mame and I knew it would be Linux.

Wow this could open so many possiblities.  With a little driver work we could be looking at multiple Act Labs Lightguns in Mame now!  But multiple mice... that alone is just awesome.  Good job jerryjanis!

Performance-wise how much slower is Linux Mame compared to Mame in Winxp?

[Lilwolf]

Anyone test the act-labs gun in linux?

[Jakobud]

How much work has gone into trying to get multiple mice going in Windows?  I did a few searches on it and found this:

"On Microsoft

[SirPoonga]

Whoa!  This is huge!  I knew that someone was gonna figure this out someday with Mame and I knew it would be Linux.

Wow, you act like this is new.  Multiple mice has always been in xmame.  linux doesn;t have that issue XP does.

BTW, you figured out what uRebel wants to try but he doesn't have an XP machine.  

[AUX]

Does the 3 player trackball version fo Rampart work with this build of xmame?

[Jakobud]

Whoa!  This is huge!  I knew that someone was gonna figure this out someday with Mame and I knew it would be Linux.

Wow, you act like this is new.  Multiple mice has always been in xmame.  linux doesn;t have that issue XP does.

Oh well I always new that multiple mice in Linux was possible, but haven't seen anyone actually do it in Mame until this.

[jakejake28]

Performance-wise how much slower is Linux Mame compared to Mame in Winxp?

havent used it myself, but all my other emus run FASTER when in Mandrake than in XP via duel boot

[SirPoonga]

I have xmame on my cabinet right now.  It's about the same.

The reason you don;t see people running multiple mice in linux with xmame is that there really isn;t any frontends for linux.  There's gxmame which is the mame32 of linux and advancemenu.  That's aobut it for ones with some decent features.  Most are not cab friendly.  I'm suprised there isn't an opengl FE out there that would work.

[jerryjanis]

Does the 3 player trackball version fo Rampart work with this build of xmame?

No, but there's an updated driver if you're willing to recompile (I just tried it with XMAME and it worked):

http://jstookey.com/arcade/mamefixes/

BTW, you figured out what uRebel wants to try but he doesn't have an XP machine. 

I played around with rawmouse a little bit a few weeks ago - I got some raw info to display about mice and keyboards.  However, as far as I could tell the Microsoft Platform SDK that provides access to the rawinput stuff isn't compatible with MinGW/GCC...  From what I've read, compilers like Borland C++ can support that stuff because they paid MS big money to be told how to do it.  I had to compile my awful test programs with Visual Studio (yuk!).  My impression is that the "dx70_mingw" headers on the MAME downloads page are MS DirectX SDK headers that have been patched to work with mingw, so it is possible to patch them, but I'm far too afraid to look into that option.

There's not much info on the net about rawmouse...  Nobody's touching it with a ten foot pole.  I made a major breakthrough when I found some wacky code that was totally in Korean or something...  The comments were all in crazy "not even letters or numbers or punctuation" text, but the code was solid enlish and explained a lot.  I wonder if I can translate any of those comments with an internet translator?  Anyway, I should dig up that code again and at least make it available in case it's useful to anyone.

It would be great if someday someone was able to just create a standalone windows program that would read the raw inputs from multiple mice, and then of course someone could make Mame support reading those inputs...

Hmmm...  Remember this thread that tricks games into using joysticks?

http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=10778;start=0

It would be really friggin' awesome to have a standalone program that would read the rawmouse information from WindowsXP and feed it into something that faked WindowsXP into thinking it had multiple standard mice through DirectX.  Then the Mame code wouldn't have to change at all to support it, and it could be applied to any program.  Eh, maybe the limitation in WindowsXP is more powerful than this.

[Jakobud]

Hmmm...  Remember this thread that tricks games into using joysticks?

http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=10778;start=0

It would be really friggin' awesome to have a standalone program that would read the rawmouse information from WindowsXP and feed it into something that faked WindowsXP into thinking it had multiple standard mice through DirectX.  Then the Mame code wouldn't have to change at all to support it, and it could be applied to any program.  Eh, maybe the limitation in WindowsXP is more powerful than this.

Yeah, except you can already remap joysticks to act as analog axis's in Mame, can't you?  Or am I wrong about that?  I was thinking about Rampart when I said that, but perhaps I am thinking about the joystick version...

I think the largest advantage to this whole multiple mice thing is this gives us a lot of hope for multiple Act-labs light guns.  This will most likely require some driver writing from Act-labs, but it is totally possible.

And SirPoonga, check out a FE called Lemon Launcher.  Visually and interactively, it's based off of Game Launcher (but the code is completely different).  It's Mame only (unlike GL which can do any command line based emu).  But it's super easy to setup.  I actually might even like it better than GL simply because of it's support for unlimited sub menu's...

http://lemonlauncher.sourceforge.net/

Anyways, there is a downloadable Win32 version and source code for Linux (or Windows) compilation.  Check it out. You might like it.

But Poonga, you are saying that Mame performance under Linux is about the same as WindowsXP?  Don't the latest Mame releases support DirectX hardware stuff?  I would think that would give it a significan edge of Linux.

[jakejake28]

But Poonga, you are saying that Mame performance under Linux is about the same as WindowsXP?  Don't the latest Mame releases support DirectX hardware stuff?  I would think that would give it a significan edge of Linux.

do remember that a linux system can run up to 60 percent faster than a corresponding windows machine...

[Howard_Casto]

Not true at all, a xp machine has about a 60% larger footprint.  Once you get beyond the overhead the performance is about the same.  And if you plan on running a graphical flaovr of linux, it's poor hardware accel support might even hurt you worse, but I can't confirm that last bit.  

[jakejake28]

Not true at all, a xp machine has about a 60% larger footprint.  Once you get beyond the overhead the performance is about the same.  And if you plan on running a graphical flaovr of linux, it's poor hardware accel support might even hurt you worse, but I can't confirm that last bit.  

oh, i am talking about pure command linux, your thinking GUI's right? i dunno much about them, i dont use them...

[Howard_Casto]

Well yeah but think about it.... all the front ends for xmame use xwindows or something similar don't they?

[SirPoonga]

Minus that lemonlauncher and advmenu.

[u_rebelscum]

I played around with rawmouse a little bit a few weeks ago - I got some raw info to display about mice and keyboards.  However, as far as I could tell the Microsoft Platform SDK that provides access to the rawinput stuff isn't compatible with MinGW/GCC...  From what I've read, compilers like Borland C++ can support that stuff because they paid MS big money to be told how to do it.  I had to compile my awful test programs with Visual Studio (yuk!).  My impression is that the "dx70_mingw" headers on the MAME downloads page are MS DirectX SDK headers that have been patched to work with mingw, so it is possible to patch them, but I'm far too afraid to look into that option.

There's not much info on the net about rawmouse...  Nobody's touching it with a ten foot pole.  I made a major breakthrough when I found some wacky code that was totally in Korean or something...  The comments were all in crazy "not even letters or numbers or punctuation" text, but the code was solid enlish and explained a lot.  I wonder if I can translate any of those comments with an internet translator?  Anyway, I should dig up that code again and at least make it available in case it's useful to anyone.

FWIW, I am just starting to look at trying to compile rawinput with gcc, and running into the incompatablity problems you ran into.  

[jerryjanis]

I think it's time to start a new thread about multiple mice in Windows XP.

[Lilwolf]

btw...

Analinux+ Mame?

Analogux+ Mame?

Analogx Mame?  (rotate the +)

Analog+x+x Mame?  (the +'s and x's are a rotating gif)

ALinux+ Mame?

[jerryjanis]

Hmmm, it's still entirely just XMame...

Just out of curiousity u_rebelscum, does this list incorporate all of the differences between Mame Analog+ and regular Mame?

Potentially hardware-specific code:
Support for 8 controllers.
Dual lightgun support
Splitmouse option
Mappable mouse input
Resetmouse option
Multiple mice
Improved mouse simulation with analog joysticks

Driver changes (should be directly portable):
Support for Druin's interface
Rampart, Sonic 3rd player support
Minor input test changes in namcos2
Bang, Lethald Enf, Oneshot, Underfire lightgun fixes/hacks
720, arch rivals / pigskin, area51 / maximum force fixes/hacks

[Jakobud]

Minus that lemonlauncher and advmenu.

and those two FE's are the only ones that I know of that are cabinet friendly.

[SirPoonga]

I am liking lemon launcher, BUT it needs some tweeking.  I like it because it is SDL.

[u_rebelscum]

Hmmm, it's still entirely just XMame...

Just out of curiousity u_rebelscum, does this list incorporate all of the differences between Mame Analog+ and regular Mame?

Potentially hardware-specific code:
Support for 8 controllers.
Dual lightgun support
Splitmouse option
Mappable mouse input
Resetmouse option
Multiple mice
Improved mouse simulation with analog joysticks

Driver changes (should be directly portable):
Support for Druin's interface
Rampart, Sonic 3rd player support
Minor input test changes in namcos2
Bang, Lethald Enf, Oneshot, Underfire lightgun fixes/hacks
720, arch rivals / pigskin, area51 / maximum force fixes/hacks

Pretty much.  

I try to list all the stuff on my features page, but I don't check each and every feature each release, so the page could be out of date or otherwise wrong in parts.

[gndprx]

Not very thurough information on LemonLauncher but I have a few questions.

Does it automatically generate game lists and have filters?  (not typing in 4k+ rom names)

Can you jump pages or are you limited to scrolling 1 game at a time.


I'm contemplating linux to replace my xp box in my current cab.  But weary about giving up my mamewah.

[SirPoonga]

Not very thurough information on LemonLauncher but I have a few questions.

Does it automatically generate game lists and have filters?  (not typing in 4k+ rom names)

I jut tried it out.  No, you have to generate the lists.  It's odd to, it's a heirarchal menu system.

Can you jump pages or are you limited to scrolling 1 game at a time.

Yes, ther is a page up and page down button.

[Lilwolf]

btw, I believe that my frontend (JFront) works in Linux.  I haven't tested it in ages...

Anyone interested in testing it, let me know.

I think I'm going to have a new release.  I made a TON of little changes in the last few months because I have a computer in my cab 100% of the time for the first time... sigh... noticed some little annoyances.