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dual track balls for marble madness?
krick:
I see that you're spending time trying to compile it with MinGW/GCC.
What is the source set up for currently?
jerryjanis:
His source comes with makefiles for use with Visual C++'s "nmake" command line program, which is obviously the most straight-forward approach, but for Mame development MinGW is where it's at.
The API and the demo program compiled with MinGW. I wouldn't need to compile or modify the driver to get Mame to work with Windows 2000. (Oooh, I gotta update the web site - it's a little bit out of date.)
krick:
--- Quote from: jerryjanis on February 13, 2004, 04:30:13 pm ---His source comes with makefiles for use with Visual C++'s "nmake" command line program, which is obviously the most straight-forward approach, but for Mame development MinGW is where it's at.
--- End quote ---
ah. I see.
--- Quote from: jerryjanis on February 13, 2004, 04:30:13 pm ---The API and the demo program compiled with MinGW. I wouldn't need to compile or modify the driver to get Mame to work with Windows 2000. (Oooh, I gotta update the web site - it's a little bit out of date.)
--- End quote ---
What has to done to MAME to make it work?
I thought directInput was supposed to have a generic way to address game controllers, regardless of input (USB, game port, serial, parallel) why use a mouse driver at all? It just seems to confuse windows. Someone should just make some sort of generic "serial controller" driver for a trackball on the serial port that directInput can talk to. In fact, they could base the driver on existing mouse code, just don't identify it as a mouse to windows.
jerryjanis:
--- Quote from: krick on February 13, 2004, 04:53:12 pm ---What has to done to MAME to make it work?
--- End quote ---
To add support for the CPNMouse so that Mame will work with Windows 2000 is easy enough (maybe a couple of days' work) but I'm afraid that mixing 3 different mouse control options into Mame will make it too confusing for the users. It's already confusing as it is right now. I'm thinking about possibly putting some extra effort into it to make it so that a variety of options are available with minimum of confusion by implementing a system of mouse input plugins.
--- Quote ---I thought directInput was supposed to have a generic way to address game controllers, regardless of input (USB, game port, serial, parallel) why use a mouse driver at all? It just seems to confuse windows. Someone should just make some sort of generic "serial controller" driver for a trackball on the serial port that directInput can talk to. In fact, they could base the driver on existing mouse code, just don't identify it as a mouse to windows.
--- End quote ---
To be honest the idea of writing a mouse driver scares the crap out of me. I'm hoping that I can learn a little bit about it while playing with cpnmouse. I think that limiting the mouse capabilities to serial-only isn't the best idea, when other options are available that could add support for other mouse devices. My guess is that serial ports on computers might become scarce in the near future. The CPNMouse solution is actually a working solution that is similar to your idea and it works with ps/2, usb, and serial devices and treats them all the same.
Your idea, rawmouse, direct input, and cpnmouse all have different advantages and disadvantages. That's why it would be nice to have a system where they could all be easily made available.
Heck, it's possible that hidden away on the internet somewhere is a serial controller driver like the one you describe. Hee hee, and if I ever manage to actually get the mouse input plugin idea working, then it would be a simple matter to create a new plugin when it's finally discovered (or written).
Do you know anything about writing serial device drivers?
krick:
--- Quote from: jerryjanis on February 13, 2004, 05:25:38 pm ---Do you know anything about writing serial device drivers?
--- End quote ---
Unfortunately I don't. :(
I guess I could get some books and learn though.
I did work for a few years in the game industry (PC games) and the closest I got to drivers was trying to fix some buggy code in our product to support the MS Sidewinder joystick. This was all back in the DirectX3/Directx5 days when directInput was still kinda iffy. It's been a while since I've even programmed in C/C++. In fact, I've been a Java programmer for the past 3 years.
I have seen a bit of code on the net where people wrote custom USB drivers to interface console controllers (PS2, gamecube, etc...) to the PC. Maybe we should be exploring that avenue. If we could convince windows that trackballs and spinners are just USB game controller devices, it would just look the other way and not hassle us. :)
I think you're right about (standard) serial ports though, they're gonna eventually be extinct.
If we could get something working with USB, maybe one of those serial-to-USB adapters will work.
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