Newbie question: How to map different controllers in ctrlr config files?

[marquisor]

Hi there Arcade Fellas!

I have some Input Devices which I'd like to map for mainly Groovymame:

F500 Arcade Stick (1x)
Xbox 360 Wireless Gamepad (2x)
Xbox 360 Wired Gamepad (1x)
Speedlink Comp. Pro 4 Button digital Joystick (1x)

To have them all interchangeable, I'd like to create a Controller config file for each config/combo going into the "ctrlr" subdir.
How'd you do that?

I mean I can go to the Mame UI and setup the Player 1 and 2 controls manually for each controller, but have to do it all again regardless what combo I plugin.
Mainly I want to go for Single Player to use the Arcade Stick and the Xbox Pad simulatenously for whatever the game would fit to. Especially games with analog controls I'd use the Xbox Pad.

Can I derive the default.cfg to a ctrlr/bla.cfg file? Or how is it done?
Is there a special tool for just creating such controller mapping files?
I hope it's understandable what I want to do.

Regards
MAQ

[Howard_Casto]

Like virtually all windows apps that support game devices, mame doesn't really bind controls to a specific gamepad, but rather a joystick number... as in is it joystick 1, 2, ect….
I'm not familiar with the f500, but the rest of those gamepads all have the same general button layout so one mapping should work for all of them assuming you unplug the gamepads you aren't using allowing the joystick id to shift.  Mame does a pretty good job of setting up defaults for joysticks so I doubt you even need ctrlr files... just fix the few issues you have for specific games and maybe set the default coin and start buttons to match your xbox pads. 

[marquisor]

Ok, well I disconnected (or rather I did not connect) my Xbox Controller and started up the Groovymame UI and all the custom settings for the controller were gone.
So I ended up to backup my default.cfg file from the cfg folder with Xbox 360 Pad setup done.
If I ever forget to connect my controller I can use the default.cfg backup. BUT it does not contain any other default.cfg changes I've done maybe later....
So I don't think it's a good method handling controllers?

[Howard_Casto]

Is there a reason you are using that over regular old mame?

[marquisor]

Regular old MAME? You mean the mamedev original MAME? But an older version? Why and which?
Is it different in handling controller files?

I'm using GroovyMAME because of SwitchRes and CRT usage.

I'm still on the method "backup my default.cfg file" from cfg folder.
It would be more or less hard work to manually create an XML file for the ctrlr folder, so there's NO possibility to make controller handling "more elegant" or with a tool to setup the ctrlr folder files?

[Howard_Casto]

Regular old MAME? You mean the mamedev original MAME? But an older version? Why and which?
Is it different in handling controller files?

I'm using GroovyMAME because of SwitchRes and CRT usage.

I'm still on the method "backup my default.cfg file" from cfg folder.
It would be more or less hard work to manually create an XML file for the ctrlr folder, so there's NO possibility to make controller handling "more elegant" or with a tool to setup the ctrlr folder files?

The "UI" builds of mame do their own thing... mostly screwing things up.  Yes you have to either manually convert cfg files or create ctrlr files from scratch... that is the elegant solution compared to mucking about in menus that only access half of the ctrlr files' features.