(FE Devs) Who's using controls.dat or viewer?

[SirPoonga]

I need a comprehensive list.  If you are using it - whether it be an FE dev, viewer dev, fe using viewer - let me know at
http://fe.donkeyfly.com/yabbse/index.php?board=10;action=display;threadid=137

If we can get volunteers to add all the games possible from the cpanel packs I will officially make an announcement at mameworld about the project.  In which case I need to show people the project is being used by popular FEs

At that point all the games possible from the cpanel packs have been added there are few other resources to finish the project completely.  It will probably be 85-95 percent done with the information available on the internet.

[Minwah]

Sorry SirP - missed this thread somehow...and I can't get onto fe.donkeyfly.com atm for some reason...

But as you probably know MAMEWAH has the ability to launch a controls.dat viewer pre-game launch or just on a keypress.  That is all for the moment...

[mahuti]

I'm in the process of using the information for an FE.

[SirPoonga]

Mamewah, what do you mean you can;t get it?  Can you ping it form command line?  can you nslookup it or mamehost.com?  If not we will have to talk to planetjay about it.

[Minwah]

Mamewah, what do you mean you can;t get it?  Can you ping it form command line?  can you nslookup it or mamehost.com?  If not we will have to talk to planetjay about it.

I get 'The page cannot be displayed'.  Is this any help?

[SirPoonga]

Hmmm, I wonder if you put that ip in your hosts file.

You know what the hosts file s?  It's under c:\windows\systems32\drivers\etc and maybe a little deeper than that yet.  But you put in an ip and dns name.  There's a sample file showing how to use it.  make a "hosts" file with no extention.  See if it comes up then.  If it does there might be dns server issues.

[Minwah]

Hmmm, I wonder if you put that ip in your hosts file.

You know what the hosts file s?  It's under c:\windows\systems32\drivers\etc and maybe a little deeper than that yet.  But you put in an ip and dns name.  There's a sample file showing how to use it.  make a "hosts" file with no extention.  See if it comes up then.  If it does there might be dns server issues.

You lost me there  

It seems to work here at work so I'll reply on there...once I can stay logged in...

[Buddabing]

Mamewah, what do you mean you can;t get it?  Can you ping it form command line?  can you nslookup it or mamehost.com?  If not we will have to talk to planetjay about it.

I get 'The page cannot be displayed'.  Is this any help?

By any chance are you on Road Runner/Time Warner cable? I have the same exact problem. I can get to the site at work but not at home.

[Minwah]

By any chance are you on Road Runner/Time Warner cable? I have the same exact problem. I can get to the site at work but not at home.

No, BT Broadband (UK) - I'll try it again tonight and see what happens...

[Silver]

Hi,

I'm based in the UK too - I'm with Plusnet Broadband - and had this probelem for a long time. Worked perfectly at work (and every other pc I tried) but could not ping/browse the controls.dat site from my home ADSL account.

I raised the issue with my ISP and after they reckoned that there was a configuration problem at the mamehost end - they could not speak to the nameservers of the mamehost.com domain, so the lookup always failed. While this may be true - it works from most places fine so I was not too happy. Did some research on the web and tracert etc leads to some odd results. Anyway, enough rambling:

The solution I use (works perfectly):

Edit the hosts file in the Windows/system32/drivers/etc folder (this is XP)

You will (probably) see a bunch of text commented out with # followed by:

127.0.0.1       localhost

Simply add this line underneath the "localhost" line:

69.59.163.204    fe.donkeyfly.com

This will prevent the attempted lookup on the mamehost nameservers and associated problems. Everything should work perfectly with this. Although it is a work around solution and will fall over should fe.donkeyfly.com change IP.

[Silver]

Hmmm, I wonder if you put that ip in your hosts file.

You know what the hosts file s?  It's under c:\windows\systems32\drivers\etc and maybe a little deeper than that yet.  But you put in an ip and dns name.  There's a sample file showing how to use it.  make a "hosts" file with no extention.  See if it comes up then.  If it does there might be dns server issues.

Sorry SirPoonga - missed this point. That works perfectly for me (see above) and my ISP thought there were problems with nameserver at that domain. The vast majority of places I have tried to connect work fine however....

[Buddabing]

Hi,

I'm based in the UK too - I'm with Plusnet Broadband - and had this probelem for a long time. Worked perfectly at work (and every other pc I tried) but could not ping/browse the controls.dat site from my home ADSL account.

I raised the issue with my ISP and after they reckoned that there was a configuration problem at the mamehost end - they could not speak to the nameservers of the mamehost.com domain, so the lookup always failed. While this may be true - it works from most places fine so I was not too happy. Did some research on the web and tracert etc leads to some odd results. Anyway, enough rambling:

The solution I use (works perfectly):

Edit the hosts file in the Windows/system32/drivers/etc folder (this is XP)

You will (probably) see a bunch of text commented out with # followed by:

127.0.0.1       localhost

Simply add this line underneath the "localhost" line:

69.59.163.204

[papaschtroumpf]

when I first read your post it looked that it  was for devs only, but I guess you're looking for volunteers to enter info in the database?
And the info is available at our fingertips on the CP pictures?

I'm willing to help but last time I tried to get involved Howard was chewing up everyone that was entering stuff "not the right way" and there was no real good explanation of what he "right way" was, so I gave up (that was maybe 6 months ago)

[SirPoonga]

Minwah and others.
Good, glad that worked, I know what's going on then.  Planetjay was getting tons of attacks on the server.  Most coming from european IP blocks.  So he went ban crazy and most of europe, now, is banned it seems

Anyway, I know the work around


papaschtroumpf:

I'm always looking for volunteers.  That's partly why I keep bringing up controls.dat once and awhile, then I usually get new recruits  Budda's CPMaker has been doing a good job of that lately though.
It isn't hard to fill out the information wrong.  However, our number one problem is people not putting in a good reference,  where they got their information from.  It needs to be something we can look at to verify the info.  The only thing we will accept blindly is if someone owns the machine, but usually we can get a pic of the machine then
The best resource is the control panel packs.  Though you may have to run some of those pics through a filter to make them readable.

[papaschtroumpf]

Thanks
by the way I regularly get a "page not found" for the project page too, and I'm in the US, but I can always connect by entering the IP, so something is screwed up about their DNS also.

This project is kind of a chicken and the egg thing: the viewer is useless without a decent database, but people won't enter anything if they don't feel like there is a decent viewer available to reap the benefits from their efforts.

[SirPoonga]

http://fe.donkeyfly.com/controls/resources.php

There are many good resources too.
I forgot to add, the next problem is people refering to a generic control panel with those plastic tab labels.  You can't be 100% sure those are the right labels then.  Then you have to go to the manual or flyer and find out if it is 1) a conversion kit and the kit tells you to label as such or 2) that is the actual panel.

[papaschtroumpf]

Yeah, the project is slightly at odds with the "practical" goal of getting my guests playing on my cab to get an "instruction card": many games are not entered because there is no official source for button labels, yet someone that's familiar with the game could "make up" something that would be better than nothing for practical if not historical purpose.

I am currently making my own "add on" to the controls.dat with "unofficial" labels (oh the heresy!) for games that are popular on my cab but not in the project. (for example E.D.F  http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=E&game_id=7682, even though I'm not sure what the official name of button2 is. I called it Weapon Mode).

I then manually merge the two files and search them for duplicates when I get a new version of controls.ini. Of course now with Buddabing's viewer  I will have to convert my add-ons to XML.

[Minwah]

I am currently making my own "add on" to the controls.dat with "unofficial" labels (oh the heresy!) for games that are popular on my cab but not in the project. (for example E.D.F  http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=E&game_id=7682, even though I'm not sure what the official name of button2 is. I called it Weapon Mode).

That is fine for your own use but I do agree the stuff officially added should be 100%.  MAME is un-accurate enough, there's no need for controls.dat to be

[papaschtroumpf]

so, speaking of E.D.F, would this flyer be considered an acceptable source for entering the information:
http://www.arcadeflyers.com/flyers/jaleco/34001502.jpg it is an official Jaleco document, even though it's for the japanese market.

button 2 would be labeled "Satellite formation change" (or does it need to be labelled "B"?)

Also, what should and shouldn't go in the "misc information" field? Something like "The XA-1's weapon system will strengthen with the player's achievement.. You can only change weapons when you complete a level or die."? Those are two important aspects of the game that make it fun and different from other scrolling shooters.
Also this has a 2 player co-op mode so it need sto be conveyed in the database.

I know I should ask those questions in the controls.dat forums but I wanted to post here to give others an idea of what's involved with entering a game in the controls.dat database.

[SirPoonga]

About EDF.  Actually, is EDF part of a system, like cps2 or neogeo?  If this flyer is the only available resource I'd say the buttons should be labelled A and B.   Then in Misc put a=shoot and b=satellite formation change.  There are a couple of games in the system like this now, like the VS system games.

This leads into what misc is for.  Misc is for explaining the controls in detail.  Whether it be what a button actually does, how the controls are laid out, summary of instruction cards, controls change depending on situation in the game (double dragon2 is a good example), anything to explain what the controls do more clear.