2 Player Games in Mame (tm)

[RTSDaddy2]

I'll probably get yelled at for this one, but...   

We designed our cabinet for two players with Mame32 (tm). Last night my family came over to see my - partially wired - cabinet and we went to play a two-player Donkey Kong.  Everything was fine, except we couldn't convince it to let player two use the two player joystick!  It wanted both players to use stick one.

Now, I think I've answered my own question, but wanted to make sure.  I don't recall games like DK, Pac Man, etc...ever having two sticks when I was growing up - you had to take turns in an arcade, as I recall.

 As MAME32 (tm) is a emulator, is that the problem....that those games weren't two-stick players to begin with?  Or is there some setting in MAME32 (tm) that I don't have turned on?

[Rod1968]

Pacman, Donkey Kong, Galaga and such are all 2 player alternating games
meaning there was only one set of controls
If you really want to use the 2 player controls then start the game and hit the tab button on your keyboard and a in game menu will appear and let you remapthe 2nd players controls
You will have to do this for each game you want to do like this and you will only
have to do it once it will save it automatically to the specific games config file

If there is an easier way someone please chime in cause
this is the only way I know how

Good Luck
Rodney

[Minwah]

Those games just had one stick to begin with, so yes the behaviour is correct.  You could map *both* sticks to P1 inputs to make either stick work, but Player 2 could mess things up for you by wiggling his joystick...

And I could be wrong, but I don't believe MAME32 is trademarked

Edit: sorry for the repeat info, I was typing at the same time...

[RTSDaddy2]

Both responses made sense, first of all, so thank you!

I tried the tab feature last night Rodney,  but as I'm using an IPAC, the controls are the same....it didn't make any difference.

Min, I liked your idea, but that would then mess us up on classic two-player games like The Simpsons.  Seems as if we can't win, which is about what I expected, so we'll take turns on older games and use different sticks on newer.  No big deal, just curious as to whether my thinking about how MAME (tm) was treating them was correct...and apparently I was right!

What I may try to do with the IPAC is set up my own configuration as it relates to my control panel...I doubt that will change anything, but it'd be fun just to see if I could set it up and everything still work.

Thanks guys!

[vibez]

You can use min's suggestion. when you use the tab menu. Only change the 'input for this game only', rather that 'general input'

that way you can have settings for each game

[Tiger-Heli]

I tried the tab feature last night Rodney,  but as I'm using an IPAC, the controls are the same....it didn't make any difference.

I didn't understand this reply, but I think the P2 controls are only used in cocktail mode.  What you can do is set Player 1 Up to be "Up or R", Player 1 Right to be "Right or G", etc.

BTW, if you get really lucky, some of the games may say "Screen flipping in cocktail mode is not supported."  In this case, you can set the dipswitches for cocktail mode and use two sticks with no interference.  (Normally, the screen will be upside-down for P2 if you tried this).

[Rod1968]

I didn't understand this reply, but I think the P2 controls are only used in cocktail mode.

[Tiger-Heli]

I dont know much about code
EDIT: "I should say I don't know anything about code the last thing I coded was in basic on a tandy trs80 model III back in 1986"
but I looked at the source last night and was able to recompile so that you can use player one and player two controls and can remap them to any key but I can't seperate them meaning joysick 1 and joystick 2 controls both players at the same time.

You can do this with standard MAME without re-compiling anything.  That's what my initial reply was.

If you can seperate the controls in cocktail mode it must be posible to do it upright mode

Maybe, but I think I asked about this previously, and was told the Rom (and therefore MAME) has no idea whether it's on player 1 or Player 2 - So if this can be done, I would think it would have to be done through the cheat engine.

The more I think about it, it might be easier just to disable screen flipping across the board since it wouldnt be used in a cocktail anyway

I think that would be easier, but even that would require a code change to MAME, and even then it would only fix games that actually had a cocktail version.

[Rod1968]

I dont know much about code
EDIT: "I should say I don't know anything about code the last thing I coded was in basic on a tandy trs80 model III back in 1986"
but I looked at the source last night and was able to recompile so that you can use player one and player two controls and can remap them to any key but I can't seperate them meaning joysick 1 and joystick 2 controls both players at the same time.

You can do this with standard MAME without re-compiling anything.

[RTSDaddy2]

Ok y'all,

I've adjusted things before with the keyboard, but I'm a little stumped.  I tried last night changing just one game at a time via TAB key, but last night after resetting the game I found the player 2 controls to not register...it was as if they were not mapped at all.  I know the joystick is working, again because it works with true two-player games such as X-Men, Simpsons, etc. just fine.

I thought of this just as soon as I finished the above.  Should I have stopped MAME32 completely and restarted it to get this fixed?

Sorry for the insanity.  Maybe it's that family vacation coming up that's fogging up my brain so's I can't think...

[daywane]

I thought of this just as soon as I finished the above.