What settings to enable wheel + pedals in MAME? (Logitech Driving Force PRO)

[ARTIFACT]

I successfully installed my Logitech Driving Force PRO wheel on my cab PC

It works well with the Model2 emulator

it works well with PC games in general

BUT

For the life of me I can't figure out the flags/settings I need to launch MAME with - OR how to assign the controls within the MAME Settings Menu ** "Controls (This Game)" ** after launching MAME. I do go to the controls assignment list, try to change the steering/etc but moving the wheel/pedals does not trigger the control assignment change (learn). It's ignored.

I have read numerous threads (search) where folks use this wheel in MAME with success.

Any idea what information I am missing here?

Is the wheel seen as a dial/paddle from MAME? a mouse? Thanks...

[SGT]

Have you enabled joystick in your mame.ini:

Code: [Select]

joystick     1
Really better to create an ini with the name of the roms that you want steering support.
For example, polepos.ini would be in the ini subfolder with only the following line in it:

Code: [Select]

joystick    1
Additional reading:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=68993.msg703976#msg703976

[ARTIFACT]

okay

y cab will have u360 sticks with automatic control map switching

i hope i can make it all work

[SGT]

I don't know for a fact that that particular steering wheel is seen as a joystick, but I think it is.  Hopefully u_rebelscum will see this post as he's the controls expert.

[u_rebelscum]

I don't know for a fact that that particular steering wheel is seen as a joystick, but I think it is.  Hopefully u_rebelscum will see this post as he's the controls expert.

   Just an enthusiast.

I do not have that wheel, but it's 99.99% has to be a "joystick" to mame.  OTOH, your use of dial/paddle in your question is a little backwards: the game's input for driving games is either "Dial" or "Paddle", so you have to map whatever joystick number your wheel is to mame to those inputs, and you want to map to the analog part of the dial/paddle and NOT the inc / dec parts. 

If you will also have two u360s wired directly to the computer (which I recommend), you will have 3 joysticks to mame (assuming all three are plugged in).  But if you only have the wheel ATM, it should be joy 1, and should by default be mapped to dial and paddle inputs if you enable joysticks as SGT suggested.  If you also have a gamepad etc, though, it might be joy 2+.  And if you already remapped, it might be easier to delete those .cfg files ("harder" way: input this game, and for every highlighted input, hit enter, esc, enter, esc, with enough pause between the first esc and the second enter for mame to display "none").

[SGT]

Artifact,

Please give us a more detailed review of how well this steering wheel and pedals worked with the M2 emulator.  Have you tried it with Daytona, Indy 500, and Sega Rally Championship?

[Howard_Casto]

Have you enabled joystick in your mame.ini:

Code: [Select]

joystick     1
Really better to create an ini with the name of the roms that you want steering support.
For example, polepos.ini would be in the ini subfolder with only the following line in it:

Code: [Select]

joystick    1
Additional reading:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=68993.msg703976#msg703976

These methods of enabling/disabling devices are outdated and should no longer be used other than for debugging. 

Use the "_device" settings instead.  Paddle, pedal and dial are the ones you should be looking at.  It still won't give you a 100% turn-key solution, but it saves you from making all of those ini files for the most part. 

[SGT]

but it saves you from making all of those ini files for the most part

A one line ini file only has to be copied and renamed.  For the small handful of games that he'll probably use the steering wheel might take a few minutes.  But if there's a better way, I'm all for learning how.

[ARTIFACT]

These methods of enabling/disabling devices are outdated and should no longer be used other than for debugging. 

Use the "_device" settings instead.  Paddle, pedal and dial are the ones you should be looking at.  It still won't give you a 100% turn-key solution, but it saves you from making all of those ini files for the most part. 

Howard, do you have more information on this? What should I read? Sorry for the newbie question.


OK Guys, so I just spent an hour configuring and testing the main Model2 wheel games, and testing MAME mainly with the -joystick flag on the EXE from MaLa (I am not 100% sure how the _device way works and I believe I tried some of these yesterday without success).

The Logitech Driving Force PRO *rocks* ... it works very well with Model2 games, and performed successfully with Out Run and Super Hang On on MAME.


Notes / observations:

. Unfortunately the fantastic Force Feedback on that wheel doesn't seem used by either emulators (only PC games)

. Shifting gears ... The Logitech Driving Force PRO has a shift UP/DOWN model ... Games like Daytona are I THINK more built around 4 "switches" (=buttons) ... I havent tried in MAME games yet

. MODEL2 + pedal combination box: it *works* but you need to configure each game from the Model2 emulator controls option menu - sometimes you need to check "INVERT" on either accelerate or brake... not always the same

[Dariusz]

Hi There,

On the same topic, can the same setting be used for the microsoft Force Feed Back Steering Wheel on the emulators?

Thanks

[u_rebelscum]

These methods of enabling/disabling devices are outdated and should no longer be used other than for debugging. 

I wouldn't go that far.  (see below for more info)

Use the "_device" settings instead.  Paddle, pedal and dial are the ones you should be looking at.  It still won't give you a 100% turn-key solution, but it saves you from making all of those ini files for the most part. 

Howard, do you have more information on this? What should I read? Sorry for the newbie question.

The "_device" options are pretty well documented in the mame's docs folder, in the config.txt file.

The idea behind the "XYZ_device ABC" options is if the game uses XYZ input type, enable the ABC.  ABC can be keyboard, mouse, joystick, lightgun, none.  It is only for game's analog input types; if you use a joystick or gamepad for 8-way games, for example, you need to enable -joystick directly.

So I'd say "_device" is favored over -joystick & -mouse, but -joystick cannot be called outdated (gpwiz & u360 users will agree).

[u_rebelscum]

On the same topic, can the same setting be used for the microsoft Force Feed Back Steering Wheel on the emulators?

Yes

For more info mamedev wiki FAQ

[ARTIFACT]

thanks for the details

I'll read up on that and try various things.

First I'll probably wait for my U360s, spinner, trackball, etc to come in.
My U360s will be USB, but my buttons use an I-PAC2 I already had.
I want to get the whole rig setup ready to fine tune the best configuration

That IS a nice wheel though....

ANYONE HAS SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT THE FOLLOWING? :

I just wish there was some kind of "wrapper" to let me shift up/down in Daytona/Sega Rally using the Gear +/- stick on the logitech... that, and force feedback

[Howard_Casto]

These methods of enabling/disabling devices are outdated and should no longer be used other than for debugging. 

So I'd say "_device" is favored over -joystick & -mouse, but -joystick cannot be called outdated (gpwiz & u360 users will agree).

Well I can agree with that to a point, but personally I can't see using a joystick device, even a really fancy one like the u360 on a machine.  Sure mame handles analog joysticks well, but other emulators, not so much.  Of course there are uses like this, along with joystick hacks, but I was referring to turning on/off the tags via various ini files, not the actual tags themselves. (That's why I said these methods, not these tags/flags or options)  If you were to use a joystick as your main control, then you'd leave it on all the time, so you wouldn't really be using it, in that convoluted ini file sense.

I would still call the tags outdated in that context, especially -mouse.  There's no real reason to have mouse enabled in digital games. 

Responding to SGT, last time I checked there are around 200 racing games in mame, so it's by no means just a small handful of games to copy an ini to.  Plus there's the added bother of figuring out the rom name, ect.  It can be done, especially via a batch process, but the new method is much simplier.

Artifact:  Thanks for the bold type, now I'm officially blind!

Your gear shifter should be remappable.  Unfotuanately, seeing as how there is no standardization in the mame racing game's layout, you'll probably have to do it in-game manually.

Forcefeedback is not something you can just add in via a wrapper.  First of all the actual game had to have some sort of feedback originally, and then it has to be translated, either directly into ff in mame (probably never gonna happen) or sent as output commands.  Mamehooker already has force feedback support in it.  If and when anybody figures out the outputs on some of these feedback-enabled arcade games and updates the mame drivers, it will be possible.

[SGT]

Responding to SGT, last time I checked there are around 200 racing games in mame, so it's by no means just a small handful of games to copy an ini to.  Plus there's the added bother of figuring out the rom name, ect.  It can be done, especially via a batch process, but the new method is much simplier.

The posts that I read on BYOAC lead me to believe that people with steering wheels only have a small handful of racing games that they actually run on their cab.  It's JMO, but you are welcome to disagree.  As the M2 emulator gets better at running Daytona, Indy 500, STCC, Sega Rally, etc... I believe that the number of racing games that people actually play in Mame will dwindle further.   There are a ton of racing games in Mame that are just too slow to make them playable on anything but a blazingly fast computer.  No way duplicating one line ini files for playable racing games is going to take as long as posting the debate on the subject in this thread.

[ARTIFACT]

sorry for the bold type, i wanted to call attention to the key questions i had

thanks for all the info

[Howard_Casto]

Responding to SGT, last time I checked there are around 200 racing games in mame, so it's by no means just a small handful of games to copy an ini to.  Plus there's the added bother of figuring out the rom name, ect.  It can be done, especially via a batch process, but the new method is much simplier.

The posts that I read on BYOAC lead me to believe that people with steering wheels only have a small handful of racing games that they actually run on their cab.  It's JMO, but you are welcome to disagree.  As the M2 emulator gets better at running Daytona, Indy 500, STCC, Sega Rally, etc... I believe that the number of racing games that people actually play in Mame will dwindle further.   There are a ton of racing games in Mame that are just too slow to make them playable on anything but a blazingly fast computer.  No way duplicating one line ini files for playable racing games is going to take as long as posting the debate on the subject in this thread.

I can run around 30-40 just on my xbox with mameox.  I have batch processing programs especially written to handle such things but if I were to do things manually, at least for me, more 10 is too many.