What's My Next Step?

[slsimon]

Hey guys, after some long months working on and off of the machine, my college education interferred with the build process, this weekend I am going to attempt to put the computers in the mame cabinet and cross my fingers that all my wiring is correct. 

Let me give you a run down of what I am working with. 

I have two PC's, one for a jukebox touchscreen mounted on the side of the mame cabinet and the other of course for the gaming.  I have most of the software configured and ready to use, minus some configurations that I am not sure about at the moment. 

Emulation done within Mala and nearly configured to play, minus the GUI config for each emulator such as button configurations.

Hardware List:

4 player, 6 buttons per player plus coin and start buttons per player, 4 admin buttons (pause, enter, tab, esc), left and right click buttons for trackball. 

IPAC4
OptiPAC

Hardware from GGG!
42 Electric ICE pushbuttons (All buttons but 4 are wired for full RGB color spectrum)
4 LED Wiz devices
Token Top spinner
RGB Electric ICE Trackball Upgrade Kit

Yeah, Randy from GGG really loved me on this order!!!

Here are my questions:

1.  I am not sure what of the two software packages to install and attempt to configure for the electric ice pushbutton rgb configurations, (LED Blinky by Arzoo or LED Wiz by Swindus, Edge and Loadman).  I have absolutely no experience with configurations of pushbuttons in mame/mala/plugins.  Are there specific instructions to obtain for either application?  I noticed there were some extra plugins besides these two as well that will allow one to create their own anamations for the RGB buttons, attract mode animation, right!  This may come later.  I just want to get the buttons to light up this weekend and go from there.  Assuming all my wiring is correct. 

I know some of you may ask what I want to accomplish with the RGB buttons.  There has to be a starting point, right!  I have downloaded the additional files such as catver, controls and history files.  I think there were a couple others that I configured to use in Mala.  Sorry don't have the machine next to me at the moment.  I plan on using the option in Mala to light only the game buttons being used per game in mame.  I think both plugins above allow this.

I would like for the player start button to be always on (lighted) while the coin buttons (lighted) on and when coin is needed, to blink.  During mame gameplay, of course only those button needing to be used to light up.  All admin button to be always (lighted) during gameplay.  Same with the trackball and left/right mouse clicks for the trackball.  When switching emulators, player buttons different per emulator but not all the same color. 

2.  Those addtional files will only work with the mame emulation.  So let's say I switch to another emulator, will either of those plugins above allow me to specify player button color per emulator aside from mame of course?

3.  Previously mentioned, I have 6 buttons per player plus coin and credit setup on my CP.  The following emulators are also configured on the mala layout to play.  The following emulators are configured to play at the moment through Mala but I dont' have any buttons mapped.  What would be the correct way to map buttons in the following emulators:  Daphne, Nintendo (fceultra), Super Nintendo (zsnes), Nintendo 64 (project 64), Sega Genesis (fusion), Sega CD (fusion), Sega Dreamcast (chankast)?  I guess what I am asking here is how should I map the buttons in each emulator so that they match up with the default key mappings obtained from the IPAC4 board and mame default?  Is this even possible? 

Just some last minute configurations to take care of.  Mainly Mala plugins and figuring out how I should go about configuring those emulators above to respond to the same button configurations.  Any suggestions would be great.  I would love to get my cabinet up and running this weekend with all the emulation my heart desires. 

If you need more information to be able to answer any of the questions above, please don't hesitate to post and let me know.  I will provide what I can. 

You guys have been awesome on this forum.  Thanks for all your help you have given throughout the past year or so.  Thanks, Shane

[arzoo]

slsimon,
LEDBlinky can do everything on your list. The LEDWiz plugin can do most of it also, but I'm not sure how it handles other emulators and I'm not sure if it can blink the start buttons when credits are available - regardless, that feature is game dependent (only limited mame games support it). Also, the LEDWiz plugin does not currently support the animation editor file format - but I know that Loadman has that on his enhancement list.

You may want to try them both. You can always post questions on either app back here.