XArcade Tank Stick Issues

caver01

@mbrett Sorry you are frustrated. It is the way MAME has always been, and it is always an important moment when users finally realize this. You'd be surprised how much time is spent trying to troubleshoot and educate people about MAME ROMs who don't read or comprehend the documentation.

That said, you might actually try the ROMs you have. It's not a supportable technique, obviously, but while ROMs have changed in step with MAME's development, many have not required updates. You may well have ROMs that will 'accidentally' work with several versions of MAME.

mbrett

@caver01 Huzzah! I have MAME 2010 working like a champ.

/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-core-options.cfg
mame_current_mouse_enable = "enabled"

Bingo!

caver01

@mbrett How's the performance? 2010 has always been a little sluggish on some things, but maybe on GT it doesn't matter. I might switch over to it. I am using AdvanceMAME for GT roms.

If you like vector games, I recommend getting Advmame running. They look much better in Advance than any of the lr-cores.

mbrett

@caver01 '97 worked great. That's all I tested. If I didn't have to dl an entire new ROMset, I'd be all over advMAME for vectors. As it is, I don't have that many vector games, so, as the GTs, it would probably not be worth it.

caver01

@mbrett I just tried GT2K in lr-mame2010 and the opening music was stuttering and animation got sluggish. I noticed the Pi was struggling and overheating which is rare for me. Quit and relaunched and selected AdvanceMAME and immediately noticed a difference. Smooth music and no slowdowns or overheat.

It might be recent development on Advmame 3 that is making it run better on the Pi. I know it was always a little sluggish, especially with the music on 1.4.

Anyway, I thought I would share my results.

mbrett

@caver01 I just ran GT2K and had the stuttering but no sluggish animation or overheating, and play was smooth to me. To-may-to, to-mah-to.

caver01

@mbrett I did have my arcade system running all day long today while I was at work, then came home and tried this. I guess it was warm already which might be the difference. The animation issues was definitely a result of throttling due to temperature.

Nevertheless, as your music was stuttery, I would put AdvanceMAME performance above 2010. Ultimately, playability vs. setup challenge will win out, but know that you have some wiggle room if performance becomes an issue as you heat up.

AlCzervik

@caver01 Any chance you could share how you have your GT ROMs setup in the folder(s)? Looking to replicate your efforts with the xArcade tankstick but unsure how to setup the ROMs. Thanks in advance!

caver01

@alczervik There isn't much to share. I have all of my arcade ROMs in the arcade folder. I use Runcommand to select the emulator. Obviously, choosing different emulators for various ROMs requires that the ROMs themselves come from various romsets appropriate for the emulator choices made. This takes some tracking effort, and for that, I simply use a spreadsheet.

AlCzervik

@caver01 Thanks for the quick response!

motleypixel

I'm having an issue with my Xarcade Tank stick setup. I too have the Xarcade2Jscript driver installed so the system sees the tankstck as two gamepads. I have the tankstick serial-to-usb plugged into USB 0 (that's the sticks/buttons), trackball plugged into USB 1, wired xbox 360 controller plugged into USB 2 and a wired usb keyboard plugged into USB 3. Configuring the controllers in ES GUI keeps making the Xbox 360 as gamepad/player 1, gamepad/player 2 is the left side of my tankstick and gamepad/player3 (if there is such a player in any of these older games is the right side of my tank stick.

I'm very new to this environment, but have a sound understanding of linux and shell scripting from my regular job. I figure there's a config somewhere that I can just manually vi/edit to fix?

Thank you,
Roy

caver01

@motleypixel You will probably have to setup hardcoded joystick configurations and focus on RetroArch/libretro core emulators, as these will leverage the RetroArch configs while standalone emulators will each have their own unique configs.

First, take a look at the docs here. You will likely need to pay attention to input_player1_joypad_index setting, and the same setting again for each player. These can be configured per emulator (again, for libretro cores, not stand-alone).

Also, take a look at this thread which you might find useful.

Your configuration is unique enough so that nobody can just give you simple answers. For example, I use a keyboard controller, so I don't have direct examples. You will need to logically work through this, so read the docs and do the tests suggested to find your unique answers and have fun!

jdoc

Hello everyone- I’m new to the Retropie community. My son asked me to read Ready Player 1, and it brought back too many memories of my arcade days- I couldn’t resist buying a Raspberri Pi 3 with Retropie preloaded!

Anyway, I also bought an Xarcade Tank Stick, and after much trial and error (and nuke and pave Retropie installations), I finally got the system working at a decent level.

My setup: RaspPi 3 with Retropie 4.2; Xarcade Tank Stick setup as per these instructions (https://support.xgaming.com/support/solutions/articles/5000554993-how-to-use-x-arcade-with-raspberry-pi); using lr2000 Mame with 0.37b5 ROM’s. I have NOT updated anything except for scripts. Most games work just fine- I’ve been able to find working versions of desired games 90% of the time.

I have a couple of questions: 1. I love Defender. I can load Defender (red version) and play it, but I’d like to reconfigure the Xarcade so the joystick will move the ship up, down, left, right and thrust in both directions. Currently, the stick will only move the ship up and down, and I have to rely on buttons to thrust and change direction. The other buttons (fire, nuke, hyperspace, and hot keys) work just fine. I see that I can configure per individual ROM, but I don’t have a mapping chart to refer to or instructions on how to do it (sorry, I’m a bit of a newbie!)

Regarding updating the system: updating anything pretty much destroys the functionality of the Xarcade- this is a known issue I know. Does anyone know a good place where I could track progress on resolving this issue?

And if anyone has recommendations on ROM sets and MAME’s that work well together, I’m all ears!

Thank you in advance for any advice.

jdoc

Also, if anyone has a link to instructions that would allow trackball use for games like centipede and missile command, and instructions for getting the second player controls to work on the Xarcade, that would be great. I assume it’s because I’m using lr2000 and not lr2003, but I can’t seem to find a ROM set that will work well with lr2003.

caver01

@jdoc You have a lot to unpack here for tacking this onto the end of an existing thread. Have you read through the documentation? There is a reason why lr-mame2003 is setup as the default arcade emulator. Everyone has their own opinion for their own reasons, of course, but generally speaking, 2003 sits at the intersection of having the most capability and performance, so I recommend using that. You will need romset version .78. Then, AdvanceMAME 3 (or 1.4) for vector games (or games that 2003 does not play correctly). Finally, lr-FBAlpha is a nice alternative to lr-mame2003 for the games it can play (NeoGeo, etc.) because it is often considered a better gameplay emulator while MAME goals are around emulation accuracy.

Your trackball questions can probably be answered here.

For the other X-arcade specific setup issues, I would do some searches in this forum and a lot of reading.

I seem to remember a Defender thread too, so a search should help you find info about setting up a joystick for that. I think there is a cheat you can enable.

jdoc

@caver01 Thank you for your response. I will definitely start working on this- it’s a great start!

Jono

@jdoc I don't know how you're getting on, but I've had problems with the Tankstick and RetroPie. Only had it a few weeks, so I'm a little late to this thread.

My solution was to install advanced MAME and run just the trackball games with that, and keep MAME2003 for the rest of the ROMs, so as to keep the best performance and compatibility.

The other important thing to note, if you use the Xarcade2Jstick driver that isn't overly clear, is that all (or most at least) emulators on RetroPie except for MAME use RetroArch, and RetroArch takes it's config for the Emulation Station Joypad setup.

To use MAME with the Tankstick and the Xarcade2Jstick driver, you then need to press TAB when in a MAME game and setup the Tankstick in the General settings.

Once I did that it ran beautifully... until I hardware hacked it... but that is for a different thread :)

jdoc

@jono Thanks for reaching out. I've had some time in the last week or so to tinker with settings. I will definitely try what you've outlined and get back to this thread. BTW- I've read that the latest update to RetroPie breaks the tank stick config. Has anyone heard this as well?