BattleZone mame2003 input issue

FlightRisk

@caver01 What about mapping an xbox 360 usb controller with 2 sticks and using the push to click feature on the right stick to fire? Not sure if that would cause you to maybe move the stick while trying to press it and throw off your aim. In that case, the right trigger would probably work great. Do you know how I would try that? Is it like retroarch where I just go in and move the sticks and press them as I go through options, or do I need to edit a text file? Your example above of mapping a "tank stick", is that just moving the stick around or typing those word in?

FlightRisk

@mediamogul I found the same bezel you show in your post for battlezone. It is a .png with dimensions of 1647x955. Very odd size. It that what I want and advmame takes care of sizing, or should I pull it into photoshop/gimp and resample it to my monitors native 1920x1080? Things might be off a bit since these are different aspect ratios. 1.7246 vs. 1.7777

mediamogul

@flightrisk

Thanks, here is my advmame.rc

Try changing display_expand 1.25 to display_expand 1.0

I found the same bezel you show in your post for battlezone... It that what I want... ?

If you plan on using AdvanceMAME, you need to use an artwork file specifically formatted for it. Try using the bzone.zip artwork file located here.

caver01

@flightrisk said in BattleZone mame2003 input issue:

What about mapping an xbox 360 usb controller with 2 sticks and using the push to click feature on the right stick to fire?

If you have triggers that are easier, I would recommend that over the push-click, but that is just me. I think push-click is hard to execute while keeping the stick in a specific position.

Do you know how I would try that?

Editing digital inputs for AdvanceMAME is best done from within MAME itself by pressing TAB on a keyboard. This will bring up a pop up menu and you can navigate to the controls configuration menu choices. When you select an input to map, you should be able to press buttons on a controller to map them.

Your example above of mapping a "tank stick", is that just moving the stick around or typing those word in?

To do this mapping, you are moving the stick or pressing D-pad. To do a <NOT> entry, you have to double-tap in the given direction. To make the inputs <AND> together you do them at the same time, or right after each other (but before the input is accepted). To <OR> them together, you do one input, let it accept, then immediately do another on the same line. I if you move to a new line and back, it will overwrite the whole entry instead.

Analog sticks introduces a potential new issue that I have not tested. If these movements are not accepted, you may need to define these manually by setting up analog inputs in the .rc file. For this you would need to know the indexes of your sticks. This is not a trivial process, as you would probably want to use the advj utility to test. You can read about the details here.

caver01

@flightrisk Regarding artwork, bezels etc, you really cannot just use a .png file. You have to use the MAME .106 artwork format as mediamogul mentioned. The zip files for this old menthod will contain overlays, bezels and background files alongside a .art text file that describes exactly how this version of MAME should apply them. When you download an appropriate .zip for the rom in question, most of these details will have been already worked out.

FlightRisk

@caver01 Excellent! I have it working exactly the way I want. Thanks for the tip on how to enter a <NOT>. It works well. In the end, I settled on left analog up and down, right analog up and down, and right trigger for firing. I left the keyboard options in as well. And you are right, push click just won't work in this game. My trick on my arcade game was to back up a lot while doing little turns to get distance between myself and the other tank to have time to react to their firing. Then go after them, often going past them very close and watching the radar to backup again, turn and fire. The only problem with this strategy is when you are backing up and hit an obstacle just as they fire ;)

FlightRisk

@mediamogul That is exactly the artwork I found and was asking about. I can see positions mapped out in the .art file. I was just confused about the odd resolution

FlightRisk

@mediamogul - Thanks so much for the help. Almost there. Changing the display parameter from 1.25 to 1.0 made it look 4:3 now, but here is my screen with the bezel installed. It is cutting off the right and left, and it is clearly zoomed out too much since it is cutting off the top and bottom. So it looks like it not only is zoomed in, but cutoff for a 4:3 monitor instead of my 16:9

mediamogul

@flightrisk

Changing display_artwork_crop yes to 'no' should do the trick.

FlightRisk

I feel 20 again! LOL. Thanks everyone. It is beautiful! Maybe now I'll play with a lot of those other settings like "flicker" to see what happens. I'm happy the way it is now, the rest will be fun just to see if I can get it the way my game used to look in my arcade. There isn't a dynamic option for editing the file in something like the tab menu, is there?

And last item, the game screen has about 1/8" overspill on the left and 1/4" on the right (the mountains and horizon bleed into the bezel). There is 1/2" of black on the right and left sides of the bezel at the monitors edge (so it doesnt' seem to be going edge to edge width wise). So I'm not sure if this is settings in the art file for the bezel or some other positioning sizing thing.

caver01

@flightrisk said in BattleZone mame2003 input issue:

And last item, the game screen has about 1/8" overspill on the left and 1/4" on the right (the mountains and horizon bleed into the bezel). There is 1/2" of black on the right and left sides of the bezel at the monitors edge (so it doesnt' seem to be going edge to edge width wise). So I'm not sure if this is settings in the art file for the bezel or some other positioning sizing thing.

I will have to check my setup to see if there is vector imagery bleeding over the bezel/overlay, but the black on the sides is likely a result of screen size. For example, on my 5:4 display, I don't see nearly as much of the sides of the artwork, as this is pushed completely off the screen if I recall. Widescreen TVs will have more space that might not get covered by the artwork which was built from the actual arcade game during a time when there were no wide screens.

mediamogul

@flightrisk said in BattleZone mame2003 input issue:

There isn't a dynamic option for editing the file in something like the tab menu

You should be able to invoke the menu using the 'Tab' key. If not, look at your input_map[ui_configure] setting to see what key is currently set. Keep in mind that, while convenient, not all options can be set from this menu.

the game screen has about 1/8" overspill on the left and 1/4" on the right

I haven't noticed this myself, but it could be intentional to emulate the overscan from the original cabinet. I imagine it's configurable by unzipping the bzone.zip art file and adjusting how it's displayed within the bezel, but I've never tried it personally.

Edit: If you mean that the vector art is bleeding on top and not behind the bezel then I'm not really sure.

FlightRisk

Thanks. Is this rom setup for free play? I don't see anything referencing "insert coin". And if you want to adjust flicker, scanlines, etc. for just this rom or just vector games, is there a way to do that? MameUI had a feature for slide controls and they would appear at the bottom of the screen and you could adjust phosphor life, bloom, etc.

mediamogul

@flightrisk said in BattleZone mame2003 input issue:

Is this rom setup for free play?

All games share the same setting for insering a coin. This can be overwritten on a per-game basis, but by default, the universal setting for player one is input_map[coin1] in the advmame.rc file, or it can be set from the 'Tab' menu.

if you want to adjust flicker, scanlines, etc. for just this rom or just vector games, is there a way to do that?

I believe you can do that per game from the 'Tab' menu, but you can set it manually by using the following as an example:

bzone/display_flicker 30

That will set the flicker value to 30 for just 'Battle Zone'.

caver01

@flightrisk said in BattleZone mame2003 input issue:

Thanks. Is this rom setup for free play? I don't see anything referencing "insert coin". And if you want to adjust flicker, scanlines, etc. for just this rom or just vector games, is there a way to do that? MameUI had a feature for slide controls and they would appear at the bottom of the screen and you could adjust phosphor life, bloom, etc.

Unfortunately, we don’t have phosphor or bloom effects in AdvanceMAME. Also, none of the vector settings are accessible through the GUI menus. You have to edit the .rc config file. This post covers the details.