MAME Buttons not setting properly

baken1925

Hello, I am new to Retropie and arcade builds and I am having a tiny little issue with setting up buttons for MAME games.

When I launch a MAME game, I hit tab and go to the settings to change the buttons. Everything works except my coin and player start buttons don't seem to configure properly.

I have a 2 player unit, with 6 buttons per player and a joystick, a player 1 button and player 1 coin button on top, as well as a player 2 button and player 2 coin button on top of the second set of controls, and 1 button on either side of the cabinet.

All the buttons work except when I set it up to have player 1 start - I press the button and it recognizes it. Player 1 coin does the same.
Player 2 start recognizes and Player 2 Coin is the same but when I go to launch a game, and I press the Player 1 coin and then press Player 1 Start to play the game 1 player, it just resets the game.

I always have to press the Player 2 coin button to give enough credits and play 2 player even though I don't want to.

Any suggestions? Everything seems to show correctly, I am not sure why it's doing this.

caver01

@baken1925 We probably need a little more detail about the controller you are using and which MAME emulator you are using.

If you are using a keyboard controller, what keys are mapped to Player 1 START, COIN and Player 2 START,COIN? I expect you have those mapped to two different functions--either within the MAME gui, or within a retroarch.cfg configuration, depending on what you mean by "it just resets the game".

baken1925

I am using the USB encoder from here. I just have all of my buttons plugged into the 1-12 button push buttons spots on the USB encoder.
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Arcade-DIY-Parts-USB-Encoder-2-Joystick-20-LED-Illuminated-Push-Buttons-MAME-/201330258394?hash=item2ee037f1da:g:R50AAOxylpNTU2Xc

I am using Mame4All

I do have both the Player 1 Start, Coin and Player 2 Start, Coin mapped as 4 different functions in the MAME gui.

I figured I could just plug the buttons in and the USB encoder is automatically recognized, I setup the buttons to do what I want and they would work. They all do except those 4. Well technically the Player 2 Start and Coin do work but the Player 1 Start and Coin are not. Player 1 coin gives credit, but when I press Player 1 Start, it just resets/restarts the game.

Hopefully this helps.....

caver01

@baken1925 There are two versions of Mame4all. Are you running mame4all-pi or lr-mame4all?

How did you configure the buttons? Did you hold them down during Emulation Station first boot? Do the buttons send keypresses? I know it's USB, but is that interface a USB joypad controller or does it look like a keyboard to the Pi? If a keyboard, what keys show up at a command prompt when you press the buttons in question?

If the controller is mapped to keypresses, Player 1 START should send MAME a keypress of "1" and Player 2 start should be "2". Coin 1 should be "5" and Coin 2 should be "6".

It seems like your Player one Start is mapped to "F3" which resets the game in MAME, or maybe inside the MAME configuration you have RESET mapped to your Player 1 Start button. You would need to go in there with a keyboard attached and press TAB and go to the UI defaults for all games and change or remove the mapping for game reset.

If you are using the libretro core version of mame4all, there might be a mapping for game reset that matches your button Check the retroarch.cfg files to see if you have something mapped like input_reset_btn = "0" . If your player 1 start button corresponds to what is mapped as game reset like this and you have hotkeys disabled, simply pressing this button would reset the game. You could set it to "nul" and see if that fixes the problem.

Any chance you are accidentally holding down SELECT at the same time? This will exit the libretro emulators as it is a hotkey functionality.

baken1925

@caver01
I will have to double check when I get home, but I am pretty sure it is Mame4all-pi, but I will confirm.

I configured the buttons holding them down on launch yes. Same for Emulation Station. it shows as Generic USB Joypad Controller when I set it up in Emulation Station by holding the buttons down.

That is how I was trying to fix it. I used Tab on they keyboard and went to PLayer 1 Start and Coin. I pressed Enter and then pressed the button I want it to be. It then accepts that button and says J1 Button 5 or whatever it is (again just trying to remember)

I will try going in and resetting it to defaults and trying again.

I had to move everything from one build to another as I didn't like the design, but I had the same problem on the first build. All buttons were left the same. I will try that, and also look into the retroarch.cfg file and see.

I am 99.9% sure that I don't have the same button set elsewhere but I will double check again and get back to you.

I appreciate it.