Trackball working in mame4all but not Advmame??

dsstrainer

@buggydad Yea I think it is ok for me too in mame4all. Haven't tried a trackball game yet. AdvMame appears to be gone now in RetroPi 4.0 so I guess lib-retro is the new hotness

hakan1708

@buggydad I thought that spinner doesn't work in mame4all. How did you make it work? Thanks.

buggydad

@hakan1708 Spinner (Turbo Twist 2) worked out of the gate in mame4all on the games I tested (Super Sprint and Tempest). I'm using RetroPie 4.0 on a Raspberry 2. Can't seem to get it recognized in Tron or Discs of Tron, though. Anyone have any luck with that?

hakan1708

@buggydad Thanks. I'll try.

caver01

Advmame is still there. Just not installed by default.

I have been able to make spinners and trackballs work fine with any applicable game that can be launched with AdvMAME. I am happy to assist with your config. Have you read the Wiki I wrote since this original thread was started? There are several tests you can do to ensure AdvMAME is seeing the input from your device.

It sounds like at least Linux is seeing it. I expect you merely need to configure your .rc file correctly for AdvanceMAME. The details are in the wiki, but you should be able to run the advm utility and quickly determine how AdvanceMAME is indexing your mouse device, then use that info to configure the DIAL inputs. You will need to know which mouse# and which axis. Depending on how you connected your TurboTwist 2 to the USB interface, you may just need to configure the correct axis. AdvanceMAME can be more complex (and more capable) than lr cores because it can see up to 4 different mouse devices at the same time, and this matters because you have to setup the right ones in the .rc file (or map them all).

caver01

Oh and by the way, gameplay will be limited in Discs Of Tron if your spinner isn't a "push-pull". Not everyone knows about this. In fact, when I was a kid playing DOT, I didn't even realize this was an option while playing, but on the actual arcade panel, you can lift the spinner and push it down and it will raise and lower the aim point of your discs--in addition to spinning it. The spinner in DOT is unique in that regard. Your typical TurboTwist 2 just spins and doesn't have this push/pull switch (although you can get one that does). Anyway, DOT is still fun without it.

caver01

One more note--you might be thinking why bother with AdvanceMAME, but you might reconsider when you see how much better vector titles look in AdvanceMAME at your display's native resolution than they do at a jaggy 640x480 in the lr cores. Check out this thread and compare the first image to the second image. Games like Tempest and Omega Race will look fantastic in AdvanceMAME.

hakan1708

@caver01 Awesome. I'll definitely check your wiki page. Thanks for putting it all on wiki. Yeah, I don't like the way games look on lr 2003.

caver01

@hakan1708 said in Trackball working in mame4all but not Advmame??:

@caver01 I don't like the way games look on lr 2003.

Interesting. The way games look on lr-mame2003 is the reason why I choose it as my default emu for arcade games. While I also use AdvanceMAME (and once upon a time it was my stadard on another SD card), once I discovered how well (and how fast) the PI-CRT libretro shaders work, I am totally committed to using lr cores whenever possible, especially given all of the commits by @dankcushions--2003 is the best combination of capabilities on RetroPie. There are a handful of titles that still require AdvanceMAME (mainly just vector games now that 2003 supports mouse input).

What don't you like about how 2003 looks? Or are we talking vector games?

buggydad

@caver01 Thanks for the reply. I will try your suggestions this weekend. I really appreciate your time and assistance. As far as DoT is concerned, I have two buttons within reach of my spinner which allow me to control up and down. It's not perfect but it worked well enough the few times I've made it that far in the game (back when I had MAME running on an old PC before switching to RetroPie).

hakan1708

@caver01 It is too pixelated or maybe I didn't do the settings right.

caver01

@hakan1708 You gotta give a little more detail. Are we talking about AdvanceMAME or lr-mame2003? What game are we talking about? What resolution is your display? In other words, what exactly are you referring to? Shaders? Can you link to a screenshot? Is the trackball working?

hakan1708

@caver01 It's lr-mame2003 too pixaleted. I am starting to like it though. Colors are sharper. Advance mame or mame4all are not pixaleted but contrast is not that good.

caver01

@hakan1708 Are we still talking about vector games like Asteroids or Tempest? If so, then what you are seeing in 2003 is a result of that emulator running at 640x480 resolution for vector games. Diagonal vector lines will have an aliased "stair-stepping" effect that gets softened a bit in the up-scaling, but the lines shouldn't look that way. At best, vector lines should only "step" through your display's native pixels. This is why AdvanceMAME can be made to look a lot sharper--you can specify your max display width and height for vector games. If you want more contrast for vector in advanceMAME, increase the beam intensity setting or the beam width, although setting width above 2 pixels is going to look strange.

If you are referring to non-vector games, then I don't know what you are talking about, as these games are supposed to look pixelated--and in my opinion, they look best when the pixels are displayed with a CRT shader to really emphasize the retro picture tube.

buggydad

@caver01 Thanks so much for pointing me in the right direction. Turns out I needed to add this line "input_map[p1_dialx] mouse[0,x] mouse[1,x] mouse[2,x] mouse[3,x]" to the configuration settings to get spinner working on Tron for AdvMame. Now just need to tweak the spinner sensitivity a bit as it's currently WAY too sensitive!

Thanks again.

Lazrhog

if it helps, my spinner works in all games in mame4all except for Tron. it's because the spinner is the default for left/right input as well as the joystick. but tron needs left/right on the joystick and the spinner separately. If the TAB menu recognised the spinner, I think it could be redefined, but for some reason - it doesn't. I am in the same boat as you :( I think the problem is getting mame4all to recognise the input in the TAB menu. If you go into linux, the spinner behaves just like a mouse, so its definitely a problem with mame4all.

caver01

@Lazrhog Hmm. I am surprised you can't just remove the mapping on the aiming (tron's spinning arm) associated with the joystick. That way, the stick only controls movement. Can you not edit the mapping for it anywhere? Sorry, I use lr-mame2003, which would be an option that DOES let you make those adjustments. AdvanceMAME will work too if properly configured.

Lazrhog

@caver01 I think in the version of mame used for mame4all-pi, the config files were all in a binary format. You can't edit the files

Abqshark

@caver01

If I'm using mame4all, would the advmame.rc file be mame4all.cfg intead?

caver01

@Abqshark They are different files, different formats, and none of the settings from AdvanceMAME will work on a different MAME emulator.

<EDIT> In other words, all of the details above describing the configuration changes you can make in the advanceMAME config (i.e: /opt/retropie/configs/mame-advmame/advmame-1.4.rc) apply ONLY to advanceMAME. There are two versions of AdvanceMAME that you can setup in RetroPie and these details apply to both, but you cannot use these details in mame4all. It's a different emulator and does not support devices the same way that AdvanceMAME does.

That said, lr-mame2003 supports analog controls very nicely now, such that the ONLY reason I use AdvanceMAME at this point is to play vector games. Of course, these configurations above do not apply to lr-mame2003 either, but they are not necessary. a USB trackball works fine in 2003 and you can adjust the sensitivity using the in-game GUI menu using <TAB> to access.