Mame mouse horizontal problem

caver01

@skepticalgeel I guess I am curious if it happens on AdvanceMAME. You would need to do the configuration necessary to make advmame work properly with your mouse/spinner/trackball inputs, but with advmame you can specify exactly what devices you want to use for each ROM or for all ROMs allowing you to matrix just about anything. Check here for details on how to set it up if you haven't already.

skepticalgeel

Thanks. I will download the correct rom set and give it a try.

caver01

@skepticalgeel You might take a few of the testing steps from that wiki. You can test analog inputs to see if you can reproduce the freezing you describe.

AlexMurphy

@skepticalgeel Definitely give advMame a go. I find it great for non-standard contol games. The mouse support is great for playing lightgun games, rail shooters and it's incredibly easy to map very specific controls for games like battle zone, ie dual stick. Oh, and just to say a lot of the 0.78 romset will actually run in advMame with no issues.

Fruitybit

Funnily enough I've had similar issues. however, it appears to be intermittent. Sometimes it happens, and gets worse the more I persevere, other times it doesn't seem to happen at all. This is also mame-2003 btw. I didn't have much luck with the advmame versions, but that's more likely due to my ineptitude at setting up the mouse! Sorry I haven't much of use to add, more that I've been there myself.

skepticalgeel

Progress report. I downloaded the 0.106 version of the MAME roms, and installed advMame. With the default configuraton, I got pretty much the same symptom as before. The game, Centipede for example, would be playing fine for a few minutes, then stop moving to the right. I made the following modifications to the .rc file.

device_mouse raw
device_raw_mousedev[0] /dev/input/mouse0
device_raw_mousedev[1] /dev/input/mouse1
device_raw_mousedev[2] /dev/input/mouse2
device_raw_mousedev[3] /dev/input/mouse3
device_raw_mousetype[0] ps2
device_raw_mousetype[1] ps2
device_raw_mousetype[2] ps2
device_raw_mousetype[3] ps2

This stopped all mouse activity in the game whatsoever. No trackball, no spinner, no USB mouse. Not even the fire button. I tried changing the mousedev and, mousetype lines to auto, no change.

This is not a problem with the hardware. Mouse, trackball and spinner all work fine on the Ubuntu desktop. It is not an issue with the IPAC. The problem happens with the USB mouse, which is plugged into a separate port. It is definitely a software or configuration issue.

Any ideas what is happening with advMame?

skepticalgeel

I also added the input_map lines, BTW

caver01

@skepticalgeel Your input lines look something like this?:

input_map[p1_trackballx] mouse[0,x] mouse[1,x] mouse[2,x] mouse[3,x]
input_map[p1_trackbally] mouse[0,y] mouse[1,y] mouse[2,y] mouse[3,y]

If so, Centipede should work with this just fine, assuming your devices are indeed showing up on /dev/input/mousex. You might check in the ```/dev/input directory and see if the mouse devices are showing up there with mouse0, mouse1, etc.

What about trying the AdvanceMAME mouse test application? for advmame 1.4, you would test mouse input using the command" /opt/retropie/emulators/advmame/1.4/bin/advm and observe the screen when you move the inputs.

I am not sure what we are proving either way though, as these tests might merely be showing you when it works and when it fails. With auto-configured AdvMAME you seem to have already proven that the failure happens in that emulator too.

I don't know if this would help or hurt, but I run my configuration with a custom polling setting. To do that, you need to edit your /boot/cmdline.txt by appending usbhid.mousepoll=2 to increase the mouse poll rate. I have been running this config so long, I don't know if it is really making a difference, or if you can simply adjust sensitivity in the MAME GUI menus.

skepticalgeel

OK, so I switched from advMame 3.1 to 1.4, and removed all mouse lines from the .rc file, leaving it in its default state. Mouse, trackball and spinner all work fine now. However, advMame seems to have audio issues that mame2003 does not have: stuttering audio, delays, sound effects but no music, etc. Any resources you can point me to to assist with those?

caver01

@skepticalgeel I have not heard of sound effects without music, unless maybe the ROM you are using requires a sample file for that ROMset. With samples, it usually works the other way around. Donkey Kong, for example, will play fine, with music etc., but you won't hear Mario's shoes squeak as he runs unless you have the samples file for that ROM. Games like Galaga lack the big boom explosion when you die without samples.

As for delays, make sure this .rc line is configured as follows: sound_latency 0.05
also, turn off normalization: sound_normalize no. I have seen both of these affect the audio.

You will also find that the sound is directly affected by the performance of the emulation overall. Turn off Vsync in the MAME video menu to see if this helps, or display_vsync no. If you are playing Mortal Kombat, for example, or a Golden Tee variant, the sound in those games is choppy. If your Pi is getting hot and throttling is kicking in, that will slow down the audio as well as video.

I still don't understand why defaults (auto) mouse configs has you working better than explicit raw configurations. Also, PNP settings on the mouse inputs caused me nothing but trouble. Still, I don't think we have gotten to the root cause of your issues, but perhaps proven another example where an emulator DOES work while mame2003 remains problematic, which is too bad because these days, I only use AdvMAME for vector games or complex analog mapping (or for ROMs that don't work in 2003 for some reason).

caver01

@caver01 I just realized, rereading your first post, that a major difference between us is that you are using Ubuntu on a PC, whereas I am running my IPAC+UTRAK on a Pi. That might explain differences in the way the devices are appearing on yours vs. mine, and why specific connections to dev/input/mousex might not mean anything on your end. Also, the polling suggestion is misguided, as this is how I have my Pi configured.

skepticalgeel

I installed the samples, and was able to get Centipede working OK, mouse and audio. I will test some more with other trackball/spinner games. Certain games, like Donkey Kong, sound like crap in advmame, at least on my system. It looks like I am going to have to use advmame for trackball and spinner games,and 2003 for everything else.

One last thing. Somehow, during all of this, I screwed something up to where every emulator except for advmame is being launched in windowed mode, rather than full screen. Any idea where to look to fix this?

caver01

@skepticalgeel no clue. On the Pi, it all runs full screen and not from a desktop.