@slug54 said in Need help getting analog sticks working in lr-mame2003 or any version of lr-mame:

If I choose the option for Left Analog Forced

It entirely ignores whether something is already mapped or not to the left analog stick, so i don't recommend ever using that crap. The non-forced option is supposedly safer in that concern, but i have seen reports proving otherwise from people using it.
I'm 99% sure there used to be a core option to map digital-to-analog-left and/or analog-left-to-dpad in some of the vintaged mame cores, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

I'd recommend setting "Analog to Digital Type" back to "none" and using either MAME2003-plus (lr-mame2003-plus) or MAME (lr-mame), both seem to handle this safely out-of-the-box.

Tbh, i don't understand why retropie is still trying to push users toward lr-mame2003 in this day and age, lr-mame2003-plus is the non-arguably improved version of it, and lr-mame run fairly well on newer raspberry models.

Alternatively you could also use FBNeo (lr-fbneo) which also handles this out-of-the-box and offers interesting control alternatives for Battlezone.

I love Assault, but have yet to see a PS style controller do it justice, because I just got too used to playing the arcade version. It is possible to flick both sticks outward at the same time you hit the fire button to drop a mortar shell right in front of you and your tank won't even rear up, it's that quick. There are also some other stick tricks that just don't work right with a controller.