Trackball working in mame4all but not Advmame??

[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.

[exjordan]

@caver01
hey, ive been through this trackball topic tirelessly. read all info i can get my hand on. Ive updated the advancemame.rc files to

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

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]

as well

using a u-track 3"
retropie 4.2
advancemame 1.4
advancemame 3
advancemame .94
advancemame 2016
mame4all
etc
none will recognize my trackball
when i update the .rc files all it does is stop the game from working at all
trying to get golden tee 2k, 99,98..working. ive read that people are doing it, just cant figure out what im not doing right? if anyone has any advice for me it would be apriciated immensily !!!!!

[caver01]

@exjordan if the game just fails to launch after updating the .rc file, you have a mistake in there. You cannot duplicate a line, so make sure your new lines are not a direct conflict with existing.

One thing is good--you know you are editing the right file!

You may want to check the log /dev/shm/runcommand.log

Or you could run AdvMAME directly from the command line and see what it says. It may tell you what is wrong.

[Markdonnell1975]

@caver01 said in Trackball working in mame4all but not Advmame??:

You definitely need to configure the controls in the advmame.rc file for trackball/spinner controls to work correctly in AvanceMAME. Look for these entries and correct them as follows:

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_mousetype[0] ps2
device_raw_mousetype[1] ps2
device_raw_mousetype[2] ps2

You want "raw" input capture for the mouse, and you want them set to "ps2". Depending on how your setup detects the devices, they may come in as Mouse0, 1, 2 etc. So, just set all of them this way.

Then, further down into the .rc file, you specify which input is used by MAME like this:

input_map[p1_trackballx] mouse[0,x] mouse[1,x] mouse[2,x]
input_map[p1_trackbally] mouse[0,y] mouse[1,y] mouse[2,y]
input_map[p1_dialx] mouse[0,x]
input_map[p2_dialx] -mouse[0,y]

You see how I have mouse 0, 1, and 2 all mapped in the trackball x and y? That's because, if I had an external mouse plugged in, my trackball might shift over to 1 instead of 0. Later, if I unplug the external mouse, it shifts back to 0. By specifying all three possibilities (I also have spinners), it doesn't matter--all of the mouse inputs map as a trackball.

The dial inputs are what advancemame calls the spinners. For my setup, mouse 0 was consistently my spinners. So, Player 1 would get the x-axis and player 2 would get the y axis, although I noticed that the y axis was spinning backwards, so I added the minus in front to reverse it.

Your setup will be different I am sure, but you should be able to get the inputs working this way. Once configured in the .rc file, you can play with sensitivity settings using the in-game MAME GUI.

One final note--the polling rate isn't fast enough by default. The trackball and spinners have way more resolution than was being captured causing a good fast spin to register as a backspin until it slows down. That can be very frustrating. You can increase the polling rate to fix this. Add: usbhid.mousepoll=2 to your /boot/cmdline.txt.

Thank you for this! I have spent 3 days trying to get this spinner to work. It's rocking now!