Ultimarc A-Pac with 5k Potentiometers

caver01

Maybe just TAB and look at the input GUI menu and it will say what the control is. I suppose you might already know.

1500points

Tempest is Dial, Avalanche is listed as Paddle in the TAB GUI

caver01

@1500points Ok, I figured. My configuration in AdvanceMAME is a catch-all, as you can see. I have all inputs mapped to mouse0 1 and 2 so everything works for every ROM. There was a time, however, when I was using AdvanceMAME to run Golden Tee. For these titles, I had to specify a ROM prefix on lines to override like this:

gt2k/input_map[p1_trackbally] mouse[0,y]

For this one ROM (and several other lines like it for other ROMs) I dropped all but one of the mouse inputs for the trackball Y-axis. This was because I did not want players to CHEAT by using the spinner instead of the trackball to make a perfectly straight shot!

Anyway, this probably doesn't solve your POT/Paddle distance issue, but you could do something similar by ROM so that certain games retain your existing paddle input map while other titles can have a line to override to a mouse device.

1500points

Cool. I wondered how that could be broken out per game.
I've kind of given up on doing too many game styles on a mini standalone build. So I just do custom setup per the box. The Warlords will probably be just Warlords and Super Breakout.

For the TT2 spinner, I confirmed the main games I know about are able to work in Advance MAME (Major Havoc, Arkanoid, Kick/Kickman, Avalanche, Tempest) Time to make a new mini cab!

Now that leaves PONG. What's it take to get that playing from Pi.....

caver01

@1500points It has been a while since I looked at Pong. I tried to set it up at one point but ran into problems with it missing from supported ROMsets. It might be time to take a second look, but as I go through compatibility lists now, I don't see it. Maybe MAME (current) version has it? I dunno.

biglouieuk

Evening, a little more investigation this evening with the APAC and pots.. :-)

I have them moving in the advj looks good. but in advmame 0.94 Warlords, not so good.

I have it either left, right or in the middle. I don't get anything in the middle or any analogue in adv mame.

I have hit TAB in Warlords and the controls are set to be Paddle Dec j2:stick:x- and j2:stick:x+

Analogue controls in TAB are Paddle Digital Speed 200..

I'm, missing something, and Ive spent a few hours trying to work out what! :-)

caver01

@biglouieuk What you are missing is the fact that you cannot configure the actual analog control mapping in the TAB menu. You can only adjust sensitivity of existing inputs that need to be mapped in the .rc file. The speed and digital controls are there for people who don't have paddles/spinners/trackballs. It allows you to set how fast a switching joystick, for example, simulates the turn of a wheel, or a spin, etc.

caver01

@1500points I was looking briefly at the APAC page and seeing that you can calibrate the inputs. Specifically, it says, "If you are using controls which don'tcover the entire range of travel of the pot, you will need to calibrate thecontrol. All you need to do is click on "ControlPanel", "Game Controllers", and then highlight the upper or lower entry for "A-PACInterface", and follow the instructions. This will ensure that a full movementof the control device corresponds to a full movement in the game."

Is that not the problem you were running into with Avalanche? What I don't know is if the configured range is saved to the APAC or if it is a lookup/translation held in windows somewhere. If Windows, that would suck, but if it saves the calibration on the APAC, it would fix your Avalanche limits. Have you tried this?

biglouieuk

@caver01 Thanks for the reply..I've configured in the rc file, and can see it working in advj...

Its in mame that it doesnt seem to want to work as analogue..Hence why i was messing about with the settings in TAB, to investigate if it was a mame setting..

The Game settings are all set to j2:stick:x- and then plus..Assume thats from the .rc file..

I'm not understanding something for sure!

caver01

@biglouieuk Ok, sorry, I guess that makes sense, as you were writing about the .rc above.

I am a bit out of my depth because I don't use the APAC nor pots, but are you getting a variety of input values from advj? If you aren't getting any scale of values from pots, it might be behaving like a digital input. I just posted a note above about calibration which is a thought.

biglouieuk

@caver01 thanks and yup, getting analogue number changes in the advj tool.

I'll spend some more time today, see what I can work out. I thought it might be connected with @1500points comment about having settings in .rc and then some rogue settings in the TAB GUI. Seems like a good first start.

I've also ordered some optical rotational encoders and the optipac, so I'll be looking into that setup when it all arrives...

For now, more investigation.

EDIT: Editing the correct advmame.rc file is a useful thing to do! Pots now work for me, thank you so much @1500points for all the work you did on this, I wouldn't have worked this out!!

caver01

@biglouieuk said in Ultimarc A-Pac with 5k Potentiometers:

EDIT: Editing the correct advmame.rc file is a useful thing to do! Pots now work for me, thank you so much @1500points for all the work you did on this, I wouldn't have worked this out!!

Are you using .94? I have found that the much more recent development efforts on AdvanceMAME 3.x have produced a far superior experience (of course you need a newer ROMsef).

1500points

@caver01 said in Ultimarc A-Pac with 5k Potentiometers:

@1500points I was looking briefly at the APAC page and seeing that you can calibrate the inputs. Specifically, it says, "If you are using controls which don'tcover the entire range of travel of the pot, you will need to calibrate thecontrol. All you need to do is click on "ControlPanel", "Game Controllers", and then highlight the upper or lower entry for "A-PACInterface", and follow the instructions. This will ensure that a full movementof the control device corresponds to a full movement in the game."

Is that not the problem you were running into with Avalanche? What I don't know is if the configured range is saved to the APAC or if it is a lookup/translation held in windows somewhere. If Windows, that would suck, but if it saves the calibration on the APAC, it would fix your Avalanche limits. Have you tried this?

I will explore this and report back.
I recently set up a new image for a single Turbo Twist 2 spinner. So I dropped Warlords on it to compare the experience with the pots.

That's when I realized I was overlooking something obvious in Warlords. One of the sides wasn't going clear to the end of the movement. It still gets far enough to play so I didn't see it until I was comparing with spinner.

Therefore it definitely needs a calibration in general it wasn't just avalanche, although that's where it was most obvious.

1500points

oh shoot. i just realized those instructions are Windows specific. that doesn't address the raspberry pi/retropie environment.

caver01

@1500points Well, it depends on how the calibration is stored. I just don't know the answer. IPAC controllers, for example, are configured with the WinIPAC utility (windows) but the configuration is stored in the controller, so it can be plugged back into the Pi with the new settings. I don't know if APAC works the same or not.

biglouieuk

@caver01 Hi Caver01, do you know if this is still the case? The reason I ask (other than because I am ignorant about such things!) is that the scan lines and curve I use on advmame isn't as good as it is on the shaders in lr2003

I wonder then if I can apply shaders to advmame in a better way, or if I can get lr2003 working with pots.

I guess the former being the easier option! :) I'll start researching, but thought I would ask the question.

caver01

@biglouieuk My answer is, I don't know how the APAC does calibration because I don't own one. I was merely suggesting that it might store calibration on-board. I use TurboTwist2 spinners and an Ultimarc UTRAK trackball.

As for the scanline/shader effects, I agree that the RetroArch CRT-PI shaders are very nice and have little effect on performance. The same cannot be said about the RGB effects in AdvanceMAME. I much prefer the RetroArch shaders and they can apply to any libretro core (so, FBA, lr-mame2003, 2010, NES, etc. all look great). This is why I typically use advancemame exclusively for vector games (no shader).

biglouieuk

@caver01 I've spent a bit of time this evening playing with advmame video and reading a thread or too, which I notice you're involved in.

I found that if I bump video mode (in the TAB GUI) to 4.0 x (in my example 1024x1024) and set the resize to fractional, mixed or integer, and resize effect to filter, with scan2horz as the RGB effect, I can get something passable. (for Warlords that is) Scanlines, no curve.

Warlords is pretty much 1:1 in real life, its square on the screen. I can get that same result in RetroArch settings, but struggling with AdvMame. Maybe Advmame is "too" advanced for me! :-)

caver01

@biglouieuk There might be a setting you can use to force aspect ratio. Been a while since I tried. It used to be the opposite--hard to get it to fill the screen!

I typically use the RGB triads effect with "mean" or "filter" enabled to smooth them out a bit. I always liked the triads more than the scanlines in AdvMAME as they resembled the big dot-pitch CRTs I grew up with.

biglouieuk

@caver01 I'll check out triads tomorrow and see how it looks. I've been digging in ADV MAME DOCS and while there is a bit in there, I haven't found something to force a 1/1 ratio as yet.

Once the Ultimarc optipac arrives and I can test it with the optical spinners I bought, it might mean I can drop advmame and head back to libretro anyway. Ive only been sticking with it as @1500points had done such great work on getting pots to work in advmame. (I've been lazy!)