XArcade Tank Stick Issues

caver01

@jdoc You have a lot to unpack here for tacking this onto the end of an existing thread. Have you read through the documentation? There is a reason why lr-mame2003 is setup as the default arcade emulator. Everyone has their own opinion for their own reasons, of course, but generally speaking, 2003 sits at the intersection of having the most capability and performance, so I recommend using that. You will need romset version .78. Then, AdvanceMAME 3 (or 1.4) for vector games (or games that 2003 does not play correctly). Finally, lr-FBAlpha is a nice alternative to lr-mame2003 for the games it can play (NeoGeo, etc.) because it is often considered a better gameplay emulator while MAME goals are around emulation accuracy.

Your trackball questions can probably be answered here.

For the other X-arcade specific setup issues, I would do some searches in this forum and a lot of reading.

I seem to remember a Defender thread too, so a search should help you find info about setting up a joystick for that. I think there is a cheat you can enable.

jdoc

@caver01 Thank you for your response. I will definitely start working on this- it’s a great start!

Jono

@jdoc I don't know how you're getting on, but I've had problems with the Tankstick and RetroPie. Only had it a few weeks, so I'm a little late to this thread.

My solution was to install advanced MAME and run just the trackball games with that, and keep MAME2003 for the rest of the ROMs, so as to keep the best performance and compatibility.

The other important thing to note, if you use the Xarcade2Jstick driver that isn't overly clear, is that all (or most at least) emulators on RetroPie except for MAME use RetroArch, and RetroArch takes it's config for the Emulation Station Joypad setup.

To use MAME with the Tankstick and the Xarcade2Jstick driver, you then need to press TAB when in a MAME game and setup the Tankstick in the General settings.

Once I did that it ran beautifully... until I hardware hacked it... but that is for a different thread :)

jdoc

@jono Thanks for reaching out. I've had some time in the last week or so to tinker with settings. I will definitely try what you've outlined and get back to this thread. BTW- I've read that the latest update to RetroPie breaks the tank stick config. Has anyone heard this as well?