Trackball And Spinner Conflict

mgrabow

I have a Raspberry Pi3 running Retropie 4.5.1 I was having an issue getting my new spintrack spinner to work, so I built a new system from scratch. I have just a handful of games all running in advancemame 1.4. Retroarch is 1.7.1

Here is my issue. If the game can work with either a trackball or spinner it does (Tempest, breakout, Arkanoid)…. If the game requires just a trackball (centipede, missile command, millipede) it only works with the spinner. Trackball does nothing.

If I disconnect the spinner, all is well on the trackball games.

I wanted to update retroarch to 1.7.9.2 but it wont start. Not sure why. I was hoping the later version would help...

I moded the advmame-1.4 file according to this thread. Seemed to get the spinner working.

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Spinners,-Trackballs,-Lightguns,-and-other-Mouse-Devices/

mitu

Probably because the spinner and trackball are detected as 2 different mouse devices, so if you've configured just one mouse in your emulator, whatever is detected first takes over.
Advmame is more flexible than RetroArch in this regard, but you didn't mention what emulator core are you using with RetroArch ?

mgrabow

@mitu sorry I don't always understand the multiple layers of things that make these programs work. most of what I have learned is from multiple forums and youtube so I don't always have a good understanding of this. I am using advmame1.4 for most of my roms.

In my old pi I had a bunch running on lr-mame2003 but could not get my spinner to work on any games. I decided to take a second pi and rebuild using all newer versions of Rasbian, retropi, retroarch and anything else needed.

Yes the pi detects them as two different devices.

mitu

OK, so what's the actual question ? What is it that you want to achieve ? I get that one of the devices works in RetroArch, would you like both to work ?

mgrabow

I would like the trackball "mouse1" to work with centipede, missile command etc... and the spinner to work on Arkanoid, breakout, Tempest etc... or both can work on all games.

I read in a few places where you creating a separate 'romname.zip.cfg' file with the command 'input_player1_mouse_index = "1" for each rom that uses the trackball/roller . Makes sense, but I am not sure where to install these config files and is it just a one line file I create or do I modify an existing file and rename it according to the ROM I want to use it.

mitu

@mgrabow The .cfg file should be next to the ROM file. It only applies to lr-mame2003 (or other RetroArch based emulators) and it allows you to choose which device is used per-game.

mgrabow

@mitu so my current ROM directory has all my roms. . If I can get the games to run in LR-mame2003, I can create a config file and just store it in this directory? There are no current config files in that directory just the zip files. I see several videos where people have them both running and recommend advanced mame.

mitu

@mgrabow Yes, the .cfg file should be in the ROM folder - but as I said, it will allow you to choose between them.
I think lr-mame2003 might also have a way to map your input by pressing TAB and then choosing Input (for this game), but otherwise advmame is more flexible in this regard, allowing you to add multiple gamepad inputs for the same game input.

mgrabow

@mitu Thyanks for the help. Ill mess around with this and see if its a solution and will post the results...

digital.arts

@mgrabow
if you choose the option of creating a game-specific file "rom_full_name.cfg" (e.g. centipede.zip.cfg)

input_player1_mouse_index = "n"

don't forget to add this second line:
config_save_on_exit = false

just to prevent an override of the main config...