MAME 2003 PLUS not letting me use Joystick
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Controls can be tricky. Arcade cabinets use so many different styles of joysticks.... Most users are probably using typical 8 way joysticks like Sanwa or similar in their home cabinets. Many of these sticks have optional restrictor gates you can attach to the bottom to physically set the joystick up as you'd like, such to be 2way - 4way - 8way. Some sticks even offer quick switch features that can be done manually or electronically for on the fly changes. Some classic cabs like Tron use a 4 way stick that uses a rubber restrictor so you can still hit diagonals even though it's technically 4 way. So it's best to set it up to what feels right for you.
In mame2003-plus and other emulators we try to emulate these restrictor plates electronically and you can get pretty decent results with this, though no setup will beat using actual restrictor plates if you want the most accurate experience.
Personally I like using a 8 way octagon restrictor plate in a Sanwa jlf stick. It doesn't really restrict the sticks movement and allows you to circle the stick but when you play games like pacman the stick still catches in the corners of the octagon. This gives you a good range of game compatibility that feels right.
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@barbudreadmon
The analog to digital type setting is a good option to explore. The basic idea is to be able to use an analog stick as a dpad which is most useful in cores that do not support analog natively or when you just prefer to use it over the dpad in general. I find this is very usefully for playing lightgun games on a ps2 style controller for example... which won't snap to center when you release the stick. Just map the dpad to the light gun x and y then use digital to analog left to use the analog stick.Retroarch up until this point has done this by sending both the analog signal and it's corresponding digital signal when this option is on, most cores have issues with this because it creates a double input effect. Fortunately though, mame2003-plus was designed with this in mind and always uses the analog signal over a digital one if both are given.
The nightly builds of retroarch have changed this option though. Future builds will now only send the digital signal when this option is turned on. This means all cores will be able to use it without issues concerning double inputs.
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@mahoneyt944 said in MAME 2003 PLUS not letting me use Joystick:
we try to emulate these restrictor plates electronically
I don't fully understand this, the only thing it seems to do is preventing corner from working with a 8way when disabled, it seems very weird to do that in an emulation environment, especially since it seems to be the default setting, ultimately if users willingly wanted to be prevented from using corners of their 8way joystick, i believe they would probably use a 4way ?
@mahoneyt944 said in MAME 2003 PLUS not letting me use Joystick:
The basic idea is to be able to use an analog stick as a dpad which is most useful in cores that do not support analog natively or when you just prefer to use it over the dpad in general
In FBNeo i dual map directional controls if the other directional control is free (iirc there are a few games where the 2 directional controls are natively used for different things), so any game can natively use either analog or dpad without a need for this setting. That stopped users from writing reports when they were trying to play games with the wrong directional controls (mostly people trying to play racing games on barcades or snes controllers).
@mahoneyt944 said in MAME 2003 PLUS not letting me use Joystick:
Future builds will now only send the digital signal when this option is turned on
That's cool, thanks for the heads up !
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@barbudreadmon i believe these 4way / 8way options are only applied when the game driver inputs designates them and the option is on in the core options. Otherwise it's not used.
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@barbudreadmon thanks for all of the info here. I appreciate it. My setup is two 8-way joysticks opting for MAME 2003 Pro in certain situations like paperboy, burgertime, etc and to me it works fine so just gonna leave it that way. For everything else I am running fbneo or MAME2003. Honestly it works pretty perfectly for me or I am not intuitive enough with it to see a negative difference. Again I appreciate everyones input. Cheers!
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@barbudreadmon said in MAME 2003 PLUS not letting me use Joystick:
I don't fully understand this, the only thing it seems to do is preventing corner from working with a 8way when disabled, it seems very weird to do that in an emulation environment, especially since it seems to be the default setting, ultimately if users willingly wanted to be prevented from using corners of their 8way joystick, i believe they would probably use a 4way ?
I think the setting is off by default in mame2003-plus. You have to actively turn it on. I spent a few hours playing with it on and off and I prefer it on for games like Donkey Kong. I don't seem to get hung on "corners" going up ladders as frequently. While not perfect I think it's a worthwhile implemented feature.
I do like how FBNeo has a no hassle dual mapping, now that's the way to do it.
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@riverstorm @mahoneyt944 My issue with that setting is that i can't figure out a single use case where it seems useful to have it off, so i'm wondering why it's the default (or even why it's not always forced on like later mame). It could be that i'm just unaware of issues that happen when it's on.
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@barbudreadmon can't say for sure.
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@riverstorm I have the MAME 2003 Plus just running the older 4-way games and a couple weird ones like Paperboy which controls were awful on MAME 2003 (probably me not setting it up correctly). I think I switched to 4-way once and it kept it for every game and since it is only being used for those types I dont have to worry about it. I still have a really hard time going into that retroarch/fbneo green screen and switching those button configs around so try and stay out of there and go to the MAME screen as a first option when I can.
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@mahoneyt944 said in MAME 2003 PLUS not letting me use Joystick:
@barbudreadmon can't say for sure.
maybe @arcadez2003 knows ?
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@common763 said in MAME 2003 PLUS not letting me use Joystick:
I still have a really hard time going into that retroarch/fbneo green screen
Out of curiosity, how did you map your cabinet's buttons ? Because going into that screen should be quite rare if you followed retroarch recommended layouts.
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@barbudreadmon said in MAME 2003 PLUS not letting me use Joystick:
@riverstorm @mahoneyt944 My issue with that setting is that i can't figure out a single use case where it seems useful to have it off, so i'm wondering why it's the default (or even why it's not always forced on like later mame). It could be that i'm just unaware of issues that happen when it's on.
Grant actually worked on the feature and made it a core option. It's hard to explain but you can feel the differences when you actually play. It's definitely not a perfect option/implementation and some may actually prefer it off. Why he chose "default = off" I'm not sure. It seems it would be beneficial to more games than not to have it on but some games may not work as well with the "last direction" logic.
I'll have to check, maybe it is on. I can delete the core option file to see what it defaults too.
@barbudreadmon - I do spend quite a bit of time in the "green screen" RA GUI. I don't think it's a popular layout but it's what I prefer. Not a big deal but I do tweak a good number of games that just don't suit up well with the defaults in mame2003-plus.
456 123 -
@common763 - I agree playing paperboy with a joystick and buttons seems like it might be somewhat inadequate and probably not anywhere near as accurate or enjoyable so whatever tweaks you can use are probably beneficial.
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@common763 - It looks like paperboy has analog controls. Does turning on 4-way actually help this game? Maybe it does as the handle bars were basically 2-way vertical I would imagine.
Input: Stick, range 16-240 Δ 10, sensitivity 100, 2 buttons -
Paperboy used handle bars which is basically like a yoke from starwars or a big analog stick. You can adjust the analog sensitivity to make it more controllable in the mame menu. I also added a core option to center digital joysticks so you can play games like this with a digital dpad too but it requires fine adjustment of the analog settings to be playable on dpad.
Pressing up and down make your pedal speed change too. Pedal fast vs brake.
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@mahoneyt944 - Yeah I knew it was handle bars. I played back in the day too! ;) The part I don't know is he turned on the option
"4-way joystick emulation on 8-way joystick"so does that even do anything for an analog game such as Paperboy or analog games in general or does it only work for digital input? Does it change anything if analog to digital is enabled?I figured it has 2-way movement for up and down (faster and slower) and then turning left/right (twisting). I was just curious if 4-way does anything such as only registers up and down and ignores left/right plus the diagonals.
@barbudreadmon - The option is off by default. If I remember correctly @grant2258 had used "last direction" logic, so if you're moving right and try to go up but you hit one of the "corners" the direction won't change [he'll keep moving right] until your stick is in the up position or down or whatever.
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@riverstorm I'd imagine it's only for digital. Analog would be much harder to emulate this because you'd have to check every value in the range it has to determine the direction in a similar way. This is exactly what I did to add the live center hack in food fight awhile back.
If you use analog to digital I think the analog signal would override the digital one because both are sent. But once the new analog to digital is push to stable builds of ra then it would probably allow it to work with the analog stick, as you're replacing the analog signal with a digital one and mame won't distinguish a difference.
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@riverstorm said in MAME 2003 PLUS not letting me use Joystick:
456 123From mame2003+ official documentation :
The recommended 6-buttons layout for mame2003+ should be this one :
With device type set to6-ButtoninQuick Menu > ControlsIt should also match the layout FBNeo is expecting by default (when device type is set to
Classic)
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