Mapping controls to Mame games

[Peetem]

Ok, I’m done pulling my hair out and am taking a new direction. There is so much great documentation that its become overwhelming, so I’m seeking help here.

I have built an arcade cabinet with two sets of controls with player 1 and player 2 identical - a joystick and 12 buttons. I have executed Jstest and know the #’s for each of the buttons. Each controller is wired identically into a Dragonwise USB device.

Emulation Station has detected the controllers and allowed me to map the buttons to the virtual controller. However, I don’t want to use the virtual controller layout. I want to custom-map each button in Mame to a different aspect. That’s all I want to do.

Player 1 works great - joystick, A,B, X,Y, Stat, Select, Coin 1, player 1 start, LS,RS, LT and RT all show us in Mame and I can remap in Mame how I want things to be.

Player 2 joystick works great but no other button maps in Mame - it doesn’t detect them.

So, all I want to do is create a custom mapping something like this:

Button 1, player 1 - Fire
Button 2, player 1 - Jump
Button 3, player 1 - coin
Button 4 player 1 - player 1 start
Button 5, player 1 - Reverse
Etc.

And do the same for player 2:

Button 1, player 2 - Fire
Button 2, player 2 - Jump
Button 3, player 2 - coin
Button 4, player 2 - player 2 start
Button 5, player 2 - Reverse
Etc.

Now, I get ES probably does this in some way that I’m not understanding - maybe even mapping to coin, start, etc. automatically. That’s great and one of the many reasons Retropie is the best. However, its not what I want to do.

Now, I’m not having errors and I know how to edit .cfg files, but for some reason, I can’t get the right combination of things to make this happen. I have tried hard-coding player 2 and it didn’t work.

So, its there a simple Wiki or some other page that can help me do what I want to do the right way? A video? I watched several that go into Retroarch and then Mame and map and I did it that way and player 2 still doesn’t work in Mame. So now I just want to custom map everything on a button-by-button basis.

Many thanks in advance!