Lordmonkus

So I haven't bothered using my X-Arcade stick in a while but I got it out today to mess around on it and fired up Pac-Man thinking about this discussion and I really had no issues with controls whatsoever. The version of Mame I was using is 168 MameUiFX and my TankStick is relatively new, less than a year old (no idea if it being a newer version has any bearing on the matter whatsoever).

Yeah kind of but not exactly a full analog spinner. Its more like an 8 step rotation. On an X-Arcade stick I would think the best way to do it is either use the bottom 2 bottoms for rotate left and right and activate with your thumb or maybe another option would be to use the top left and right buttons for rotation and use the top middle button for fire and another button like one of the bottom 2 for your grenades.

Lol yeah the addiction sets in. I started with just my pc and a controller which has evolved into the X-Arcade stick and now i'm planning on building at least a couple of bartop cabs for different game types. One for 2 player fighting games with 6 buttons each player. One for 4 way joystick vertical oriented with 3 buttons for games like Pac-Man, Galaga, Black Tiger. One for twin stick shooters like Robotron and Smash TV One for spinner type games like Tempest and Arkanoid One for 2 player horizontal brawlers like Final Fight. Then who knows from there lol.

Yeah it's pretty badass. Love the marquee idea and the tv mounted vertically and the ends hidden behind to see everything in it's proper aspect ratio is a really slick solution.

I was just doing some reading over on the BYOAC forums and came across this crazy cab build link. The guy used these Ultimarc Servo Stiks link that change between 4 and 8 way on the fly depending on the game. They have a small servo motor in them that changes as needed on the fly. Check on the second page reply #45 for a video showing the cab in action and you can hear the servos changing the stick between 4 and 8 way.

One other thing to take into consideration is how well it would fit into the X-Arcade control panel. It may need some modification.

According to the X-Arcade site you can switch the sticks between 4 and 8 way but you have actually go inside and modify it, it's not a simple easy to do thing like the OP was looking for. Some of the sticks here on Ultimarc claim to be easy to switch. Link

Doing a quick search I did find this information on the matter. Link "If you are playing a game like Pac-Man™ or Donkey Kong™ and find that the joystick gets stuck when changing directions, this is because these original arcade games used 4-way restricted joysticks, while the X-Arcade™ is set to 8-way mode by default. You can solve this with the X-Arcade™ by changing it to 4-way mode. Note that newer versions of MAME seem to have a built-in software 4-way emulation automatically used for 4-way games (more info see 8). NOTE: If you are using a newer version of MAME or playing a console version of a 4-way arcade game, you do not need a dedicated 4-way joystick. This is because they have a software emulated 4-way mode that simply interprets diagonals as the next direction instead of getting stuck. "

There is no easy switch joysticks as far as I am aware. The easiest you can get is the Omni2 from GroovyGameGear (link) and here is a video showing the procedure (link) The Build Your Own Arcade Controls forums has a lot of information over there on different joysticks and building them. (http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/board,1.0.html)

Unfortunately there is no easy solution. Your options are either A) Just get used to it and learn to play those games on the default sticks. B) Replace the sticks with ones that are easier to swap between 4 and 8 way or C) Build your own 4 way controllers and use those. I own an X-Arcade tank stick and I am in the planning stages of building a standalone 4 way arcade emulation mini cab. Cost wise the parts other than the computer and monitor it isn't terribly expensive if you have the tools and skills.

Do you have the bios file for it ? And if yes are you sure it's the correct one ? I use the FBA core of Retroarch for all my NeoGeo emulation

Omg Omg Omg, you are now officially on my "naughty xmas card list"

I don't know if it has this feature, if it's in the plans or even if it is possible. But I would love to have the ability to import my entire romset and then go in and build a clean list of games and then have one click to copy out all the necessary roms to a folder so I could have a nice, clean romset. This would be so awesome if it's possible for people who want to build a small streamlined mame cab without importing an entire romset and then dealing with generating a new list.

Judging by the screenshots here this thing looks amazing. I will definitely be taking a closer look at this thing.

Personally I have a full mame romset just using MameUI on its own but for within Launchbox I have a couple of hundred games pulled out into a separate folder to keep it streamlined. I'll use the full MameUI for trying out games and when I find one I really like I will pull a copy of the roms out to the favourites for Launchbox.

Take a look at this project over at the Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum. Link. He's far from finished but he does have some done. Basically he's creating batch files to copy out roms for games that people will actually play and weed out the crap no one cares about.

Indeed, these are awesome.

Interesting program, never heard of or used it before. I have always just manually gotten drivers I needed.

It's probably something to do with the on-board Realtek sound card and drivers. The first thing I had to do when I installed Win10 was install proper Realtek drivers because of massive reverb issues with the sound. I probably should have just reinstalled new sound drivers again first to see if that fixed the problem this time but I didn't think of it til after. I just figured I would post this here as well as over on the Retroarch forums for anyone else running into the issue and looking for a quick fix for this problem if encountered.

After installing Windows 10 Update KB3140743 I noticed a massive performance hit with Retroarch. Everything on my system was running perfectly before this update and after was running around 20 frames per second slower and basically impossible to play. I don't know what exactly in the update caused this issue but uninstalling this specific update everything was perfect again. This was only a problem within Retroarch, other standalone programs and emulators did not seem to be affected by this update as far as I could tell. This was on my lower end laptop, my main gaming rig does not use Windows 10 so I do not know if it was something within the patch specifically for everyone or if it was something specific to my laptop combined with the patch.

The thing about Mame is this though. When is the last time Mame had a real significant update that actually mattered to the vast majority of people ? The last version of Mame I really need is 151 and that is only because of the fact that is the last full romset I downloaded is for. Now Mame is up to 171 but there is very little if anything of any real significance to warrant upgrading to that version. That's not to say there won't be any real changes coming, especially now that it's gone open source we could see some massive changes. Long story short is unless Mame all of a sudden starts to support a large portion of games it didn't previously there really is no reason to upgrade the proper working Mame for the romset version you currently have working. If the version you have runs the games you want without issue just leave it alone until there is a major reason to upgrade. I'm all for newer versions of stuff but when the newer versions are for extremely small obscure things it's just not worth messing with upgrading it. Also having said all that I do always get the newest version and check it out and stuff but I keep a nice solid 151 mame and romset installed that is my base install.

No problem.

There's a search box at the top of the MameUIFX window, or at least there is one on mine.

I could be wrong but I believe he means Computer On a Chip but the more common term is System On a Chip.

My first console that I owned was my Atari 2600 I got for my 8th birthday back in 82 and my first computer was a Commodore Vic 20 with the oh so awesome cassette drive and monochrome monitor I got the following year. Before the Atari though I remember playing Pong on a Coleco Telstar my uncle owned. I also had some handheld electronic games like a Space Invaders I got for my 5th birthday. I still have my original 2600 and the Space Invaders handheld, both still work perfectly.