Star Wars Mame Flight Stick (Guide + Settings)

[Lordmonkus]

After a bit of a discussion earlier in Discord with @DOS76 and @neil9000 I decided to setup my flight stick to play Star Wars Arcade. Out of the box this does work but the settings make it not very much fun to play at all so after some tinkering and reading I came up with some settings that work well enough for me for now. Maybe they will get tweaked some more but for now here is a good basic setup that people can use and tweak to suit them and their controller.

The first thing you will want to do is to reduce the dead zone since Mames defaults are way too high. Go to your mame.ini file and look for the line:
 

joystick_deadzone 

I set mine to 0 but you may have to set some dead zone for your controller and preferences. Save your mame.ini file after changing it.

Next we can load up the game, after loading the game you will want to move your controller around in circles a few times (you will want to do this every time you load the game). This will calibrate the controller, if you do not do this your aiming cursor will be off center.

Now press Tab on your keyboard, then go to Input (This Machine) and set your controls. You want to set the AD Stick X Analog and AD Stick Y Analog Axis to your flight stick. Just press Enter on your keyboard followed by Left or Right for X and either Up or Down on your stick for Y. Make sure you have the Dec and Inc set to none or to a different controller, if you have these set to your flight stick it will cause problems.

Don't forget to set your fire button P1 Button 1, most likely this will be your trigger on a flight stick, unless of course you want to use a different button.

Here is how mine looks.

Next we want to back out one menu and go to the Analog Controls section. This is where you will need to play around a bit to find settings that suit your controller and personal preference. Here are my settings for reference.

[Namedos]

I know this is a little old but first off...thanks for posting this.  I'm going to play around with this over the next couple of days with my flight stick.  Any other suggestions you might have since you have had this in play?  Thanks again.

[CitznFish]

On 6/24/2018 at 1:56 PM, Lordmonkus said:

After loading the game you will want to move your controller around in circles a few times (you will want to do this every time you load the game). This will calibrate the controller, if you do not do this your aiming cursor will be off center.

 

If this is anything like the real version you just need to hit the 4 corners and press fire in each corner to calibrate. 

[neil9000]

2 minutes ago, CitznFish said:

If this is anything like the real version you just need to hit the 4 corners and press fire in each corner to calibrate. 

Well, it's MAME, so yes its the real version.

 

[CitznFish]

1 minute ago, neil9000 said:

Well, it's MAME, so yes its the real version.

 

Yes, I know. 

Edited August 12, 2020 by CitznFish

[Lordmonkus]

5 minutes ago, CitznFish said:

If this is anything like the real version you just need to hit the 4 corners and press fire in each corner to calibrate. 

You don't even need to hit any buttons, just move the joystick around to calibrate it.

[RoivasPrime]

So what can I do if my yoke won’t calibrate?

[Lordmonkus]

No clue.

[Knowcontrol]

@Lordmonkus What brand and version of fight stick do you own or would suggest? I would like one that sits on my lap. I'm realizing how hamstrung I am with my 8BitDo controller.

[Lordmonkus]

I had a Mad Catz / Saitek X55 at the time but they have since been bought out by Logitech but I wouldn't recommend that at this point in time. Something like the Thrustmaster T16000M would be a better choice and cheaper.