Latest Bigbox MAME game exit problems

[Jason Carr]

@bojo5150 You could try disabling game controller support in Big Box to see if perhaps that could be the issue. Other than that, I'm clueless; I've never heard of anything like that before. And sadly, @DOS76 right; I would need that specific hardware to test and try and fix it, and since that issue has never come up before, I'm more inclined to believe it's some sort of configuration issue than an incompatibility with Big Box.

[bojo5150]

I’m going to try 2 things today and will report back. As you stated I’ll disable controller support in Big Box (where is that option located actually? And will it effect anything else? I assumed I was using only keys mapped within each emulator)

 

I’m also going to change MAME’s exit key to something unused for anything else (like alt+F1 or something) and force a shutdown with an AHK in LB. hopefully one of these 2 ideas happens to work.

 

Thanks again!

[Retro808]

11 minutes ago, bojo5150 said:

I’m going to try 2 things today and will report back. As you stated I’ll disable controller support in Big Box (where is that option located actually? And will it effect anything else? I assumed I was using only keys mapped within each emulator)

BigBox > Options > Controller

[bojo5150]

Here's an update:

 

- Big Box controller support was already disabled so I enabled it to see if it made any difference. After enabling I didn't see any noticeable effect.

- I changed MAME's exist key to Alt+F12 and then wrote an AHK script to call an app called PSKILL to close out MAME unexpectedly/abruptly. This may have had a small impact as I was able to play multiple MAME games before the keyboard encoder would stop responding but ultimately it did still stop. Maybe I just got lucky and was able to play a few games?? :-)

- Here's where it starts to get interesting. As I noted before I can play any emu, any game, etc.. when launched using Launchbox. So I was playing a few as the kids wanted to play for a while. After they were done I launched Big Box to continue troubleshooting and the keyboard encoder stopped working after launching the game vs after exiting the game.  It seems that something Big Box does when launching the game and/or exiting the game kills the keyboard encoder or likely causes some type of configuration snafu. This was the first time I tried playing games in Launchbox first and then immediately opening Big Box. After a reboot I was able to reproduce this exact same scenario with the same result.

- I then went into Launchbox --> MAME emulator and unchecked the start-up and exit screens and started to ONLY play MAME games. Interestingly enough I played 9 games in a row with no issue!!! I thought it was fixed as I can live without the transition screens however I then launched Daytona racing (Model 2 emu) and the encoder stopped working.... I reboot the PC, went into Launchbox and uncheck the splash screens for every emulator and now I have a more widespread issue. I may get lucky and play a few games in a row with no issue but eventually the encoder will stop working and it now happens for ALL emulators....  Now I'm at a complete loss.

Anyone have any suggestions? Jason?  I will say I haven't updated LB/BB in a while, the last update was around April, I'm pretty sure its either 9.5 or 9.6 but I forgot to check before I threw in the towel last night.

[DOS76]

if you go into device manager in Windows can you find the encoder check the properties and see if there is a power down option that can be unchecked even check for the USB ports it may be plugged into. Its a long shot but can't really hurt anything either

[neil9000]

13 minutes ago, DOS76 said:

if you go into device manager in Windows can you find the encoder check the properties and see if there is a power down option that can be unchecked even check for the USB ports it may be plugged into. Its a long shot but can't really hurt anything either

Also to add to this also check the actual power options for the power plan you are on.

I dont know if its a different way to get to the same setting, or if one or the other over rides the other, so worth checking both.

[Jason Carr]

You can try disabling keyboard automation, but I'm not sure if that's even in that older version of Big Box. That's probably your best bet. Other than that, honestly no amount of key presses or input should ever lock up a keyboard controller like that, so I would be hesitant to trust the keyboard controller in general. But try disabling the keyboard automation stuff.

[bojo5150]

Thanks guys, I’ll try your suggestions when I get home from work tonight. One other thing I thought of is the Hagstrom encoder is a USB 1.0 device. Is it possible that Big Box has issue with this somehow? (USB protocol should handle this but figured I would throw it out there)

also, do you think if I scrapped the Hagstrom encoder and installed and IPac my problem would disappear? I’d hate to buy it and still have the same issue

[DOS76]

depends I know I use zero delay encoders in my arcade machine and I have zero issues (bad pun intended). So it may not be the encoders but something with your system but in all likelihood it could definitely be due to the age of the device in question.

[Jason Carr]

7 minutes ago, bojo5150 said:

Thanks guys, I’ll try your suggestions when I get home from work tonight. One other thing I thought of is the Hagstrom encoder is a USB 1.0 device. Is it possible that Big Box has issue with this somehow? (USB protocol should handle this but figured I would throw it out there)

also, do you think if I scrapped the Hagstrom encoder and installed and IPac my problem would disappear? I’d hate to buy it and still have the same issue

I've personally used an i-Pac controller in a cabinet myself with zero issues. No promises, but if you still have the problem after getting an i-Pac, then it's either a configuration issue or an issue with a different piece of hardware.

[FelixK15]

On 4/7/2019 at 11:23 PM, Charco said:

Ok, I think I had this issue. Change the UI Cancel in MAME to something other than what what you have set for controller automation in Big Box. It may be causing a conflict.

That was it! Thanks for the support and sorry for the late reply. I though that if someone with a similar issue searches through this thread he should find the answer that helped me.

[Charco]

Nice, glad it worked for you

[bojo5150]

Sorry for my delayed update, we had some weather the other night and lost power for about 8hrs so I didn't get to test anything new until last night.

@Dos76 and @neil9000 I tried both power related options and the encoder exists in the USB list however the checkboxes / power options are greyed out so I cannot modify them unfortunately.

@Jason Carr  Controller automation was already turned off so I'll assume for now that its a non-issue.

I went ahead and ordered an I-Pac 4 that's scheduled for delivery on Monday. Say a prayer that it works!

 

Thanks again for everyone's support!

[bojo5150]

I never followed up on this topic. I received my new ipac4 months back, rewired all the controls and everything works great.

 

i just wanted to thank everyone’s support on this forum helping me to Narrow down the issue and find the resolution.

[Jason Carr]

7 hours ago, bojo5150 said:

I never followed up on this topic. I received my new ipac4 months back, rewired all the controls and everything works great.

 

i just wanted to thank everyone’s support on this forum helping me to Narrow down the issue and find the resolution.

Great to hear. Thanks for following up @bojo5150.

[NOMAD0P]

Having same issue here on all emulators. After actually reading this whole thread, double up of keybinds caused this and a pause screen issue as well. Thanks guys!

Edited March 21, 2020 by NOMAD0P
i read the actual thread