Controllers (and what you dream of)

[flatuswalrus]

1 hour ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

anyone tried these yet?: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2016-New-Wireless-2-4G-Air-Mouse-Handheld-Trackball-Mouse-Thumb-Controlled-Handheld-Trackball-Mice-Mouse/32747227298.html?spm=2114.search0104.3.8.85f33a85RS4qoo&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_1_10065_10068_10890_319_10546_317_10548_10696_453_10084_454_10083_10618_10304_10307_10820_538_537_536_10843_10059_10884_10887_100031_321_322_10103-10890,searchweb201603_1,ppcSwitch_0&algo_expid=1887bd24-8179-444e-8191-c59409962162-4&algo_pvid=1887bd24-8179-444e-8191-c59409962162

I have never tried anything like that but it looks quite awkward for trackball games. I imagine only using the thumb would not be as accurate as your palm on a larger trackball.

As far as controllers go I have owned various controllers, arcade sticks, trackball, spinners and light guns. Out of all of them the most trouble I had was with light guns. They were just so finicky I am not going to ever get any again. That is not to say they never work, I just had little luck and found them frustrating. The spinners from groovygamegear were definitely worth the money.

[Mr. RetroLust]

4 hours ago, Dane said:

I have never tried anything like that but it looks quite awkward for trackball games. I imagine only using the thumb would not be as accurate as your palm on a larger trackball.

As far as controllers go I have owned various controllers, arcade sticks, trackball, spinners and light guns. Out of all of them the most trouble I had was with light guns. They were just so finicky I am not going to ever get any again. That is not to say they never work, I just had little luck and found them frustrating. The spinners from groovygamegear were definitely worth the money.

I wish they would sell those spinners or trackballs on a handy controller, i'm not a handy person in the DIY department.

Thanks @Chadmando for Controller Companion, it looks very promising although I have to figure out a lot still and spend some time on it, I started off testing by changing the guide button to keyboard button "Tab" but it doesn't react in Mame while Tab is set to the bindings within mame to show the mame menu, any idea how to set this up? I did turn off all default bindings except for the guide button so maybe i did something wrong in that process. Basically I'd like to use the guide button in the future to hold and then press other buttons to activate things so it will be the exact same button combo's as in retroarch. Any advice or experiences on this program are welcome

[Chadmando]

3 hours ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

Thanks @Chadmando for Controller Companion, it looks very promising although I have to figure out a lot still and spend some time on it, I started off testing by changing the guide button to keyboard button "Tab" but it doesn't react in Mame while Tab is set to the bindings within mame to show the mame menu, any idea how to set this up?

Yes I beleieve there is an option in there that blocks digital inputs, I am looking for it right now.

EDIT: Looking at my set up I am using joytokey for mame, I must have had the similar issues as you. I played around with my settings and I can confirm it works within joytokey. All my joysticks are configured to keyboard buttons in mame, and I use Joytokey to send the inputs. I am using mame 0.173

Edited December 29, 2018 by Chadmando

[Mr. RetroLust]

Thanks @Chadmando I really hope I can still do this with Mame and Companion as I don't want to many different software running in the background, I always try to minimalize these thing to make it less complex in case of errors cross software, input lag and system speed. @Dane you seem to have had success with this in Mame, any tips?

[neil9000]

5 minutes ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

Thanks @Chadmando I really hope I can still do this with Mame and Companion as I don't want to many different software running in the background, I always try to minimalize these thing to make it less complex in case of errors cross software, input lag and system speed. @Dane you seem to have had success with this in Mame, any tips?

Controller companion is great and i recommend it any chance i get. However i havent used it with mame as mame lets you reassign anything you like. I should probably read the whole thread back but meh, what is the issue you are having with mame?

[Chadmando]

Here's a solution that I tested and works.

Open up Launchbox, go to emulator settings for mame>  Autohotkey script

Enter this code:

vk07sc000::
{
SetKeyDelay , , 300
send {TAB}
}

 

This way you're not running new programs. The "setkeydelay" makes the button push a little longer otherwise it seems to ignore the press.

I don't think controller companion will work, and I'm not sure if mame works with XInput, hopefully I am wrong though. If you plan on mapping more controls to the same controller you might have issues.

Edited December 29, 2018 by Chadmando

[Mr. RetroLust]

Thanks @Chadmando I'll try this out soon and experiment with it. It would make sense indeed that Mame works differently with controllers as the guide button is mappable (is that the right english term?) in retroarch with the logitech F310 at least so I expect FC to work as well but Mame wouldnt with the F310 before as well.

@neil9000 Thank you for offering help bro I hoped being able to map the guide button as a combo key with controller companion (edit: mapping guide button with controller companion for use in Mame), like holding guide and press R2 would save a game etc. For now I can do this with the select button but the guide button would be nice to use instead.

Edited December 29, 2018 by Mr. RetroLust

[Chadmando]

1 hour ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

Thanks @Chadmando I'll try this out soon and experiment with it. It would make sense indeed that Mame works differently with controllers as the guide button is mappable (is that the right english term?) in retroarch with the logitech F310 at least so I expect FC to work as well but Mame wouldnt with the F310 before as well. 

@neil9000 Thank you for offering help bro I hoped being able to map the guide button as a combo key with controller companion, like holding guide and press R2 would save a game etc. For now I can do this with the select button but the guide button would be nice to use instead.

I went back and tried this again, I actually had controller companion disabled when MAME was in use, after I enabled (START + SELECT) to toggle it, it worked completely fine... (for hotkeys).

[flatuswalrus]

7 hours ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

I wish they would sell those spinners or trackballs on a handy controller, i'm not a handy person in the DIY department.

If you are not handy it is because you have not properly sunk your teeth in. I bet you could do it if you tried. A lot of things are daunting and intimidating at first but eventually things click and you can do it. I am completely gutting/renovating my house at the moment and I am doing everything myself. Most things I have not done before but I just do a little research, watch some videos and then away I go. I am also going to build my own guitar afterwards for the first time too. When I first got into LaunchBox I didn't know what to do but asked many questions and now for the most part I am confident with it all. There are friendly forums out there for asking questions regarding building a control panel, you could even document the process here in an appropriate thread and ask questions along the way as this is such a friendly and helpful forum, unlike Hyperspin! That's right, I totally went there girlfriend.

7 hours ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

Thanks @Chadmando for Controller Companion, it looks very promising although I have to figure out a lot still and spend some time on it, I started off testing by changing the guide button to keyboard button "Tab" but it doesn't react in Mame while Tab is set to the bindings within mame to show the mame menu, any idea how to set this up? I did turn off all default bindings except for the guide button so maybe i did something wrong in that process. Basically I'd like to use the guide button in the future to hold and then press other buttons to activate things so it will be the exact same button combo's as in retroarch. Any advice or experiences on this program are welcome

You could just change MAME to open the menu with another key if you want to use TAB-key for something else.

2 hours ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

 @Dane you seem to have had success with this in Mame, any tips?

It might sound silly but the only thing I have Controller Companion used for regarding MAME is my Hori FC4's home button is set to '4' on the keyboard. The reason is because when I was using the X-Arcade Tankstick the left flipper button was mapped to '4' and it exited out of the emulator. So, I still just have '4' as my universal exit button on everything. If I ever build a 4 player panel (can't imagine I will) I will just change it all around to something else. It will give me something to do and keep me off the streets.

Edited December 29, 2018 by Dane

[Mr. RetroLust]

11 hours ago, Chadmando said:

I went back and tried this again, I actually had controller companion disabled when MAME was in use, after I enabled (START + SELECT) to toggle it, it worked completely fine... (for hotkeys).

I have tried toggling enable as well but it didn't make any difference, i'll dive into it at a later stadium when I have some more time.

[Mr. RetroLust]

10 hours ago, Dane said:

If you are not handy it is because you have not properly sunk your teeth in. I bet you could do it if you tried. A lot of things are daunting and intimidating at first but eventually things click and you can do it. I am completely gutting/renovating my house at the moment and I am doing everything myself. Most things I have not done before but I just do a little research, watch some videos and then away I go. I am also going to build my own guitar afterwards for the first time too. When I first got into LaunchBox I didn't know what to do but asked many questions and now for the most part I am confident with it all. There are friendly forums out there for asking questions regarding building a control panel, you could even document the process here in an appropriate thread and ask questions along the way as this is such a friendly and helpful forum, unlike Hyperspin! That's right, I totally went there girlfriend.

You could just change MAME to open the menu with another key if you want to use TAB-key for something else.

It might sound silly but the only thing I have Controller Companion used for regarding MAME is my Hori FC4's home button is set to '4' on the keyboard. The reason is because when I was using the X-Arcade Tankstick the left flipper button was mapped to '4' and it exited out of the emulator. So, I still just have '4' as my universal exit button on everything. If I ever build a 4 player panel (can't imagine I will) I will just change it all around to something else. It will give me something to do and keep me off the streets.

Give me a saw and a piece of wood and I can promise you I will make it an ugly mess lol I'd rather buy something like a handheld trackball gamepad, I don't want to risk messing things up, time, cost but also size wise. I agree these forums are great, lots of helpful and friendly people!

i'll tinker around with controller companion and auto keys at a later stadium, I need to read about it some more to understand it all I think.

[Mr. RetroLust]

I fixed it by changing keyboardprovider from 'auto' to 'dinput' in the mame.ini file:

#
# OSD INPUT OPTIONS
#
keyboardprovider          dinput
mouseprovider             auto
lightgunprovider          auto
joystickprovider          auto

Controller Companion now works with Mame, let the good times roll good sirs \m/ 

[flatuswalrus]

9 hours ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

I fixed it by changing keyboardprovider from 'auto' to 'dinput' in the mame.ini file:

Controller Companion now works with Mame, let the good times roll good sirs \m/ 

Sounds like you are well on your way to having it all dandy as candy.

[Mr. RetroLust]

44 minutes ago, Dane said:

Sounds like you are well on your way to having it all dandy as candy.

Yeah now I finally figured it all out, I chose guide as secondary bindings button to hold and it can do whatever I wanted it's awesome! Now I can finally adjust system volume as well by holding guide + up or down. Thanks again @Chadmando and @Dane this dinput setting might solve problems with other key mapping software in combo with Mame as well, this thread helped me solve it: 

 

 

[Mr. RetroLust]

And just when you thought everything is working like a dream... Windows and it's friggin' controller order shuffle is back, I swear it was working well for months and now since I have 3 controllers they keep getting shuffled. I know this problem has been happening for a lot of people in the past, was there a definitive solution to this? I see a lot of results on google but am getting nowhere, hope you guys can share some knowledge. It really surprises me this happens at all since windows seems to be a holy grail for many gamers and microsoft upping the Xbox name on its OS these last years, so something simple like this shouldn't be happening I think, been a console guy myself for a long long time till Launchbox came into my life  

Edited January 8, 2019 by Mr. RetroLust

[Kondorito]

2 hours ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

And just when you thought everything is working like a dream... Windows and it's friggin' controller order shuffle is back, I swear it was working well for months and now since I have 3 controllers they keep getting shuffled. I know this problem has been happening for a lot of people in the past, was there a definitive solution to this? I see a lot of results on google but am getting nowhere, hope you guys can share some knowledge. It really surprises me this happens at all since windows seems to be a holy grail for many gamers and microsoft upping the Xbox name on its OS these last years, so something simple like this shouldn't be happening I think, been a console guy myself for a long long time till Launchbox came into my life  

Lust, check this out 

https://github.com/briankendall/devreorder/

[Mr. RetroLust]

8 hours ago, Kondorito said:

Lust, check this out 

https://github.com/briankendall/devreorder/

Thanks man, I've seen this come by and some other software called Tur-Game Controller Order on the hyperspin forum, although I hoped there was an easy fix or knowledge for windows itself, I try not to have to many software running in the background, do you use this software yourself?

[Kondorito]

2 hours ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

Thanks man, I've seen this come by and some other software called Tur-Game Controller Order on the hyperspin forum, although I hoped there was an easy fix or knowledge for windows itself, I try not to have to many software running in the background, do you use this software yourself?

I tested this software some time ago, it is very lightweight and does not require configurations. I know a lot of users having good results with it, but cannot vouch completely as I am not currently using it.

I have two arcade sticks and two 360 joysticks hooked up to my minipc. BigBox reads them all 4 natively, so no need to configure anything there. I play all console  and handheld games with the 360s through RA, so nothing to configure there either. For MAME, I set an AHK in BB to trigger JoyToKey at every game launch, and then killed at close (so it does not interfere with the rest of the Computer games that use the keyboard). I set in JoyToKey a forced order of the arcade sticks and 360s, and I have the default.cfg mame file as read only, and set there already which joystick and arcadestick I want to control with what.

So basically, I managed to get a fixed joystick order without 3rd party apps. I do not go unhooking the devices, so would not know if plugging/unplugging them mid-play would affect their order (should not).

[Mr. RetroLust]

29 minutes ago, Kondorito said:

I tested this software some time ago, it is very lightweight and does not require configurations. I know a lot of users having good results with it, but cannot vouch completely as I am not currently using it.

I have two arcade sticks and two 360 joysticks hooked up to my minipc. BigBox reads them all 4 natively, so no need to configure anything there. I play all console  and handheld games with the 360s through RA, so nothing to configure there either. For MAME, I set an AHK in BB to trigger JoyToKey at every game launch, and then killed at close (so it does not interfere with the rest of the Computer games that use the keyboard). I set in JoyToKey a forced order of the arcade sticks and 360s, and I have the default.cfg mame file as read only, and set there already which joystick and arcadestick I want to control with what.

So basically, I managed to get a fixed joystick order without 3rd party apps. I do not go unhooking the devices, so would not know if plugging/unplugging them mid-play would affect their order (should not).

Thanks for the tips bro! I also have the default.ini set to readonly so nothing is changed within Mame, its windows suddenly deciding the order should be changed making the settings in Mame useless, i've got two Logitechs F310 and a Hori Fighter Commander, in Mame I mapped both an F310 (controller 1) and the Hori (controller 3) to player 1 and the other F310 (controller 2) to player 2, this worked for a few days but all of a sudden every pad is switched to another number and it keeps doing this whenever I restart windows. I have now changed all the controls to the order which Windows so aggresively reorders to in the hope Windows leaves me alone (the bastard!) if this doesnt work i'll try out the software you mentioned

[Kondorito]

1 minute ago, Mr. RetroLust said:

Thanks for the tips bro! I also have the default.ini set to readonly so nothing is changed within Mame, its windows suddenly deciding the order should be changed making the settings in Mame useless, i've got two Logitechs F310 and a Hori Fighter Commander, in Mame I mapped both an F310 (controller 1) and the Hori (controller 3) to player 1 and the other F310 (controller 2) to player 2, this worked for a few days but all of a sudden every pad is switched to another number and it keeps doing this whenever I restart windows. I have now changed all the controls to the order which Windows so aggresively reorders to in the hope Windows leaves me alone (the bastard!) if this doesnt work i'll try out the software you mentioned

By any chance, could you have switched the two F310 controllers? Even though they are the same model/make, it could be that your original configuration was set with a specific F310 in a specific USB port, and after you plugged them the other way around, Windows read them differently? In my minipc Windows reads the joysticks in different order depending on the USB port I use for each one, so I got their cables marked to know each of the 4 USB ports go with which controller USB.