Quitting MESS Emulator

[turbofeet]

Hi All

Got everything working nicely in BigBox; all exiting when I press both Thumb sticks in on my Xbox one controllers.

All except MESS which I use for Atari 2600.

Pressing the ESC key quits it so nothing odd set up there.

Tried an AHK script on exit of the following:

; No custom exit script is necessary for Retroarch
; since it already uses the Escape key by default
send {Esc} 

Even though I do not use RetroArch...

Anyone have any ideas?

Gracias

Edited August 8, 2019 by turbofeet

[CDBlue]

There are a few things that I feel I should mention before a possible solution is listed (or at least what I believe the solution, anyway).  

Firstly, in case you were not aware, Mess is now integrated into Mame, and no longer two separate arcade platforms.   I would recommend using Mame instead of Mess nowdays as Mame is more up-to-date than the old Mess standalone.  

Secondly, if you have retroarch setup and working for other systems, the core for Atari 2600 (Stella_libretro) is actually very good, and what I would recommend for emulating Atari 2600, as it's typically easier to setup retroarch and get it working for consoles, rather than getting Mame/Mess

Now the possible solution to your issue, that is if you do want to continue using Mess.  It's been a long time since I touched Mess, but if Mess is similar to Mame, which I believe it was back in the day, then it's actually recomended to not use the AHK keys in LB to exit Mame/Mess, but rather map those hotkeys to work with the emulator itself.  For example, map the exit functionality in Mame/Mess to the two thumbsticks.  The issue is that ESC works because Mess's default key to exit the emulator is ESC.  But, pressing the controller automation in LB/BB doesn't trigger that properly... and even if it does, it usually causes problems as it doesn't exit properly and causes things to not save (if you made changes in configs for example).  So, for Mame/Mess, it's best to change the mapping in there if possible, to match the controller exit scheme you use for other emulators.

Hope this was helpful in some way... good luck.

-CDBlue

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah, use either the Stella core (not the Stella2014 one) or stand alone Stella. Both of these are basically 100% accurate and they will play even the most advanced homebrew.

[turbofeet]

Thanks. I used MESS as I got it working nicely. I did try Stella but got some aspect ratio problems so went back to MESS.

I retrospect it was probably more because of Windows Desktop Resizing due to my 4K TV. That causes a real headache and I have had to disable via compatibility settings for a few EMUs.

I figured it out from another post on here. I set the emulator as right-thumbstick to quit (UI Cancel) rather than ESC and all is gravy.

If you are used to pressing both thumb sticks you won't know the difference.

Thanks for the reply. Appreciated

[turbofeet]

11 minutes ago, CDBlue said:

There are a few things that I feel I should mention before a possible solution is listed (or at least what I believe the solution, anyway).  

Firstly, in case you were not aware, Mess is now integrated into Mame, and no longer two separate arcade platforms.   I would recommend using Mame instead of Mess nowdays as Mame is more up-to-date than the old Mess standalone.  

Secondly, if you have retroarch setup and working for other systems, the core for Atari 2600 (Stella_libretro) is actually very good, and what I would recommend for emulating Atari 2600, as it's typically easier to setup retroarch and get it working for consoles, rather than getting Mame/Mess

Now the possible solution to your issue, that is if you do want to continue using Mess.  It's been a long time since I touched Mess, but if Mess is similar to Mame, which I believe it was back in the day, then it's actually recomended to not use the AHK keys in LB to exit Mame/Mess, but rather map those hotkeys to work with the emulator itself.  For example, map the exit functionality in Mame/Mess to the two thumbsticks.  The issue is that ESC works because Mess's default key to exit the emulator is ESC.  But, pressing the controller automation in LB/BB doesn't trigger that properly... and even if it does, it usually causes problems as it doesn't exit properly and causes things to not save (if you made changes in configs for example).  So, for Mame/Mess, it's best to change the mapping in there if possible, to match the controller exit scheme you use for other emulators.

Hope this was helpful in some way... good luck.

Thanks. I got there in the end!