Can I run a command per game for servostik?

[MechaDangerous]

Hello everybody!

I'm currently using Attract Mode on my full size arcade cabinet but Launchbox/BigBox is looking very appealing. Two quick questions I have though:

1. Can i run a command line per game before it starts? I use a Servostik on my Player 1 side and would like to run a "JoyTray.exe -servo joy4way" before any game that uses it in order to change the joystick to the 4way orientation (or 8way for 8way).

2. Is there anything special to know regarding usage of LEDBlinky? I havent set it up yet on my current cabinet, but wont want to until I move to Launchbox i think (if that is what i end up doing).

Thanks in advance!

[Headrush69]

If you are going to use LedBlinky, it supports setting Servo sticks too, so it’s as simple as setting up LEdBlinky only.

If you have LedBlinky already running with anything else, just enable it in LB and should be working.

[MechaDangerous]

I dont have LEDBlinky setup yet, but that's very good information. I saw the option in there, but wasnt sure how its calling to the servo. I  have to do more testing I suppose. Thank you for your reply!

[Headrush69]

36 minutes ago, MechaDangerous said:

I dont have LEDBlinky setup yet, but that's very good information. I saw the option in there, but wasnt sure how its calling to the servo. I  have to do more testing I suppose. Thank you for your reply!

It's very simple.

When you set up LEDBlinky you can can do it per platform or even per game.

You can set the primary control as 2-way, 4-way, or 8-way and it will change automatically if you enable Servostick in LEDBlinky preferences.

For MAME games, LedBlinky comes with several database files and also reads the mame.xml file and preconfigures a lot of games with joystick mode and buttons colors automatically.

Edited January 15, 2020 by Headrush69

[MechaDangerous]

Wow I didnt catch any of that in the official documentation that I saw. I must have missed reading something. I will have to review what I have or what came with the email when I got my license key.

[Takachi]

I have two ServoStiks and I can change between 4-way and 8-way using the software Ultimarc JoyTray. Works great! (both with right click on mouse and also with F4 and F8).

However, when I am running LaunchBox and LEDBlinky, the servos do not move automatically depending on what type of game I launch. I tried many things already and now I ran out of ideas what I could have overlooked. Any ideas?

[Headrush69]

4 hours ago, Takachi said:

However, when I am running LaunchBox and LEDBlinky, the servos do not move automatically depending on what type of game I launch. I tried many things already and now I ran out of ideas what I could have overlooked. Any ideas?

Have you set the the primary control for the games that need a change in Controls Editor?

A post of a debug log would probably indicate where the issue is fairly quickly.

[Takachi]

In the meantime I got this to work. But only for some of the games. Some games still require me to manually change between 4-way vs 8-way.

To answer your question: No, I haven't set the primary controls for any games so far. I thought that in one of the many configuration files (mame.xml? controls.ini? Not sure.) someone from the community must already have stored the information whether it is a 4-way or an 8-way-game for all the games. Is this not the case? Do I have to manually set the controls and the 4-way/8-way settings for some of the games?

 

[Headrush69]

2 hours ago, Takachi said:

To answer your question: No, I haven't set the primary controls for any games so far. I thought that in one of the many configuration files (mame.xml? controls.ini? Not sure.) someone from the community must already have stored the information whether it is a 4-way or an 8-way-game for all the games. Is this not the case? Do I have to manually set the controls and the 4-way/8-way settings for some of the games?

Yes and no.

LEDBlinky uses the control.ini file for finding the primary controls before checking your custom mapping set using LEDBlinkyControlsEditor.

This file only contains some games. You also have to remember that depending on how you imported into LB, region based roms may not have an entry in controls.ini.

So for example, if you imported the MAME game 1941, but you have the North America version, 1941u, that isn't in controls.ini and LEDBLinky doesn't search the child-parent tree like MAME roms do.

If you enable the LEDBLinky debug option, the debug log is very informative and easy to read, you'll be able to tell if a specific rom is finding an entry for a rom and whether the issue is LEDBlinky itself, or just a missing mapping.

[Takachi]

OK, problem solved. Thank you so much for your helpful advice. Ultimately it was a combination of different issues and a fatal misconception on my side. But now I have figured out a way how to always have the servos set to the correct position for every single game automatically. It was a bit tricky though and requires some manual work (still on-going). It is not as "all-automatic" as I thought. Just as you said.