BillK01 Posted March 1, 2020 Share Posted March 1, 2020 So my cabinet is supposed to ship this week and I’ve got my pc ready. I have Mame/Arcade, Daphne, Sega Genesis, SNES, Neo-Geo, Colecovision and Atari 2600 working with Big Box and it looks great with all the video preview etc. Spent most of today going through almost 3000 Arcade games and hiding the stuff I don’t want showing up in Big Box and still need to do that with the rest - plus get those specific emulators configured to look their best. That task isn’t nearly as overwhelming as the thoughts of configuring my controller to work with them all is. My question is - is there a simple way of setting up my controller other than opening each and every game and doing it manually? Even if I’d have to go in and clean up some games later. Thinking that something like at least getting all Arcade games set for up/down/left/right matched to my controller joystick 1 would at least help a bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmonkus Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 You don't have to do it on a per game basis at all, just per emulator and then if you need per game controller setups you can do it depending on the emulator. Both Retroarch and Mame allow for easy per game controller setups. I also advise having a cheap wireless keyboard hooked up just in case you do need it. We are talking about Windows here and occasionally having a keyboard is extremely handy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillK01 Posted March 2, 2020 Author Share Posted March 2, 2020 Thank you! I do have an old wireless kb & mouse I repurposed from an old pc at my office. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rydin4life Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 I'm a bit worried about this myself, but if I understand things correctly as @Lordmonkus says, you can go into MAME and set the General mappings and then into each game to make some tweaks....but I suppose you really won't know which ones to do until you play it for the first time, and hopefully may will work OK right from the start. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil9000 Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 7 minutes ago, rydin4life said: I'm a bit worried about this myself, but if I understand things correctly as @Lordmonkus says, you can go into MAME and set the General mappings and then into each game to make some tweaks....but I suppose you really won't know which ones to do until you play it for the first time, and hopefully may will work OK right from the start. Yeah, just set a general mappings for how you would like all your games. GenerallY i do A=BUTTON 1, B=BUTTON 2, X=BUTTON 3, Y-BUTTON 4, L BUTTON=BUTTON 5, R BUTTON= BUTTON 6, L TRIGGER= BUTTON 7, AND R TRIGGER=BUTTON 8. Then i change that when i find a game that doesnt work for me like that, Street Fighter 2 for example i like to put mediums on the shoulder buttons and have light and heavy's on the face buttons, thats purely personal preference. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillK01 Posted March 2, 2020 Author Share Posted March 2, 2020 44 minutes ago, neil9000 said: Yeah, just set a general mappings for how you would like all your games. GenerallY i do A=BUTTON 1, B=BUTTON 2, X=BUTTON 3, Y-BUTTON 4, L BUTTON=BUTTON 5, R BUTTON= BUTTON 6, L TRIGGER= BUTTON 7, AND R TRIGGER=BUTTON 8. Then i change that when i find a game that doesnt work for me like that, Street Fighter 2 for example i like to put mediums on the shoulder buttons and have light and heavy's on the face buttons, thats purely personal preference. Yea it almost seems like it'd be simpler with an xbox controller. Since I have the recroom masters emulator plus with both the spinner with 2 buttons, a trackball in addition to a single 4-way joy with 2 buttons and 2 8-way joys with 6 additional buttons each it may be a bit more involved. I haven't even begun to dive into setting games up with Daphne, SNES, Genesis, NeoGeo, Colecovision and Atari 2600 yet - which really makes me tired. I'll probably just wait until my cabinet is built to mess with all those. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItchyRobot Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 (edited) I have to say, the button mapping has been the biggest pain in the ass with this hobby - especially when you have multiple Xbox controllers and a double Arcade stick/Spinner/Track ball setup (using a keyboard module). Not that it is overwhelming, but a bit time consuming trying to figure out what will work best and not conflict. Each emulator has its own way to deal with pausing/quitting, etc.; so you need to figure out what keys best work for the most consistent button configurations when dealing with multiple emulators. I'd say just take your time and think critically to determine what is best for you. The BigBox pause menu has become my biggest hurdle. I tried setting up the Xbox Guide button as the BigBox pause menu, but have found that it conflicts with RetroArch, causing multiple pause menus that need to be closed. So I am now changing that to something else. I am not to far off from having it all setup like I want, but it has been a bit of a learning curve. I have a feeling it will never be done, but at least I know how it all works now. And it will continually get refined over time as I continue to tweak each game. My next project is creating a per game controller layout popup image for my favorite MAME games - using a Pause theme. It will all need to be custom to reflect my controller layout. It will take a while, but it is something I enjoy creating. Here is an example of my Mortal Kombat II (though I now need to change my Xbox button combos since RetroArch is throwing up its Pause menu when I used Guide button). https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WozzcdtKwZtVAJih6_PZDULQ33u3LMuY Edited March 2, 2020 by ItchyRobot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rydin4life Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 As funny as it may sound and as overwhelming as ALL of this was at the very beginning, I think the controller mapping is the biggest hurdle and probably the most frustrating. With my Recrom Masters cabinet, I'm only running MAME Arcade games, no console systems so that does make it easier on my side. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillK01 Posted March 2, 2020 Author Share Posted March 2, 2020 20 minutes ago, ItchyRobot said: My next project is creating a per game controller layout popup image for my favorite MAME games - using a Pause theme. It will all need to be custom to reflect my controller layout. It will take a while, but it is something I enjoy creating. That would be AWESOME to have. If you work on commission I'd love that for this controller! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItchyRobot Posted March 2, 2020 Share Posted March 2, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, BillK01 said: That would be AWESOME to have. If you work on commission I'd love that for this controller! No thanks! ? That is a great controller and a good company from what I have heard. If I was you, I would give them a call and ask for their MAME default.cfg (and maybe each games cfg file) file that would have all the buttons setup already-or at least to what they deam a good button per game setup. I have a feeling since that is such an expensive controller that they would have this available to its costumers. Though, not to confuse things more, but I am pretty sure each games cfg file is tied to the bezel layout too. So that could get hairy if you already have bezels setup. Edited March 2, 2020 by ItchyRobot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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