New here and could use some help

[chronicnight83]

Hi guys. I'm been working on a 4-player control panel for a little while as a side project, and when I found GameEx, I immediately knew that I needed it as my front end. I'm still really new to most of this stuff, and the guides have been extremely helpful in helping me do so much more than I thought I would be able to. But I still have a few questions that I could not find perfect answers to, so I was hoping some of you guys could give me some input.

The first. Most of my sorting done by GameEx seems solid, and makes it great for me. I've just been trying random games here and there to make sure they work and such. I have most settings pretty much the default in the GameEx settings, and four player games set to yes. When I head into the 4-player game section and try to play Captain America and the Avengers, it plays the 2-player version that allows me to select the characters, instead of the 4-player where the character is tied to a position on the control panel. I know other games have the 4-player version selecting, such as TMNT, Simpsons and WWF Wrestlemania (and a handful of others I started up and cannot recall offhand). Any ideas? What info would you need from me to help figure out why this is happening?

Next. Related to the 4-player configuration, I'm just wondering what other people with 4-player setups do for 4-player games. Right now I have it set up as player locations of 3,1,2,4. But this is a weird setup when you play games like TMNT and Simpsons where the location is tied to the character, but it doesn't match up with 1,2,3,4. Is there a way to reconfigure the settings to use different controls for 4-player games that I select off of the 4-player menu in GameEx (or I guess just in general), so I can make it match the game?

Thanks for any help guys.

[MNMax21]

The second part I've never really paid attention to or noticed I guess. I set my 4 player up the way you describe. That would be more of a MAME aspect than GameEx I believe. Mine is 3, 1, 2 and 4. I wanted 1 and 2 to be front and center. I think Simpsons followed that plan, as I was marge and was like WTF when I started whipping the vacuum around. You can map any controls you want in MAME by just hitting tab within the game. It will bring the on screen menu. Just make sure to select the one that says something like input for this game only, rather than general, which would change all your games. I had to make my player one, button two button the 'divide' button instead of 'alt' I have a SNES simulator that wouldn't let alt be used at all for any controls. Which made button two useless in that emulator until I remapped it!! Annoying.... I have 8 buttons per player, a joystick each and a trackball. I highly recommend an ipac 4 for 4 player control panels!

I cannot answer the first part, not a clue. Sorry.

[MNMax21]

The first part sounds like a game list issue... That's all I can think of. You might want to research building your own lists..

[chronicnight83]

Awesome, thanks for the reply. So I could go into MAME (does it have to be outside of GameEx, or is it okay to edit my controls even if it loaded through GameEx?) and setup the controls specifically for that game. And then I should be able to find some controller config data for that game, and copy/paste it into a spot for other games that I would like to do that to?

If so, that sounds easy enough and a great fix.

Thanks!

[Draco1962]

You can manipulate controls by hitting TAB when you are in game I believe.

[celly]

Thats right, Tab. I find it easier to check controls while still in GameEx as its easier to move from one title to the next via the frontend.

[MNMax21]

Yeah, sounds like you're getting it. I find it easier to just change the games in the tab menu, rather than the config. I just play them through GameEx and if I find something that doesn't make sense, I just change it for that specific game. When I did the remapping of my iPac board, I had to change the controls for all games. That way it would follow my layout, rather than the default MAME layout. Basically, MAME and iPac don't really map controls past buttons 4 on players 3 and 4. Some of the controls they map are duplicates as well. You'll find this out when you venture into the four player realm. Most of the time I don't think you'd notice. I'm not even sure if there is a game in MAME that utilizes 8 buttons each for 4 players. I chose my layout based on the belief that I would be using it for other Emulators as well. The PS1 and SNES for example, which both have 4 buttons on the face and then the upper L and R buttons. If you really want to get crazy, you should look into CPWizard. It's an awesome design tool that allows you to create your control panel, with colors and all. You can even map the controls to match you panel. It's a pretty sweet item.

[MNMax21]

This web page was a wonderful resource for me when I was setting everything up. I still monkey around with the thing to this day.

http://mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php/FAQ:Controls