Can't find how to configure my controls for games (IPAC)

[zakvilneuv]

Hello.

I didn' find a section for a first post / presentation of myself, so I will do it within this post, better thant nothing I hope.

I built my own arcade cabinet last year, with an LCD, Raspberry Pi3, and an IPAC. I first used Retropie, but after months, decided to put a PC inside, in order to have more power and be able to run more recent PC games also.

I first tryed Hyperspin (HyperFreeSpin in fact), but spent too many days working on it, reading forums, and it was so a hard work, with mixed results, that I decided to give up last week-end. It was the 3rd complete week-end of work, added to every evenings during the last 3 weeks...

I then discovered GameEx, and I found it to be very nice, well developped, and the concept seemed very pleasant. I choosed a complete lifetime pass, in order to be able to use everything, and started to install and configure.

But I'm stuck, in the middle of nowhere.

I found a few posts/topics, concerning the IPAC (which I know is a keyboard encoder). I know also that we must replace the firmware of the newer versions (post 2015) with a special one which makes the gamepad function inactive (which helped a lot on Retropie and other distributions). I followed the entire advanced wizard, and saw where to assign keys (generated by the IPAC) in order to control the GameEx interface, but I can't find where to remap keys emulator by emulator for game controls using a GUI. It seems there isn't any GUI for that, inside GameEx. I saw the "advanced config" exe, which seems to help remapping keys, but I'm not sure I must use it. I searched also in the different ini files, but never found a simple, comprehensive section in these files, where I can see :

- Coin 1=

-Coin 2=

- Start 1=

- Start 2=

- button A=

- button B=

- button X=

- button Y=

- button L =

button R=

... and so on, as in any other frontend I tryed in the past.

I only found sections with button 1, 2, 3... 15 as I can remember, but how to make the relation between these numbers and the usual controls (A, B, X, Y, L, R, coin 1/2, start 1/2) ?

Must I do it all manually, using the virtual key codes (I saw that in a few posts), corresponding to keyboard inputs, and assign them to the different buttons numbers ? but how to know how to map them ?

Also, tell me if it's better replacing the original keys generated by the IPAC 2, with letters only, instead of "tab", ctrl", etc... This is important, as these keys are originally choosed because they are the keys used as standard in Mame... (even if I know it can be reconfigured later in Mame, for all games, or game by game). (For information, I attached the IPAC default keys)

And what about the other emulators ? Is it like in other frontends, for which you must configure control keys for each emulator ?

So as you can understand, it's very disappointing (maybe it's not the right word, sorry, I'm french), because I'm lost. I thought GameEx was a big GUI, nearly plug and play (as Retropie), compared to Hyperspin, but in my case, with an IPAC, it seems it's not...

I'm very sorry if I seem like "another newbie"... but I've searched and read a lot in this forum, without success... maybe i missed something... not sure...

Thank you for your help.

Stephane.

IPAC2 keys.pdf

[tthurman]

In the setup wizard, do you have "Enable Slik Stik and IPAC support"?

This was all that was necessary to get my (older) IPAC2 to work without issue in GameEx.

Key mapping is configured via the Ultrimarc interface.

 

[zakvilneuv]

Hello.

Thank's for your answer.

Yes, I enabled "Slik Stik / IPAC" in the Wizard.

Of course I can also remap the keys in the IPAC interface (WinIPAC V2 from Ultimarc). But same problem : which keys must I use to replace the default ones for controls in the different games/emulators ? And if I modify these default keys, I'll certainly have to reconfigure MAME's default control inputs in order to make it work.

Where can I find which keys to use ? (again, not for GameEx navigation because we can assign keys in the Wizard, but for emulators/games)

[zakvilneuv]

Is there  anybody who could help me, please ?...

[tthurman]

It seems most here use game pads, and while I use a controller with an IPAC, it's almost exclusively for MAME.

My setup is nothing, was pre-programed with the Ultrimarc software and not touched since. 

Have you tried looking into CP Wizard for this functionality?

 

[RedDog]

So, it sounds like you are asking if there is some sort of universal interface that will let you bind your IPAC binds to all of your emulators. Sadly, there isn't one. Considering all of the emulators that are out there, this would be a tall order to fill.

I remember some time ago when I went through all of my emulators to set up my gamepad. I ended up creating an excel spreadsheet just so I could track what buttons were reserved or unusable in each so I could figure out a player1 setup. Sorry to say that I don't have that excel sheet anymore, but there is also a pretty good chance that some of the emulators I am using will be different than yours...so different requirements.

It is  a bit of work trying to figure out some sort of universal binding setup so that when you go from emulator to emulator, there is some sort of consistency...but it is probably something you will need to just work through. Also, save your notes on the control setup somewhere. I myself am not looking forward to having to redo my setup, but as some point I will need to since I have added some emulators since I did it the first time.

[zakvilneuv]

In fact, with Raspberry Pi distributions (like RETROPIE), there is a GUI when starting for the first time, and it asks you to configure the different controls, ONCE, button after button, and after that, everything is mapped for all the emulators.

It's why I was asking this question.

But I understand it's not the cas in GameEx. So I installed a few emulators using the GameEx system packs (NES and SNES) and configured the controls in these emulators, outside of GameEx. It's working well.

NExt step, I want to add Mame, but as I wanted to install the latest version, I took the ROMset for this 0.192 version, and... as I don't want to keep all the ROMs, I can't use the GameEx sytem pack for that (tryed to replace the emulator inside the pack, ...). I will open another topic for that...