Updated MAME Analog+ or MC-Escher diff

[bkenobi]

To start with, I have a pair of SNK LS-30 rotary joysticks in my cabinet connected to a GP-WizRX controller. These seem to work fine in Windows, but play like crap in rotary games like Ikari Warriors. I've both read and been told that MAME Analog+ works much better for rotary games as well as most other analog control games. Well, I finally tried it today and realized what they were talking about.

Here's the primary difference in relation to rotary control:

Vanilla MAME uses two buttons for each player to control rotation. If you hold down the button, it will rotate 1 click for a given amount of time depending on how you have your controls setup. If you have the sensitivity set fast, it will swing around rapidly for instance.

MAME Analog+ uses the MC-Escher patch that changes these buttons to work correctly. So if you hold down the rotation button, it will only rotate 1 click. In an actual rotary joystick, 1 click is 1 button press, so this makes really good sense.

Anyway, I can use MAME Analog+ that's posted on the homepage, but the only version I could get working was 0.87.2 (the newest is 0.90). I was just wondering if anyone out there might know how to take the diff that's posted on the MAME Analog+ site and strip it down to include only the MC-Escher changes so that it could be compiled into the current version with HK's MAME compiler? I tried putting something together, but failed miserably.

In case anyone wants to help, the last version that made any changes to the rotary stuff is apparently 0.74.1, so anything after that would work for generating the stripped down diff.

[headkaze]

Depends on how many changes they made as to how hard it is to create a new diff for the latest version of Mame.

First problem is the version difference 0.90u1 and 0.124. There are many changes there already, including the massive change to the Raw Input System in 0.107. If they are using Direct Input that could be a problem because AFAIK that code was either disabled or removed. Although I do remember some switch to turn it on DIRECTINPUT=1 or something. Not sure if that would still have an effect.

Now if you have a look there is already a diff file on that page next to the source download. Take a look at the size of the diff. It's about 10 times larger than the hiscore diff patches. So to be honest, considering the large jump in version and the size of the changes it would be a big job to update it to the latest version and possibly large enough to be alot of work going up a single version.

The reason these Mame derivitives die out is because they are hard work to maintain. And I'm sure that every so often vanilla Mame would have a large enough update to make the job big enough for the derivitive to die. The reason hiscore diff is still going strong is it only changes a few things in the source and is quite easy to update.

I remember updating a diff file that was made for Mame 0111u3 to add multiple soundcard support. I updated it to 0121 and it was about the same amount of changes as the hiscore diff and took me about an hour to update. So yeah doesn't look very promising.

If you do want to give it a try, download the diff and it shows you the changes and which source files and location they change. So you will have to compare those changes with the old source code and the new and figure out how it needs to be translated to the new source.

[HooPZ]

I'd suggest posting this at BYOAC in the Software forum. The author of Mame Analog+ is U_rebel_scum and he is very active answering questions over there. He is absolutely the best resource for source changes to Mame and is extremely patient while he helps people. No offense to HK or anyone else, but it seems logical to me that the author of the derivative program could help you out quite easily.

Good luck!

[bkenobi]

Cool, I'll give BYOAC a try. I didn't know if the author was still around since the derivative hasn't been updated in several years.

HK: Yeah, I saw the diff and that's why I was interested. The main changes are to 4 functions that deal with the rotary commands, but there may be more. There is actually a modified source available from MC-Escher directly for version 0.56 and 0.63, but the Analog+ version claimed to include updates/improvements. I noticed how big that file was and knew that there was a big change to the inputs at v0.107, which is why I was hoping someone who had messed around with this stuff might take a glance. The updated controls is precisely why I don't know what I'm doing, actually

[HooPZ]

Cool, I'll give BYOAC a try. I didn't know if the author was still around since the derivative hasn't been updated in several years.

HK: Yeah, I saw the diff and that's why I was interested. The main changes are to 4 functions that deal with the rotary commands, but there may be more. There is actually a modified source available from MC-Escher directly for version 0.56 and 0.63, but the Analog+ version claimed to include updates/improvements. I noticed how big that file was and knew that there was a big change to the inputs at v0.107, which is why I was hoping someone who had messed around with this stuff might take a glance. The updated controls is precisely why I don't know what I'm doing, actually

I believe he stopped updating it because of how Mame implemented multiple mice. There may have been more to it than that, but I know that was a factor.

[bkenobi]

Btw, MAME Analog+ UID is "u_rebelscum". Thanks!

[bkenobi]

I PM'ed him. Hopefully that won't be taken as too direct. I will update this thread with whatever I hear back for anyone else who might be interested.

[HooPZ]

Btw, MAME Analog+ UID is "u_rebelscum". Thanks!

Ooops, I missed that. His posts are always informative even if some go way over my head.

[headkaze]

Didn't know u_rebelscum was the author of Analog+. He knows quite a lot about Mame's input system and gave me a few pointers when I first started writing CPWizard. Still I think development of Analog+ stopped for a reason, and he's probably had a few people ask for updates before. Still he is friendly and helpful so might have a solution to your problem anyway.