Controls.xml

[Tempest]

Everybody,

BK and I had a discussion awhile back on inaccurate data in the controls.xml file.

I have decided to update the file to make it as accurate as possible.

I have only just started, but I wanted to give a couple of examples of things I have found...

<game romname="airbustr" gamename="Air Buster: Trouble Specialty Raid Unit (World)" numPlayers="2" alternating="0" mirrored="1" usesService="0" tilt="0" cocktail="0">
  <miscDetails>
Only 1 button on the CP but Mame has 2 mapped (both doing the same thing)
  </miscDetails>
  <player number="1" numButtons="1">
   <controls>
	<control name="8-way Joystick">
	 <constant name="joy8way"/>
	</control>
   </controls>
  <labels>
	<label name="P1_BUTTON1" value="Fire"/>
	<label name="P1_JOYSTICK_UP" value="Up"/>
	<label name="P1_JOYSTICK_DOWN" value="Down"/>
	<label name="P1_JOYSTICK_LEFT" value="Left"/>
	<label name="P1_JOYSTICK_RIGHT" value="Right"/>
   </labels>
  </player>
 </game>

It says in the miscdetails that it only had one button, but mame has two mapped. I'm thinking I don't care what Mame has mapped, when I use Romlister, I want one button games listed.

I've also been complaining that controls.xml says that Asteroids uses a joystick, when it doesn't, so I changed the entry to:

 <game romname="asteroid" gamename="Asteroids (rev 2)" numPlayers="2" alternating="1" mirrored="1" usesService="0" tilt="1" cocktail="0">
  <miscDetails>
  </miscDetails>
		<player number="1" numButtons="5">
   <controls>
	<control name="Just Buttons">
	 <constant name="button"/>
	</control>
   </controls>
  <labels>
	<label name="P1_BUTTON1" value="FIRE"/>
	<label name="P1_BUTTON2" value="THRUST"/>
	<label name="P1_BUTTON3" value="HYPER SPACE"/>
	<label name="P1_BUTTON4" value="ROTATE LEFT"/>
	<label name="P1_BUTTON5" value="ROTATE RIGHT"/>
   </labels>
  </player>
 </game>

I'm am not able to verify at this time whether Button4 is left, or right, but I will double check all changes before I am finished.

Another example is that Special Criminal Investigation is listed as having a joystick, since I own a SCI, I can assure you that it does not...

My plan is to check at KLOV first for their descriptions, then Mame CP, and Cabinet pictures.

I will not make any changes that I cannot verify, and will be skipping all Majong games.

I would like input as to wether my plan is a good one, and possible issues to avoid. Also, if anyone has games that they know are incorrect, please post any suggestions here.

HK: I'm probably playing with fire here, but I have a pretty good idea that you have more experience than anyone else here with Controls.xml, is there anything that you would like to see changed? Jeff Leyda (the author of Romlister) mentioned this:

oh yeah, here's another issue to be aware of.

when a game has no buttons at all,

controls.dat says "numButtons=0"

MAME has no buttons entry whatsoever, so you should use:

( Buttons=6 | Buttons=5 | Buttons=4 | Buttons=3 | Buttons=2 | Buttons=1 |

buttons=0 | !buttons= )

doing a search for only "!buttons=" yielded 338 hits. That means there

are 338 games out there with no buttons whatsoever, that controls.dat is

missing information on. yowch. I don't actually believe this to be

correct-I mean, I think MAME's xml data is wrong on a lot of those, but

that's a big number of roms that we're skipping over!

I've just changed this in the code for the next build.

-jeff!

Since he already has a work-around for it, I'm not planning on changing any entries regarding the Numbuttons=0 issue, unless you say otherwise.

Anything else?

[bkenobi]

I have personally been concerned with the 5 and 6 button games since I (apparently) mapped my CP wrong . I have a 7 button NeoGeo/SF layout with the buttons on the bottom starting with 1 and the 3 on the top starting with 5. Most people do it the other way. This is good if you like using the SF layout normally, but I don't. Anyway, to fix this, I created a couple custom folders for GameEx that contain just 5 and 6 button games so I can remap them manually. The list was somewhat surprising in that the number of games didn't look right. Do a listing in RomLister and see what I mean. It's missing a ton of games.

I don't know if this is a controls.xml problem or a problem with me being inept, but either way...

[headkaze]

I spoke to SirPoonga (Controls.dat creator) not so long ago and he was talking about doing an update. He is always looking for help on this. What I'll do is send him a PM on BYOAC about this thread. Hopefully we can help him out with a new version.

[SirPoonga]

Hey guys,

Yeah, the site needs updating. I haven't done much updating because people have stopped helping out. I will try to update the game list to the current mame soon.

Did they fix Asteroids in mame? The reason it is mapped to joystick is mame mapped it to a joystick.

Controls.dat was made under the assumption that you will query mame what controls it uses and then use the dat file to label the controls. That's why airbustr has two buttons. If you query mame it will return that the game has two buttons. If you want to label them both then will know how to label them.

It's a balance between being accurate to what was on the control panel and to what is in mame.

If games need updating by all means use the update form. We require proof that the information is accurate. If it is something like Asteroids and they switched the controls in mame just say mame changed. I can look that up in mame.

I see Spy Hunter is in the queue, the problem is the dude didn't provide proof that is proper labels. before I accept a submission I check the source to see it's legit and then I look at mame to make sure the controls mame lists are mapped.

You know what I should allow to the public. I made some special functions for the add and update form for HowardC and me. We can copy an existing submission. We didn't add that functionality for public use because we knew people would get lazy and not verify stuff after they copied something. however, it is useful to add mahjong games.

[Tempest]

Yeah, after further digging, I figured out that you guys were going by what Mame had mapped. I can see why you would do it that way, but it does cause issues of which I'm sure you are aware. What do you think the odds are of convincing Mamedev of changing their mappings to match the original CP layouts?