SlikStik trackball stopped working in games.... 3rd and 4th Player controls not working now either

[platdaddy]

Hello All,

I've been running GameEx for over a year without any problems. Recently I attempted to play a game that required the track ball. In the game, trackball does nothing. Trackball works inside gameEx to select menu's etc and also works in windows as well....just not in games. I then started some testing and realized that my 3rd and 4th player controls no longer work in games either (joysticks and buttons). All appear to work fine inside notepad.

1st and 2nd player controls appear to be working normally.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance for the help.

[jedah]

Try re-inputting the controls in mame for player 3 and 4 (Press tab ingame). Maybe an update did something to your control file. It maybe that the slikstik setting file got corrupt. I know that fresh installs of mame only come with the standard keyboard controls now (it used to have slikstik, x-arcade e.t.c).

Hope that helps.

J.

[platdaddy]

  jedah said:

Try re-inputting the controls in mame for player 3 and 4 (Press tab ingame). Maybe an update did something to your control file. It maybe that the slikstik setting file got corrupt. I know that fresh installs of mame only come with the standard keyboard controls now (it used to have slikstik, x-arcade e.t.c).

Hope that helps.

J.

Thanks for the reply. I did go into the Mame input and try resetting the controls for a particular game. It takes the changes but it still doesn't work in the game.

I have been using the same version of mame32 for over a year along with GameEx....kinda creeped up on me....weird.. I have not reinstalled mame32 or gameex....however I'm not sure if gameex auto updated itself.

[cvavruska]

  platdaddy said:

Thanks for the reply. I did go into the Mame input and try resetting the controls for a particular game. It takes the changes but it still doesn't work in the game.

I have been using the same version of mame32 for over a year along with GameEx....kinda creeped up on me....weird.. I have not reinstalled mame32 or gameex....however I'm not sure if gameex auto updated itself.

Go into the cfg directory and remove the game's cfg file in case it got corrupt somehow. You can also look at it. Also, look at the gameex.log file and see what the command line looks like. If you are using a -ctrlr file that does not contain definitions for p3+p4 then that might be the culprit.

[platdaddy]

  cvavruska said:

Go into the cfg directory and remove the game's cfg file in case it got corrupt somehow. You can also look at it. Also, look at the gameex.log file and see what the command line looks like. If you are using a -ctrlr file that does not contain definitions for p3+p4 then that might be the culprit.

Will do...thanks. Could be a corrupt file. I don't believe it is the particular game cfg as all games that use the trackball and/or 3rd or 4th player have the same issue. More likely a global cfg file. I will continue hunting.

[Brian Hoffman]

  platdaddy said:

Will do...thanks. Could be a corrupt file. I don't believe it is the particular game cfg as all games that use the trackball and/or 3rd or 4th player have the same issue. More likely a global cfg file. I will continue hunting.

edit your mame.ini to enable mouse.

If you dont have a mame.ini

run mame.exe -cc

other than that go into mame. press tab while mame is running and re-setup your other controls

[platdaddy]

  Brian Hoffman said:

edit your mame.ini to enable mouse.

If you dont have a mame.ini

run mame.exe -cc

other than that go into mame. press tab while mame is running and re-setup your other controls

ok. I went into the Mame32 setting and enabled the mouse. I have no clue as to how this was disabled. I also set the default control to SlikStik which is the control panel I have.

The only problem now is there seems to be "lag" when using the trackball ONLY in games. Operates fine outside of games. For example, when playing Golden Tee...it pulls back fine but when you roll it forward to swing, it stutters or stops half way or barely swings no matter how hard/fast you roll the track ball. Same for bowling games too.

[Brian Hoffman]

  platdaddy said:

ok. I went into the Mame32 setting and enabled the mouse. I have no clue as to how this was disabled. I also set the default control to SlikStik which is the control panel I have.

The only problem now is there seems to be "lag" when using the trackball ONLY in games. Operates fine outside of games. For example, when playing Golden Tee...it pulls back fine but when you roll it forward to swing, it stutters or stops half way or barely swings no matter how hard/fast you roll the track ball. Same for bowling games too.

It could be the sensitivity.. There are options for that also.

[platdaddy]

  Brian Hoffman said:

It could be the sensitivity.. There are options for that also.

Is it preferred to set the sensitivity in the OS, Mame32 or GameEx? Or does it make a difference?

[Brian Hoffman]

  platdaddy said:

Is it preferred to set the sensitivity in the OS, Mame32 or GameEx? Or does it make a difference?

mame.

Ingame is where you want it to be the most accurate right?

[bkenobi]

It's under analog settings as I recall. You can adjust the speed, sensitivity, re-centering speed, etc.

[platdaddy]

  bkenobi said:

It's under analog settings as I recall. You can adjust the speed, sensitivity, re-centering speed, etc.

It is very possible I'm an idiot, but I don't see anything regarding analog settings in Mame32. Still looking however.

[Brian Hoffman]

  platdaddy said:

It is very possible I'm an idiot, but I don't see anything regarding analog settings in Mame32. Still looking however.

press Tab while in mame (in game)

[bkenobi]

Sorry, yes it's only available in game. This is a per game setting, so you may want to adjust the analog settings for each of the analog games you play. Adjusting this carefully can make a game that seems unplayable work almost as well as the original.

[platdaddy]

Thanks for the reply and helpful info. I did indeed know that....haha...it's been a long time since I've messed with my arcade machine... worked flawlessly for over a year. I did adjust the analog settings and it did help. However, it was still not great. After further investigation, it appears the trackball isn't catching on the rollers when rolled at moderate speed. Even in windows if you give the mouse ball a good spin, it stays where its at (stuttering) for a moment then shoots off (almost as if it finally catches). I disassembled my track ball and the rollers have grooves on them and were very dirty. I cleaned them up and it helped a little but I may need to replace the trackball all together or at minimum the rollers. I'll let you know how it turns out.

[bkenobi]

In some trackballs and spinners, if you spin them too fast, they will not work correctly. There are many threads on BYOAC.com discussing a phenomenon where the device will move opposite to what you specified if moved too quickly. These problems are caused by the poling rate of the device and the rate at which you spin the encoder disk.

I'm not going to get too technical here, but when you move the trackball, you spin little shafts underneath it. Those shafts have encoder wheels (like little pinwheels) attached to them at one end. Those encoders sit in-between a LED emitter and LED detector (sometimes a single unit, sometimes two components). When you spin the ball/spinner, the encoder disk spins and breaks the light beam. Depending on the direction of spin, the device will respond according to what you input. Now the problem comes in when you consider that the device only checks the light beam every so many milliseconds. If you spin the wheel fast enough that the light beam is broken and then unbroken before the device poles again, it won't know that you moved anything. If you slow down slightly, it will catch the tail end of the beam being unbroken and think you are moving backwards or maybe just twitching it. If you slow down even more, it will then see what's going on correctly and the cursor will shoot across the screen.

Something else COULD be going on, but this is the most likely cause. The solution many people have looked at is using a program to increase the poling rate of their PS/2 interface devices (mouse hack), or moving to USB.

[platdaddy]

  bkenobi said:

In some trackballs and spinners, if you spin them too fast, they will not work correctly. There are many threads on BYOAC.com discussing a phenomenon where the device will move opposite to what you specified if moved too quickly. These problems are caused by the poling rate of the device and the rate at which you spin the encoder disk.

I'm not going to get too technical here, but when you move the trackball, you spin little shafts underneath it. Those shafts have encoder wheels (like little pinwheels) attached to them at one end. Those encoders sit in-between a LED emitter and LED detector (sometimes a single unit, sometimes two components). When you spin the ball/spinner, the encoder disk spins and breaks the light beam. Depending on the direction of spin, the device will respond according to what you input. Now the problem comes in when you consider that the device only checks the light beam every so many milliseconds. If you spin the wheel fast enough that the light beam is broken and then unbroken before the device poles again, it won't know that you moved anything. If you slow down slightly, it will catch the tail end of the beam being unbroken and think you are moving backwards or maybe just twitching it. If you slow down even more, it will then see what's going on correctly and the cursor will shoot across the screen.

Something else COULD be going on, but this is the most likely cause. The solution many people have looked at is using a program to increase the poling rate of their PS/2 interface devices (mouse hack), or moving to USB.

Thanks for the very informative run down. It makes perfect sense to me. I guess what is bugging me is that it has worked flawlessly in the past. Even spinning it hard. I never adjusted my analog settings either. Also, spinning the ball left or right does not react the same way. Takes off immediately...Only forward and very slightly backward does the problem become apparent. I may replace the shafts and see what happens.

On a somewhat related note, is there a "ballpark" number that seems to be a good starting point for the analog settings?

BTW....this is a Happ 3" trackball. It is USB if I'm not mistaken.

[bkenobi]

I didn't realize it worked correctly at one point using the same movements. If so, then something else is up. Could be a dirty/oily shaft or a bad/dirty encoder board. I'm not sure what else to check. If it's a hardware problem (which it currently sounds like it is), I would highly recommend asking on the BYOAC forums. This is the type of question they can answer quickly and correctly (by reputation anyway).