Opinions wanted - recoding custom input in GameEx

[Tom Speirs]

Ive been thinking for a while I should rewrite the custom controls system in GameEx.

On of the things I know I want to do is to be able to configure the global exit combos for games. Its seems most folks dont even realise that features already in there so I must be doing something wrong, along with the fact its hard coded to specific keyboard and gamepad controls.

The other thing is allow customisation of game pad controls to allow directions to be custom too, so folks can use dpad etc.

So I though id put it out there for you to comment on. Really looking for design ideas rather than extreme feature requests.

Thanks.

Tom.

[Brian Hoffman]

Ive been thinking for a while I should rewrite the custom controls system in GameEx.

On of the things I know I want to do is to be able to configure the global exit combos for games. Its seems most folks dont even realise that features already in there so I must be doing something wrong, along with the fact its hard coded to specific keyboard and gamepad controls.

The other thing is allow customisation of game pad controls to allow directions to be custom too, so folks can use dpad etc.

So I though id put it out there for you to comment on. Really looking for design ideas rather than extreme feature requests.

Thanks.

Tom.

Well, Gameex has tons of options, Which is a good thing! However our users seem to be broken up into two groups. Powerusers and Novice users

Your power users will be able to figure out what is needed and how it gets put together and you may never see a post about it in the forum

Our novice users may be skilled enough to setup and configure the command line options to get the emulator to run but may not know how to take it a step further to remap the controls, assign exit keys or figure they need to kill or wait for other processes to terminate. Which is alot of the questions I see. Part of the issue is all this information is in a txt file and I can see it being intiminating even though you have labled everything very nicley. Perhaps re-organizing and adding them into the advanced config gui may make it seem easier to configure and understand

The global exit hotkey is a good idea and is how another fe does it.

Re-mapping the controls for controlling gameex is an excellent idea and has been requested before. Ive seen people use AHK scripts to do this so if you can implement it the better.

At least that my opnion.

Brian Hoffman

[Tom Speirs]

Well actually all the existing stuff already has a GUI for it now, so no offence but I need a bit more than that! Like what does GameEx not do that needs an AHK script in regard to controls?

[Tom Speirs]

Re-mapping the controls for controlling gameex is an excellent idea and has been requested before. Ive seen people use AHK scripts to do this so if you can implement it the better.

At least that my opnion.

Brian Hoffman

Do you mean like AutoHotKey here?

Sorry, might have misunderstood in my previous post. You mean like in built AutoHotKey style stuff?

[Tempest]

This has been requested before, but it would nice to be able to use a combination of Joystick buttons, and keyboard inputs for alpha paging, etc.

[chriss]

or maybe have two seperate buttons like page up/down for alpha paging. this feature seems to confuse most people who were on my arcade. pressing a button and then flip through the pages with the joystick...

I would like to have the left joystick on my arcade for normal scrolling and the right joystick for flipping

[IMBerzerk]

or maybe have two seperate buttons like page up/down for alpha paging. this feature seems to confuse most people who were on my arcade. pressing a button and then flip through the pages with the joystick...

I would like to have the left joystick on my arcade for normal scrolling and the right joystick for flipping

At this point, that's the only issue I have as well. I have successfully remapped many keys for use inside emulators already and it works great. Most recently is the CC64 emulator. I now have 'F1-F7' and 'Y,N,T' keys mapped through the configuration setup.

My only grip is that I have to press a button, then move the stick left or right for alpha paging. That time delay you put in there for the left/right use on a cabinet was a blessing.

But to me, just having a better set of instruction like an 'idiot's guide' or something is fine. I don't see a need to change anything in the mapping configuration program. Once you understand how to use it, it's real easy and very powerful.

[bkenobi]

If you are going to rewrite anything, PLEASE make it possible to use multiple keys for the same command. I would really like the ability to use two buttons for escape (in my case P2 up + P2 down). I would also like to have multiple keys perform the same task (P1 and P2 could control the FE without needing to use XPadder or a key remapping script.

Other than that, I think the Setup Wizard made most things easily accessible as long as people know it's there. Thanks for considering my plea

[Tom Speirs]

Does it not already do that? I know not through the Gui but via the INI it should.

[KEYBOARD]

# Scan Code Number

# See Scancodes.txt for a list of Scan Codes specific to your system.

# If file not there, run GameEx.

# To assign more than 1 key to a control, seperate scan code with |

Looks like its just for keyboard though.

[IMBerzerk]

Does it not already do that? I know not through the Gui but via the INI it should.

[KEYBOARD]

# Scan Code Number

# See Scancodes.txt for a list of Scan Codes specific to your system.

# If file not there, run GameEx.

# To assign more than 1 key to a control, seperate scan code with |

Looks like its just for keyboard though.

So Tom, I want to map {Alt}+{8} for use in CCS64, how do I write that into the ini file?

Thanks..

[Tom Speirs]

Sorry, not with you, whats that in relation to this topic?

[IMBerzerk]

Sorry, not with you, whats that in relation to this topic?

Well it's not at this point, I think we went off topic somewhere before what I wrote. I just wanted to know how to map 2 keys in the ini file as you suggested. I can work the GUI without a problem, but that's about all.

Like I mentioned, it is sort of the problem with the mapping. It works very well, but if you're not a programmer, or don't understand coding, you can only do what the GUI allows you to(my case). Now, if you don't understand ANYTHING about using key mapping and emulation, IE a newbie, you're going to be a little overwhelmed.

GameEx is outstanding, with a ton of great options. But for the 1st timer, it can be rough until you've worked with it long enough to get accustomed with the many options available. If you could tweak the mapping GUI to allow a 2-key mapping input, that might help a lot of folks trying to use it instead of trying to work with the INI file.

I hope I explained myself better.

Thanks.

[bkenobi]

I had no idea that was possible! I'll have to try it out. If it worked in the joystick section too, then I could ditch my XPadder setup for GameEx! As it is, I'll give this a try. Hopefully this can simplify things a bit.

[Tempest]

I guess trackball/spinner/dial support is something that should go in my thread about building on the input in GameEx, perhaps? I know it refers to custom input, but I am really looking at the whole of input in GameEx. As I dont have one of those controls, how should it work? (please use other thread)..

I use Bkenobi's script on my driving cab.

It sends up / down keypresses based on mouse movement. As I spin the steering wheel, the highlighted item in the menu changes...

It would be nice to be able to define which axis' will send which keys, and I think you would have to have some kind of sensitivity adjustment.

You should be able to test it with a mouse.

[bkenobi]

Each axis should be reversible in the settings as well. I have my steering wheels set up so that if I turn either one right it moves down the list in GameEx. I don't know off the top of my head which way the axis is actually set up relative to the mouse though. So I guess being able to just assign a key to each axis direction would be good enough.

When I coded this up, I used a minimum travel before sending a key since the mouse can twitch +/- a pixel or so without any movement of the wheel. So, I think the best way to implement this would be sending the key if the mouse is moved a certain distance (defined by a sensitivity value in the config). Also, if you have a larger list, it would be really nice to have a way to increase the speed of the scroll. I tried to implement this by looking at how far the mouse was moved in the poll time and paging if it was above the threshold. I couldn't get it to work correctly because the pageup/pagedown buttons didn't seem to send correctly. I never got into it too far because there aren't that many games on my driving cab. If this were used on a cab with a spinner on the main control panel, it might be a nice feature to be able to wing the spinner and shoot down the list...

I'm not saying my code is perfect, but I think it works the way I would want it implemented. Maybe you could fire it up and see what it does if my explanation isn't that clear.

http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?ac...ost&id=4735

[Endaar]

From another thread:

I guess trackball/spinner/dial support is something that should go in my thread about building on the input in GameEx, perhaps? I know it refers to custom input, but I am really looking at the whole of input in GameEx. As I dont have one of those controls, how should it work? (please use other thread)..

IMO...Right now, when you move the mouse, it moves the highlight. The arrow keys move the highlight and will scroll the list when you reach the end. What I think a trackball should do is scroll the list without moving the highlight. This is exactly how the scroll-wheel on my mouse works and it's my preferred method of browsing. I think this could be as simple as adding a switch which changes between the list being static or the highlight being static, and that would then work for anything connected as a mouse. Hopefully that makes sense.

Endaar

[Tempest]

From another thread:

IMO...Right now, when you move the mouse, it moves the highlight. The arrow keys move the highlight and will scroll the list when you reach the end. What I think a trackball should do is scroll the list without moving the highlight. This is exactly how the scroll-wheel on my mouse works and it's my preferred method of browsing. I think this could be as simple as adding a switch which changes between the list being static or the highlight being static, and that would then work for anything connected as a mouse. Hopefully that makes sense.

Endaar

I thought I would give this a 'bump' as a great idea.