Trackball menu navigation

[WfM]

Hi all,

I have been doing searches for an answer to my question and can't seem to find it even though I know I may have seen it before. Anyway, is there a way to navigate the game list in Gameex (particularly MAME games) with your trackball instead of the joysticks. Trackball works fine in the games themselves and in the Windows environment. I would like to scroll through the game listings though instead of holding down the joystick.

I realize this has probably been answered numerous times, but I coudn't seem to find the answer. TIA for any help.

[bkenobi]

Try this script out.

Mouse2Key_v2.1.zip

[WfM]

I hate to seem the total idiot, but I'm new to figuring a lot of this out. How do I implement this script? Thanks a lot for your reply.

[bkenobi]

This is an AutoHotKey script. You can either install AHK and run the script (it runs in the background) or you can compile it with AHK to an exe file then run it (in the background again). If you want, I can compile it for you and upload again.

[WfM]

That would be awesome if you would compile it for me and let me run it as an .exe I really appreciate your help. Thanks again.

[Tempest]

Here you go...

Mouse2Key_v2.1.exe.7z

[bkenobi]

Thanks Tempest

[WfM]

Thanks for the file, I appreciate it. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to do anything other than place a mouse cursor on the game menu screen. It doesn't allow me to scroll through the games, etc. Perhaps I am still not understanding things? Thanks again.

[bkenobi]

This script will take mouse movements and turn them into cursor presses. As I recall, you have to turn off the slick stick option. I can't remember if there was anything else that was needed. I had posted this in a thread a long time ago, but I can't seem to located it now. I specified what was needed in order to run this there, but basically just default settings as far as I remember. Tempest set this up recently, so perhaps he remembers...

[Tempest]

I think I had to set "Enable Keyboard DirectIput" to "No" under "Input Settings"

[WfM]

I am actually using a slikstik panel in my cabinet, so that may be the problem since I do have the option to use it enabled.

[bkenobi]

I don't know if that option is required or not (don't have a SlikStik), but you could try turning it off to see if that helps. If the SlikStik stops working, then I guess this script won't help you much.

[Tom Speirs]

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)..

[E-T]

I would also like to have this option.

I loaded and ran the mousekey.exe program and it loads and is shown in the taskbar ( running programs ).

It unfortunately doesn't seem to do anything.

I ran it and then ran gameex, but it had no effect.

I then tried in windows environment while looking in a directory. pressing arrow keys moved from file to file, but moving the mouse ( or trackball ) did nothing.

Should it not work in windows environment ?

Am I missing something ?

[bkenobi]

If you are talking about Mouse2Key that I posted, then yes it will work in Windows ONLY when a window containing "GameEx" in the title is active. Otherwise, the program just sits there and waits. You can open a text file in notepad with the name GameEx.txt or something and it should send up/down arrows (add a few carriage returns to the file and you should see the cursor move up and down).

[E-T]

OK I tried it while editing the GameEx.ini file and it worked great.

Then I tried it in GameEx and it didn't work.

The odd time I got it to simulate an up arrow and a side arrow, but basically a fluke ( works 1% of the time ).

Could it be because I am running GameEx in arcade mode ? I have a arcade cabinet with an arcade monitor.

I turned off slickstick and keyboard direct input as per bkenobi's and tempent's suggestions but this didn't help.

[bkenobi]

I'm not sure. I run this on my driving cab and it works fine. I think Tempest uses his in a driving cab as well and I would have expected him to say something if it didn't work. He wrote a very similar script a while back, so I know this works on at least two machines. I do remember that there were certain settings that needed to be made, but I can't remember what they were! I can post my GameEx.ini if you want to check it out...

gameex.ini.txt

[Tempest]

The script definately works. I found the thread where I was having issues:

http://www.gameex.info/forums/index.php?ac...;f=2&t=5979

and according to that, You will need to disable custom keyboard input, and keyboard direct input.

[E-T]

Yes that did the trick

The only strange thing is that going side to side with the trackball goes up and down in the GameEx menus and game list ?? But the directions are all correct for windows env. and game play ??

Works great other than that.

Thanks Tempest.

[Tempest]

I'm sort of jumping in on BK's territory...

I looked at the script, it uses the most active axis. It should move up and down in the list with either side to side, or up and down movement of the trackball. It also has code in it so that it only works when GameEx active (I think he mentioned that above?) so it wouldn't affect other programs, or your desktop. Your trackball is probably seen as a mouse to Windows.

[bkenobi]

Yeah, the trackball is a mouse in windows. And, now that I think about it, custom keyboard input was definitely the other problem. That took some time to figure out the first time.

Background: I wrote this script to use a pair of 360° steering wheels in my driving cab in GameEx. I wanted both wheels to control the menu navigation so either player could control the menu. Since the wheels are hooked up to a mouse on the 2 axis and they tend to twitch +/- 1 notches on the encoder wheel (or pixels if you like), I had to include some code to make the most active axis the one that's used.

If you like, you can disable either the x- or y-axis in the code or even reverse the direction of either pretty easily. If you don't know how to do that, post what you want to do and either Tempest or I can fix you right up!

[E-T]

Yes you are right, both directions work.

I don't know why it wasn't working last night.

For some reason it is not working consistently.

I find if I am spinning the trackball down it will scroll down the games but it stops scrolling after a while.

I then have to switch to spinning sideways to continue. The same thing happens for up.

It is very nice of you to offer to modify the script for me, but now that I have played with it, I find that

since the custom keyboard has to be set to False, my custom prograamed buttons don't work now.

I have the player one button#2 programmed as a 'back' button so I don't have to go to the top menu bar

which is a cumbersome for my system.

I guess in my case the script application causes more trouble than benefit.

Really cool application though. thanks to everyone for your help.

Cheers

[bkenobi]

Yeah, I was actually hoping that this might get included in the last update when Tom offered to take a look at this. There's still a chance especially since this script doesn't solve all configurations. The best bet is to post to the features request thread and ask for trackball/spinner navigation support and point to this thread. I don't know if it will help though.

To be honest though, since this is working for me (even with some restrictions), I am much more interested in the multiple MAME version support that may be incorporated soon. Because of that, I'm not pushing for any more features as that's truly my #1 request!