Controls Help: Xpadder and dual mice

[gryhnd]

Now that my build is done, I've also finished most of the tweaking I need for the controls, with two exceptions.

1) I'm coming up to speed on Xpadder, and wondering if there is a Gameex way to launch a specific Xpadder configuration for certain games. More specifically, my joys are 8 way and so is my Xpadder configs. However games like Pacman benefit from an Xpadder config with the joys set specifically to 4 way, so the corner inputs are ignored. What's the best way to handle that? Right now I drop out of GX, reset Xpadder, and then play. Hardly seamless.

2) The TurboTwist2 spinner and the X-Arcade trackball are both seen as mice, of course, and they work well. An occasional problem arise however, when playing games like Centipede. If I stray too far afield of the trackball I sometimes whack the spinner. This causes MAME to launch the player horizontally across the playfield, usually leading to my rapid death Is there a MAME or GX way to ignore the spinner when playing certain games, or more specifically use only one selected mouse input? Both are USB, fwiw.

Thanks.

[gryhnd]

...crickets...

I believe I've figured out how to call specific configs from the command line for Xpadder, but still need to figure out if there's a way to fire them for specific games.

Still not finding a way to deactivate a certain mouse though. Windows sees two mice, but the both come up looking identical and both in the same "location", whatever that means.

[bkenobi]

I use batch files for each. Calling XPadder with the config file and such proved unreliable.

[headkaze]

1) Off the top of my head I don't think there is a way to "LaunchBefore" with Mame. One way would be to write a small plugin that launches XPAdder if there is an XPAdder config file available for it. Quite simple to do if(File.Exists(...)) Process.Start(...). The plugin API recieves the ROM name before it's launched so it's quite easy to do this.

2) Perhaps you could try setting Mame to distinguish between the multiple mice. Check your mame.ini for the "multimouse" option. This allows you to configure them separately. From that you could disable input for certain games. I believe the GameEx Advanced Emulator Config's allow you to disable mice input but it's global. Mame supports multiple mice through the Raw Input System but it's practically impossible to block mice input through the Raw Input System.

Another way to turn on and off the individual mice is by doing it at the driver level. Using devcon.exe to enable and disable the driver as needed. Here's how to do it

If you run "devcon.exe hwids @HID*" it will list all the hardware Id's for your mice. Eg. Here is what I get when I execute it

HID\VID_045E&PID_0040\6&B8FB2B8&0&0000
	Name: Microsoft USB Wheel Mouse Optical
	Hardware ID's:
		HID\Vid_045e&Pid_0040&Rev_0300
		HID\Vid_045e&Pid_0040
		HID_DEVICE_SYSTEM_MOUSE
		HID_DEVICE_UP:0001_U:0002
		HID_DEVICE
1 matching device(s) found.

To turn this mouse driver off I would then use "devcon.exe disable HID\VID_045E&PID_0040" and to enable it again use "devcon.exe enable HID\VID_045E&PID_0040".

I've attached devcon compiled for both 32 and 64 Window's OS's which should work for anything greater than Windows 2000.

devcon.zip

[gryhnd]

Thanks HK, I'll check it out.

My MAME is somewhat dated, b/c it works well and I don't feel like updating all the ROMs (<--lazy). However if newer versions solve some of my problems I may have to go that route. At least there aren't as many ROMs in this machine as my upright.

It might be a while though, before I can sit down and hack away at this again..sudden schedule change. This machine isn't networked yet, so I can't VNC into it and work on it from...well work