Donkey Kong joystick control not working

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triggerhappy
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Donkey Kong joystick control not working

Post by triggerhappy » Tue Sep 29, 2020 3:13 am

Apologies for all the posts! I just installed my new ARpiCADE in my JAMMA cabinet and am a bit of a noob with all the configuration options, MAME emulators, etc.

I've tested a number of games so far, which have worked as expected for the most part, with the notable exception of Donkey Kong.

When I load the game, it does not recognize P1 joystick motion or button presses, which is problematic because I only have one joystick in my cabinet. This is not an issue in other games; the others I have tried (including Donkey Kong 3) all recognize P1 inputs.

When I hit Tab after loading Donkey Kong and go to the menu to edit the controls, I noticed that if I edit the input for P1 joystick up and push up on my joystick, it registers as P2 joystick up. So that tells me that something is fishy with the control mapping in that game. I'm just not sure how to fix it.

Any suggestions?

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Re: Donkey Kong joystick control not working

Post by dee2eR » Wed Sep 30, 2020 1:04 am

Not knowing exactly which emulator you're using this is only a general suggestion...

I think the hotkeys system may be confusing you here. The hotkeys system makes up a virtual 3rd controller (or 5th when using the four player adaptor...) which I think MAME is picking up as controller 2 (because computers index from 0, p1 is controller 0, p2 is controller 1...)

If you ignore the wierd look of it all and continue setting the controls in MAMEs menus it should work... although I have no idea why it wouldn't have worked in the first place, DK is a pretty common game - I wonder what is going on there...

Alternately you can disable the hotkeys prior to setting the controls in MAME - that will remove the extra made up 3rd joystick from the equation. To do so exit all the menus with 'f4' until you're at the command line and type
hotkeys stop (press enter)
/boot/launchers/./mame203.sh dkong (press enter - I'm assuming DK is in MAME 203 as it's where I'd run it, if it's somewhere else change the launcher to suit)
Now set the controls up how you were before, once you have it setup how you want exit DK with 'esc' on keyboard (the shortcut won't work due to turning off the hotkeys). When you're back at the command line type 'sudo reboot' to reboot - this will make sure the changes are written to the SD card.


I hope that helps.

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Re: Donkey Kong joystick control not working

Post by triggerhappy » Wed Sep 30, 2020 10:42 pm

Thanks, dee2eR. Apologies for not specifying the emulator. DK is running under MAME 0.203.

I went ahead and used the hotkeys menu to customize the controls manually, which works, but it just seems weird that the default control mapping doesn't work straight out-of-the-gate, given that my physical JAMMA setup is about as simple as it gets: 1 joystick, P1 & P2 buttons and 2 action buttons.

Another weird thing I've noticed is that the identifiers that register when buttons are pressed from the hotkeys menu vary depending on which version of DK I'm in. In one version, pressing the first action button registers as 'Joy 2 button 0'. However, in another version, it shows as 'Joy 2 button 0 Joy 4 button 4'. Why does it think I'm pressing 2 different buttons at the same time?

Is there something wrong with my physical DIP switch settings? I checked and double-checked that switches 1 & 2 are ON and 3 & 4 are OFF. I assume that is correct, right? Is there some other place where I can define my physical button arrangement?

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Re: Donkey Kong joystick control not working

Post by triggerhappy » Wed Sep 30, 2020 11:26 pm

This may or may not be related, but I've also noticed that the controls in Centipede are not working. The joystick does not register movement and the action buttons do not register either. Unlike DK, however, when I hit Tab to bring up the hotkeys menu, I see an empty box with no text, so I can't customize the controls the way I did in DK.

That may be a separate issue, but something seems fishy with re. to the control mapping.

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Re: Donkey Kong joystick control not working

Post by dee2eR » Fri Oct 02, 2020 1:32 am

Not sure what's up with DK for you. I just tried it and it works fine for me... could be difference in ARpiCADE version or something - technically I checked on an unreleased proto version... (but I think the DK settings would be the same as the 3.9 release).

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