Configuring joystick for early SNK games on MAME

[Magma MK-II]

Those games with rotary joysticks like Ikari and Guerrilla War, is there any easy way to configure them?

[ReyVGM]

Press TAB and select Input (This game). It should let you configure it.

That's on MAMEUI at least, I don't know how it works on regular command line MAME.

[Weasel]

Mar 18, 2016 22:21:08 GMT -5 ReyVGM said:

Press TAB and select Input (This game). It should let you configure it.

That's on MAMEUI at least, I don't know how it works on regular command line MAME.

The in-game user interface is the same across all versions of MAME. MAMEUI just offers a game-selection interface when you run the program. (Granted, even command-line MAME offers that in some form nowadays, but not to quite the same extent.)

[ReyVGM]

Alrighty. Since I've never used regular MAME, I didn't know how it was.

[Magma MK-II]

Uh, I know the part about pressing TAB already. The problem is, I don't know how the controllers for these games work. Like, when I configure the second directional the character doesn't point up to the direction I press.

[Weasel]

Mar 19, 2016 19:24:01 GMT -5 Magma MK-II said:

Uh, I know the part about pressing TAB already. The problem is, I don't know how the controllers for these games work. Like, when I configure the second directional the character doesn't point up to the direction I press.

Unfortunately, there's not a way to make it behave like a modern twin-stick game, because the way those joysticks worked is more akin to the spinner dials on games like Arkanoid. There's no center point, just a dial. You could enable mouse input (I forget where the option is, though) and set the spinner axis to your mouse, though.

[Lord Dalek]

I find you gotta disable the analog controls or something like that.

[Magma MK-II]

Mar 19, 2016 19:36:38 GMT -5 Weasel said:

Mar 19, 2016 19:24:01 GMT -5 Magma MK-II said:

Uh, I know the part about pressing TAB already. The problem is, I don't know how the controllers for these games work. Like, when I configure the second directional the character doesn't point up to the direction I press.

Unfortunately, there's not a way to make it behave like a modern twin-stick game, because the way those joysticks worked is more akin to the spinner dials on games like Arkanoid. There's no center point, just a dial. You could enable mouse input (I forget where the option is, though) and set the spinner axis to your mouse, though.

So, are they like buttons you press that makes the character point in that direction or does they make the character rotate into the direction?

[Weasel]

Think of it more like mouse-aiming in a PC first-person shooter. There's no way to tell the game exactly which direction you want to face, because its mechanism is instead just a rotation axis where your direction changes as you spin it in one direction or another. In MAME terms, this means you'd be moving the mouse left and right to spin clockwise/counter-clockwise.

[DreamCuPs]

Mar 18, 2016 20:55:53 GMT -5 Magma MK-II said:

Those games with rotary joysticks like Ikari and Guerrilla War, is there any easy way to configure them?

There are "joystick hack bootleg" versions for both games, and on those the controllers behave the normal way, allowing you to configure them just like any other 8-way stick based game. They work on mame as clones of the original rom, i recommend you try them.

[Magma MK-II]

Thanks, I didn't knew about that.

EDIT: i found one for Guerrilla War, but there doesn't seem to be any for Search and Rescue and Time Soldiers.

[DreamCuPs]

Yep... I guess not every game like these had its kind of hack version yet. Unfortunately, the original roms of this games are virtually unplayable on emulators.

[FreightMan07]

Mar 18, 2016 20:55:53 GMT -5 Magma MK-II said:

Those games with rotary joysticks like Ikari and Guerrilla War, is there any easy way to configure them?

Hey, I LOVE Ikari Warriors!

First one I ever played was on the NES, where your guy would move wherever you moved him on the directional pad and he shot that way too. It was cool....till I discovered the rotary controls on the arcade....and that was much better!

There IS a bootleg version for MAME that has the controls set up like the NES version, but nah, screw that, rotary is what you are after, and I think I can help you.

Now, others here were right: you can't really make a joypad act exactly like a rotary setup, but I found this setup works pretty good.


First off, I will assume you are using a control pad that has shoulder buttons.

You already know about pressing TAB to get to the input controls, wonderful.

Assign your rifle and hand grenade buttons to your desired face buttons (or shoulder buttons if you have a pad with more than two....yer gonna need at least two free for the rotary controls)

Next, DISABLE the "Analog precision" controls (select it, then hit ESC which zaps that)
Under that option, you will see "Analog increase" followed by "Analog Decrease"...simply set those to your shoulder buttons....I have mine set at DECREASE for the left shoulder, INCREASE for the right shoulder.

Now, when you play, your soldier always faces and shoots forwards...unless you tap the shoulder buttons in the desired rotational direction, then you can move forward while firing sideways, downwards...well, you get the idea.


Not exactly rotary controls, but the best, IMO, a joypad can do...and hey, its not a bad setup once you get used to it.....unless you simply MUST have exact rotary controls.  Hope that helped ya, bud.

Edit: Forgot to mention, if it makes any difference to you, I AM using a GUI version of MAME...MAME PLUS to be exact...latest one for 64 bit systems is 1.59....however, all the MAME GUI versions seem to have the same control setup interface (hit TAB, get to controls, etc, etc).

[Magma MK-II]

I use MameUI. I'll test this later.