Analog settings in MAME?

[Dire 51]

Having recently gotten back into using MAME, I was wondering if anyone could suggest the best analog settings for playing games like Crystal Castles and Chiller. I have to admit, I'm kind of lost.

[Cryomancer]

My only advice is to play with it until you find something you like. i end up doing this pretty much every time i feel like playing a pachinko game too.

[Dire 51]

Hmmm.

Now that I've been playing around with it, I've noticed something very odd. For games that use trackballs, dials, and the like, the character you control will actually move by itself if you don't touch the controls. For instance, the soldier in Forgotten Worlds slowly spins around. Bentley Bear in Crystal Castles has a bad case of the shakes. And when you do move the analog stick, it barely moves them.

Is there another setting I may have missed?

[Clownzilla]

Try adjusting the sensitivity settings for the analog controls. It's defaulted to the max sensitivity and I find it more useful if it's toned down.

[Ed Oscuro]

For games that use trackballs, dials, and the like, the character you control will actually move by itself if you don't touch the controls. For instance, the soldier in Forgotten Worlds slowly spins around. Bentley Bear in Crystal Castles has a bad case of the shakes. And when you do move the analog stick, it barely moves them.
I'm guessing that you haven't changed any settings. MAME will use a joystick without changing any options, so it sounds like what's happened is MAME is picking up some "noise" feedback from your analog stick. I would be interested to find out what kind of joystick / what build of MAME (i.e. MAMEUI32, MAME Plus!, WolfMAME, something else?) you're using, but it's probably not necessary to diagnose the problem.

Modern analog sticks for use on computers (that use a USB connector) are almost always analog, and these sticks constantly send information about their centering. Games consoles such as the PS3 or 360 use the deadzone concept to filter out these spurious movements, but MAME might not be doing that.

Coincidentally, I finally set MAME to use the mouse for dial (spinner) controls yesterday. Here's what you need to do:

In MAMEUI32:

Options -> Default Game Options -> Controller Mapping.
(Default Game Options -> Display lets you turn off that ugly hardware stretch.)

In the new-to-130u3 MAME Plus! mamepui.exe executable (which I like better than the older mamepgui.exe):
Options -> Default Game Properties -> Controller Mapping.

Almost all of these can be set to use the mouse. For spinners, moving the mouse left and right will simulate spin, which I just tested out on Forgotten Worlds.

By the way, here's a hint that speeds up scrolling the list of games:
From the main view of MAMEUI32, or MAME Plus! GUI / UI, right-click the tabs marked "Description / Name / Samples" and so on, and remove all of those you don't want. You can literally double the speed by removing useless junk information like whether it uses samples, a trackball, what type of display it has, and so on. For MAME Plus! I just leave the Description, Played (play count), Manufacturer, Year, and Play Time (Play Time is new to MAME Plus! 130u3).

[Dire 51]

I'm using MAME32 v0.99 and a PlayStation 2 controller.

The tips you gave me have actually helped out quite a bit. Lightgun games are vastly improved using the mouse, trackball games are still kind of wonky (although I have more control in Crystal Castles now), and Forgotten Worlds... well, I think I prefer the setup from Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1, as opposed to trying to use my controller and the mouse simultaneously.

Thanks Ed. :)

[Clownzilla]

I'm using MAME32 v0.99 and a PlayStation 2 controller.

The tips you gave me have actually helped out quite a bit. Lightgun games are vastly improved using the mouse, trackball games are still kind of wonky (although I have more control in Crystal Castles now), and Forgotten Worlds... well, I think I prefer the setup from Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1, as opposed to trying to use my controller and the mouse simultaneously.

Thanks Ed. :)

Trackballs are an absolute must for gun games (unless your fortunate enough to have a light gun cabinet or an working LCD gun). When it comes to trackball games, the more "arcade like" the trackball the better. I have found that my trackball mouse is close to worthless on trackball games. I never have been able to get it to work to playable levels. If you can afford it, look into building a trackball controller OR buy the trackball controller from X-Arcade. The great thing about the X-Arcade trackball is it doubles as a PC mouse and will be the GREATEST mouse you will ever own (although a little nerdy).

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm using MAME32 v0.99 and a PlayStation 2 controller.

The tips you gave me have actually helped out quite a bit. Lightgun games are vastly improved using the mouse, trackball games are still kind of wonky (although I have more control in Crystal Castles now), and Forgotten Worlds... well, I think I prefer the setup from Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1, as opposed to trying to use my controller and the mouse simultaneously.

Thanks Ed. :)
* First off, I'd play around with my keyboard a bit if I were you. Some games play well with an analog stick, but others fail miserably. On my laptop, the arrow keys are borked (can't press keys + diagonal left-up or right-down at the same time, I think it is), but nearly any good PC keyboard will do this just right. If a game doesn't feel right, try out the keyboard.

* Consider getting the latest MAME Plus!
http://mameicons.free.fr/mame32p/

They have been very quick to issue a new release since taking a long time to get in line with 130u3's new changes - in fact I've been using 130u3 quite a bit since its release only two days ago, and now I see it's already obsolete ROFL

For some games, especially Toaplan shooters practice, I find the autofire function exceptionally helpful. Now that mamepui.exe works almost exactly like MAME32UI (the only difference being the old ugly in-game text, but with 0.99 you are still using the old style I think), I can't see myself using MAME32UI much.

* MAME Plus! is somewhat popular on the scoring sites like Shmups Forum, along with Wolf MAME, so it's not a bad bet to make replays with it.

A couple other things I always update with each release:

MAME History
MASH's MAME INFO
Puggsy's Cheats (finally updated for use with newer versions of MAME, although many cheats aren't working yet and you can't roll-your-own from inside MAME quite yet).