Xbox 360 Mame Emulator Download

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Glendora Spink

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Aug 3, 2024, 4:02:03 PM8/3/24

to conthardmive

I'm running LB 12.14 and completed the installation of MAME using the built-in Wizard. Everything works well apart from the Xbox controller (Elite 2) when using the standard mame.exe emulator. Nothing on the controller works when inside the emulator. The controller works on other emulators and even works wihin LB to move the cursor around and select etc.

I've edited the metadata for an individual game (via the GUI) and checked the game controller and it says 8-way joystick, which I believe is as expected. I also tried adding the Xbox controller that was listed, but that didn't make any difference.

If I select Retroarch as the emulator to launch a game the controller works perfectly. Clearly there's a MAME configuration setting somewhere that I'm missing. I would have thought that would have worked out of the box?

Launchbox does not setup controls in any emulator, you have to do that yourself (although many emulator will just work when using a xinput controller, mame is not one of those) so you need to manually setup your controller via the mame menu. Load a game, hit TAB on your keyboard and head to input global and use your keyboard arrow keys and enter to highlight and select the buttons then press the button you want on your controller.

OK, that makes sense.

However, I've gone into MAME and started a game. I've then hit TAB to bring up the configuration menu. In there I can see input settings for this specific game and general. I've gone into both and I can see that it already shows JOY 1 UP Joy 2 UP for going up for example - they all look OK to me. To test it, I've hit return on the UP configuration and then selected up on the Xbox controller, and it gets filled in with JOY 1 UP Joy 2 UP as expected, so clearly accepting input. In fact, when I bring up the tab menu, I can also move up, down and select in the menu with no issues.

Clearly something simple I'm missing. See config screenshot.

Not sure what's going on, but I launched different games all with the same outcome, then just quit LB, went back to the same games and they work with the controller now, without any more adjustments.

I will try my best to keep this short and sweet, but I got the most recent mame installed and setup and running. I am using this with Bigbox to play on my living room TV, and was wanting to find a quick pre-made XBOX controller config file to get me up and rolling quickly. I know about setting up controls from the General Input and Machine Input, but was hoping to get something that would take care of most of the basic setups for me (trying to work smarter not harder with this).

I already found this post at arcadecontrols.com downloaded both the original version from AldousHxlE as well as the revised version from Kinks. Placed the .cfg files in the ctrlr folder, and added the name to the mame.ini file ( I tried both versions). Only thing is when I go back to check the General Inputs in MAME, all I see are keyboard commands. No joystick commands. I'm using a wireless XBOX One Controller and checking the cfg folder my default.ini file is still in its original state since installation.

Am I missing a step or does the most recent MAME version not support this setup anymore? Am I correct to assume that if the ctrlr file worked properly I should see joystick commands on the proper controller input fields?

I already found this post at arcadecontrols.com downloaded both the original version from AldousHxlE as well as the revised version from Kinks. Placed the .cfg files in the ctrlr folder, and added the name to the mame.ini file ( I tried both versions). Only thing is when I go back to check the General Inputs in MAME, all I see are keyboard commands. No joystick commands. I'm using a wireless XBOX One Controller and checking the cfg folder my default.ini file is still in its original state since installation

My hope/goal is to find a pre-made xbox controller setup that takes care of most setups (the above ctrlr file, they made custom configs for NEO GEO games vs CPS). But when I plug in the ctrlr file in mame.ini I don't see those changes when I open MAME and look at the Input's in either the General or Machine Input menus. All it shows is keyboard setups.

Just load up a game, press tab and then Input (General), in here you can set your all purpose controller setup. Then for individual games if you want a different control scheme instead of Input (general) you go into Input (this Machine).

Thanks Lordmonkus, but was hoping for something possibly quicker. That's why I was seeing if a premade ctrlr ( cfg ) file would take care of most of that setup. Supposedly the one I linked to at arcadecontrols.com works for others, just can't get it to work on mine. Push comes to shove I'll just manually set them up, but was hoping to speed up the porcess.

I'm confused. I assumed that the ctrlr file IS the solution, I was asking to see if anyone here had any idea as to why the ctrlr file isn't adding the changes to my inputs. If this isn't the solution I am looking for (specified in my first post) then let me know, and I will just do it manually. But I hate to spend hours doing everything manually when I have the solution already, I may be missing one simple step to get it to work.

I guess my concern with just a general setup is do the controls translate well between fighting games, NEO GEO games, CPS games and so on? I like the idea of the ctrlr file they made because it looked like they did the grunt work of giving you the best configurations for different button layouts, thus avoiding the pitfall of having to go into the Machine Inputs... can a proper ctrlr file help with that or am I going to have to suck it up and tweak the Machine Inputs as I go along?

Gotcha... good to know. I just assumed that arcade controls would be a bit of a mess in general because there's no universal code or expectation on how to place buttons (like on consoles). Sounds like I was overthinking it a bit (which is good too know).

Agreed, i have a default that is set on my arcade stick, its setup like street fighter 2. I have buttons 1,2 and 3 on the top row, then 4, 5, and 6 on the bottom. That works for 99.9% of games. Then the odd balls that dont i do a machine controller bind.

I tried that "kinks" ctrlr file you referenced in the link (I hadn't realized could remap multiple ways in one file by machine type so that was cool). I use a XBOX One wireless as well so our setups are similar. It seems to remap with keyboard and joystick as expected (see screen snap of 1944 CP1 controller maps vs Neogeo game where can see the buttons are remapped based on machine type) when tab in using the "kinks" ctrlr file. So you might double check a couple areas to verify pulling in correct file. It sounds like you placed the downloaded cfg file into the ..\mame\ctrlr directory so that is first item. Then in your mame.ini file check that the file name is the same but don't include the CFG extension in name. I had an existing cfg I had made called "xbox2player" so I just renamed the downloaded one to what I had for testing. As long as the mame.ini reference and cfg file match it should be golden. I don't necessarily like all the mappings of buttons with XBOX controller but may borrow some of them items they I had in their file. I had a much more simpler one (just two player only) \ which like Neil9000 and Lordmonkus stated above, typically works for bulk of the games. Either way, you will want to get the ctrlr mapping issue figured out so whatever mapping choose is fixed so MAME doesn't have issues of resetting controller maps if forget to turn on controller before launch MAME.

Edit: As I was messing around noted (at least) the following problems with the "kinks" file. 1) Don't map the right stick at all, so problem with games like Robotron where just run around but cannot shoot...death results quickly! 2) there are extra spaces in the select and coin commands which seemed to cause funky results when starting games (stopped when deleted them). The Neogeo machine also had some extra spaces in the button commands. 3) they used a "remap" set of commands to map the UI arrow keys to the number pad in start of file. Don't see why since arrow keys not used anywhere else, plus they use the incorrect command for number pad key binding so number pad up/down don't work anyway because have extra "_" in them. 4) pedal/paddles don't look quite right but didn't try them. 5) the player 1 keyboard bindings were removed so would have issues if using for say Apple II emulator game with keyboard (i.e, Castle Wolfenstein).