Can I build a Control Panel with two joysticks for each player?

[teslafan1]

I am building a MAME cabinet and will be purchasing the rotary joysticks so I can play one of my favorite games Heavy Barrel.  I have decided to limit the # of players to two because I don't want a massive control panel.  Could I also purchase classic 4-8 way switchabel joysticks and have both joysticks as options for each player?  The contol panel would have one rotary joystick and one classic joystic for each player and one set of buttons.  Is it possible to have both joysticks "live" all of the time and just control the action on the screen with the one that is being used?  Or do I need to "lock out" the joystick not being used?

I considered doing a four player board and having players 1-2 with the classic joysticks and players 3-4 with the rotary joysticks.  If I went that route could Heavy Barrel just use the player 3-4 controls or is the way MAME is set up would two player games always require the use of the player 1-2 controls?

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

Paul

[rhoelsch]

Yes. Just wire them to the same inputs in your iPac or whatever you use.

[Titchgamer]

Yes not a problemto have 2 per player.
But to disable 1 stick in every game you would either need to manually switch between them useing a relay or just program the sticks with different inputs and set one or the other in each game for mame.

[PL1]

Welcome aboard, Paul. 

Is it possible to have both joysticks "live" all of the time and just control the action on the screen with the one that is being used?  Or do I need to "lock out" the joystick not being used?

You can wire the joysticks in parallel if you want.

A number of builds have done this for dedicated 4-way and 8-way sticks.

When lines cross, a dot = connected and no dot = not connected.

I considered doing a four player board and having players 1-2 with the classic joysticks and players 3-4 with the rotary joysticks.  If I went that route could Heavy Barrel just use the player 3-4 controls or is the way MAME is set up would two player games always require the use of the player 1-2 controls?

You can easily re-map the controls in MAME via the "Input(this Game)" menu to whatever you want.

You'll need a Rotary Encoder for the rotary joysticks.

In addition to those rotary encoders, another option (KADE miniArcade 2.0) is currently in development -- more details coming soon.   


Scott

[keilmillerjr]

They make dill does with two joysticks for each player. I don't see why not.

[Laythe]

If it was me... I'd wire the 4 joysticks independently to an encoder with enough inputs, rather than wiring them together to a 2p encoder.

Then I'd set Mame to accept either input (P1 rotary joystick UP OR p1 normal joystick UP), for every single game I wanted to run on the cabinet.

It'll take about 45 seconds per game.  (If your gamelist is 6,000 long, it will suck, but, huge game lists kind of suck anyway.  I maintain that there's only about 150 good games, tops.  We may differ in opinion on *which* games those are, but I'm willing to bet money you'll never feel bad that your 151st favorite game wasn't on the list.)

The advantage of doing it this way is that you can then play 2p 2-joystick games like Karate Champ, Smash TV, Total Carnage, T-MEK, and so on, using both joysticks for both players.  If you wire them in parallel, you can't ever do that, because the encoder sees the pair as one stick and can't distinguish inputs on one from inputs on the other.


If you don't want to config Mame that way per game, and are willing to lose the 2p 2-joystick games, then I'd say the parallel wiring suggestion is the way to go.