MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: [help] control ways="strange2" ?

> Hi all, there's a game with a new control type but I can't find any info on it. What
> does the strange2 ways mean ? What kind of controller is this ? I wonder if Dongfang
> Shenlong is the only game that will use this control type.
> I can't find any info on this game or pictures of the controls panel.
>
> (machine name="bmcpokr" sourcefile="bmcpokr.cpp")
> (description)Dongfang Shenlong(/description)
> (input
> (control type="joy" player="1" ways="strange2"/)

"strange2" stands for a 2-way controller whose configuration does not fit the available usual ones... it's always been present in the source as a fall back for situations where other "ways" definitions (4way, 8way, etc.) don't apply

in this specific case, if you look into bmcpokr.cpp, you will see that P1 and P2 have assigned respectively directions Up & Right and Left & Right, with the remaining directions being replaced by some of the gambling buttons. While the latter 2-way configuration is considered "usual", the former is definitely unusual and reported as such. Probably, the driver shall be updated to reflect the actual controller.

concerning the reason why this appears only now, it's because in the 0.172 development cycle we have changed some of the -lx controller output, by making it much more precise: until 0.171, bmcpokr.cpp inputs for P1 & P2 were merged, so that it showed up as a 3 way controller (with Up, Right & Left directions mapped) that -lx reported as "5 (half8)" because it was considered as the upper half-circle of an 8-way joystick...