Haha....well got back into Rave Racer again today for the first time since last posting in this thread. Running the latest version of mame. Unfortunately I couldn't find the previous raveracer config file that I used that had the perfect shifter mappings, so I had to track down this thread again to refresh my memory on how to map the game's H-shifter inputs to my H-gated shifter. For some oddball reason, the shifter mappings changed, and no longer worked properly from the example you posted Hap. I therefore had to manually figure out by trial and error which button is assigned to where, and finally realized that everything needed to be moved over by one shifter slot. So instead of starting off with Joy Button 1, I needed to start off with Joy button 0, and then 1, and so on. So the end result supposed to be like this:
Shift Down = button 0 OR button 2 OR button 4 Shift Up = button 1 OR button 3 OR button 5 Shift Left = button 0 OR button 1 Shift Right = button 4 OR button 5
rather than .....
Shift Down = button1 OR button3 OR button5 Shift Up = button2 OR button4 OR button6 Shift Left = button1 OR button2 Shift Right = button5 OR button6
...as depicted in your original suggested post.
Anyway, it's all sorted now, and I've been playing the game and having a ton of fun just now. I really really REALLY hope we see true force feedback support for mame one day, if not then at least only for this Namco System 22 driver. Would make driving their games so much more enjoyable