Looking for some help with default analog controls in MAME

purbeast

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I am working on my lightgun cabinet and I am able to set the default values for the "Input (General)" as well as "Input (This game)" options by messing with the default.cfg, the <game>.cfg file, and I also set a default controller in the ctrlr folder with basically the same thing as the default.cfg file, but I set the default controller to that ini file in MAME.ini.

However I am trying to set default values for the "Analog Controls" options. The default values are like 10 and 50, and there are 8 sliders total, and I want them all to be maxed out at 255 and 280. And it takes some time to do that on EVERY game that I have on here.

So I'm trying to set a default value but I just do not know how I can default it to maxed out.

I tried maxing it out for Maximum Force and then I looked in the maxforce.cfg file. I saw the values it had in there and I then saved that file as lightgun.cfg and also changed the "system" value in there from "maxforce" to "default" and I put it in the ctrlr directory. I then set the ctrlr value in MAME.ini to that file. However, it still does not set those default values.

Does anyone know how I can do this without having to go into every game and manually changing it?
 
So after digging through this more, I simply do not think it's possible.

In the MAME docs it even says stuff with the "tags" tag in the XML config files are only at the non default system level.

I tried setting those values for system "default" in both the ctrlr and cfg levels and it didn't work. I tried even adding the game specific systems in there, and that still didn't work.

I then thought okay I will just manually make the changes in Maximum Force, then copy the maxforce.cfg file, rename it the name of the other game such as area51.cfg, and then inside the file, edit the system from "maxforce" to "area51". And this worked. Kind of...

The problem is, not all games use the same tags nor the same variables inside of those. For instance, copying the Maximum Force and Area worked, since they both use the same variables. But then I also made Lethel Enforcers and Point Blank ones off of that original Maximum Force file, but it didn't work. After I manually changed the values in those games, I then looked at the .cfg files, and both Point Blank and Lethal Enforcers use different tags and variables in there too.

So there is basically no rhyme or reason to setting them by any specific names. It looks like I'm going to have to manually just do it myself for each game to create the correct .cfg file.

Hopefully this helps someone else in the future not waste any time.
 
Assuming you already have the cfg files made, this is an easy batch job for Notepad++. Edit all docs at the same time, make your changes, save all. Regex helps for more complex mass edits.
 
As I mentioned, the problem is not editing files - it's knowing what the TAG values are for each game. Across 4 games I've tried, there are 3 different TAG values and if they aren't right, it doesn't work. I have no clue how many of those values there are total.
 
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