Does mGalaxy Work with Ultimarc UltraStik 360 Automatically?

[WishItWas1984]

I have a SlikStik Classic Unit and I am seriously considering replacing the 4-Way Happ that I use for games like Donkey Kong, Ms. Pac-Man & Galaga....for an Ultimarc UltraStik 360.

That way I can play those w/ the built-in maps so Galaga is true 2-Way, a map for Q*bert to work, true analog for Food Fight which will also help w/ games like Sinistar, Star Wars, etc...

To my question....I've heard there are some front-ends that auto-detect and activate the correct U360 map when a game is played. Play Defender, the 2-Way (Up/Down) map is activated. Etc. Etc.

This is ESSENTIAL if I were to install the U360 because if this wasn't supported, I would have to know what I wanted to play before starting mGalaxy, load the map, then load and play....if I change my mind? Exit, load the new map....you can see how horribly annoying this would be.

So long story short, does mGalaxy support the U360 joystick in this way? If not are there plans to do so? Because seriously this frontend is the best and I never want to uninstall it.

Thanks

[WishItWas1984]

Ok I have some feedback from the maker of the Ultimarc U360 joystick.

This is what he says to the question of whether mGalaxy can switch automatically between Ultramap maps before a game starts....

"unfortunately I have not come across mGalaxy so I don’t know if it can do this or not. The question is whether it can run a command-line program before each game starts, with the program name assigned on a per-game basis.""

[dashingw]

Well this is probably a better question for MGalaxy or Aeliss to answer, but until they get to this there is a system.xml file in Program Files/mGalaxy/Data that has commands for launching each emulator. You may want to have a look at that.....

[WishItWas1984]

Well this is probably a better question for MGalaxy or Aeliss to answer, but until they get to this there is a system.xml file in Program Files/mGalaxy/Data that has commands for launching each emulator. You may want to have a look at that.....

Took a look. It seems that the Systems.xml file is just so mGalaxy knows where the emulator is and it's main parameters (ROM path, etc..).

This page on Ultimarc goes into more detail - https://www.ultimarc.com/ultrastik_prog.html

But basically this is the crux of it from that page:

Running from the Command Line
You can download previously configured UGC files to all joysticks by running from a command line. This enables front-ends etc to be able to seamlessly configure all of your joysticks with suitable settings for every game.

For example run
"C:/program files/ultramap/ultramap.exe myconfig.ugc" will download "myconfig.ugc" to the joystiicks.

If there's a way to get mGalaxy to run these specific lines BEFORE the ROM is run, then I think U360 owners would be in business.

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Found this as well regarding the same situation but for Maximus Arcade

http://joomla.maximusarcade.com/phpbb/v ... f=9&t=2111


The more I find out the more I am certain that mGalaxy needs to support U360s within its code. It needs to keep a record of UGC file locations, the Ultramap exe location and tie that to the game rom execution. That way it can load the UGC before the game runs.

I look forward to an official response to see if maybe this is already built into mGalaxy. If not, the odds of it getting into the next version. I'm likely not buying a U360 for a while but it would suck to have to stop using mGalaxy for any lengt of time.

[mgalaxy]

I'm investigating the subject and got in touch with Andy from Ultimarc.
This is more likely that mGalaxy will support The UltraStick. I still have to decide in which way.
I'll come back to this topic when I'll have more information on the subject!

[WishItWas1984]

I'm investigating the subject and got in touch with Andy from Ultimarc.
This is more likely that mGalaxy will support The UltraStick. I still have to decide in which way.
I'll come back to this topic when I'll have more information on the subject!

Wow, that's awesome to hear! I really look forward to it.

In the meantime if mGalaxy isn't ready by the time I get a U360, I'll honestly go in-and-out and load the maps manually. I looked at more frontends that support U360s and they reminded me why I love mGalaxy. I'm not uninstalling it ever, even temporarily. lol

[WishItWas1984]

Well I finally couldn't wait and got myself an UltraStik 360. Mainly because someone was kind enough to forward me a huge set of MAME INI files they used, which bypasses the need of the UltraStik software and programming the stick itself every time.

So basically each INI file has the same mapping but because the INI is game specific and they all live with MAME, mGalaxy doesn't need to do a thing for everything to work fine. The joystick remains in full 360-degree analog mode, but when MAME loads the game, it loads the INI which does the mapping/restrictions. It honestly makes me wonder why Andy at Ultimarc even bothered creating the ability to map directly to the stick.

Although a lot more goes into fine tuning these analog games to get them functional. For all of them I found out I had to adjust the joystick_deadzone and joystick_saturation values in MAMEUI32's Controller tab. In Star Wars I had to take the additional step of adjusting the AD Stick values in-game too.

Return of the Jedi is my only headache now. I can't seem to get that stable.