Using Wiimote as a lightgun in MAME

Last time I wrote about how to get Wiimote to work as a mouse pointer in X. After that, I started to wonder if I could also use the Wiimote as a light gun in emulators, especially in MAME. MAME has some nice arcade shooters, like Time crisis, which would be much more fun with a proper pointer.

It should be quite simple, since MAME supports mouse as a light gun out of the box. Or so I thought. It turns out, it isn't so simple after all. I found a blog post which explained how to do it, but I couldn't get it to work.

First, I use autodetection in X.org, so I don't have xorg.conf. Anyways, since I already got X to detect the wiimote, I didn't think it would be a problem.
Second, even though e.g. jstest-gtk displayed the joystick, I couldn't get MAME to see it. No joysticks no matter what I tried. Also as a mouse the Wiimote acted weird. In desktop all was good, but in MAME cursor just jiggled in bottom right corner.

Anyways, after 3 evenings of trying I got it to work. Here's how it went:

First I connected the wiimote:
$ sudo wminput -c ir_ptr A4:C1:E2:C4:DB:4F
Put Wiimote in discoverable mode now (press 1+2)...
Ready.

Even though the jstest-gtk and sdl-jstest both displayed the wiimote as joystick and operated properly, the sdl2-jstest did not work. I assume MAME uses sdl2, so that explais why MAME did not see the Wiimote either.
$ sdl2-jstest --list
No joysticks were found

Then I decided to try different approach. I added my user to the "input" group, so that it can read /dev/input/eventXX which is where the Wiimote data comes from:
$ sudo usermod -G input [user]

After that I used evtest to check that the Wiimote really works, and what the event device number is:
$ evtest
No device specified, trying to scan all of /dev/input/event*
Not running as root, no devices may be available.
Available devices:
...
/dev/input/event14:     Nintendo Wiimote
Select the device event number [0-14]: 14
Input driver version is 1.0.1
Input device ID: bus 0x5 vendor 0x1 product 0x1 version 0x4
Input device name: "Nintendo Wiimote"
...

I entered 14 to the prompt (the number after the Wiimote event), and checked that events are reported when pointing the wiimote to a candle and moving it around. The events look like random blocks in the terminal.

After verifying what the event device is (in this case /dev/input/event14) , I forced SDL to use that device as the joystick device with an environmental variable, and behold, the Wiimote was detected as a joystick:
$ SDL_JOYSTICK_DEVICE=/dev/input/event14 sdl2-jstest --list
Found 1 joystick(s)

Joystick Name:     'Nintendo Wiimote'
...

And also testing it with the sdl2-jstest now worked properly. Great!
$ SDL_JOYSTICK_DEVICE=/dev/input/event14 sdl2-jstest --test 0

Now it was time to test with MAME. But first I wanted to disable the mouse operation of Wiimote so that it would not interfere with the joystick operation. I did this by finding the Wiimote device id with xinput, and then disabling that device:
$ xinput list
| Virtual core pointer             id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
|   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer   id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
|   ↳ Nintendo Wiimote             id=13   [slave  pointer  (2)]
| Virtual core keyboard            id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard  id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]

$ xinput disable 13

After that the Wiimote did not move the mouse cursor anymore. Then I tried running MAME with these settings. I used -verbose mode to get debug info and piped it to less to be able to inspect the log. Now the Wiimote was dispalyed in the "Initializing Joysticks" portion.
$ SDL_JOYSTICK_DEVICE=/dev/input/event14 mame -verbose -sr 11025 timecrs2v2b | less

From the MAME menu (with TAB key) I could go to input and lightgun settings and set the lightgun 1 analog X and Y properly by moving the wiimote. The setting indicated something like JS1 axis 0 and JS 1 axis 1 if I remember correctly. The Wiimote worked properly as a lightgun!

I assume the problems come to the fact that the Wiimote operates as mouse and joystick simultaneously, why SDL does not really know which it is. That's why the device name has to be told explicitly. I also wonder if pointing it to /dev/input/js0 also, but I didn't test that yet.

For reference, here is the relevant parts from my ~/.mame/mame.ini to set the joystick to emulate lightgun:
# CORE INPUT OPTIONS
coin_lockout              1
ctrlr
mouse                     1
joystick                  1
lightgun                  1
multikeyboard             0
multimouse                0
steadykey                 0
offscreen_reload          1
joystick_map              auto
joystick_deadzone         0
joystick_saturation       0.85
natural                   0
joystick_contradictory    0
coin_impulse              0

# CORE INPUT AUTOMATIC ENABLE OPTIONS
paddle_device             joystick
adstick_device            keyboard
pedal_device              keyboard
dial_device               keyboard
trackball_device          keyboard
lightgun_device           joystick
positional_device         keyboard
mouse_device              mouse

And after storing the settings in MAME ingame menu, the following config in ~/.mame/cfg/timecris.cfg:
  <input>
    <port tag=":LIGHTX" type="P1_LIGHTGUN_X" mask="4095" defvalue="381">
      <newseq type="standard">
        JOYCODE_1_XAXIS
      </newseq>
    </port>
    <port tag=":LIGHTY" type="P1_LIGHTGUN_Y" mask="4095" defvalue="163">
      <newseq type="standard">
        JOYCODE_1_YAXIS
      </newseq>
    </port>
    <port tag=":MCUP5A" type="P1_BUTTON1" mask="16" defvalue="16">
      <newseq type="standard">
        JOYCODE_1_BUTTON2
      </newseq>
    </port>
    <port tag=":MCUP5A" type="P1_BUTTON2" mask="32" defvalue="32">
      <newseq type="standard">
        JOYCODE_1_BUTTON1
       </newseq>
    </port>
  </input>

Hopefully this will help someone to get the Wiimote to work in MAME. I also got the wiimote to work as a NES zapper in Mednafen, but I will write about it later.

Amiga emulation with Amiga forever and WHDload

This I'll tell how I configured Amiga emulation on my HTPC. Now, Amiga games typically are on several disks, and even though MythGame supports those, it does not work very well with Amiga emulators, e-uae in my case. Mostly the problem is that one must change the disks and stuff like that, which is quite clumsy in my opinion. I know there is fs-uae which probably would work better in that aspect, but it was horribly slow on my setup.

Anyways, I bought Amiga Forever from Cloanto. For just a few dollars, I got all necessary Kickstart ROMs, bunch of games, and Workbench (the nice OS).

Amiga Forever has a very nice Windows interface with one click launching of games etc, but it does not work so well with Linux. So I downloaded WHDload, which is an Amiga program intended to allow hard disk installing of Amiga disk games.

So, to set up my emulation, I created two directories: ~/Amiga/HDWorkbench and ~/Amiga/HDGames. In e-uae config, I added those to my uae config, and installed Workbench on the HDWorkbench drive, following this nice guide. After that, I installed WHDload (copied it to the hard drive and installed using Workbench).
Now everything is ready for games. Just copy the WHD installs of them to HDGames dir and launch them from Workbench! But what about MythTV?

I created a small script to write a proper startup file for amiga, so that when it boots, it automatically launches the game. The script looks like this, I call it run-uae:

#!/bin/sh -e
# Script to automatically lauynch e-uae using WHD game selected
# Also changes qjoypad layout to UAE
#
# Works by creating a User-Startup file which launches the
# game when UAE boots, and then deletes it when done.
# Note that paths MUST be correct and UAE must boot to
# Workbench with the selected configuration.

if [ ! $# = 2 ] || [ "$1" = "-h" ]; then
  echo "Usage: run-uae <config> <game>"
  exit 1
fi


AMIGA_GAME_PATH="Games:"
AMIGA_STARTUP_FILE="~/Amiga/HDWorkbench/S/User-Startup"

CONFIG="$1"
AMIGA_SLAVE=$(basename "$2")
AMIGA_PATH=${AMIGA_SLAVE%.*}

echo "${CONFIG} ${AMIGA_SLAVE} ${AMIGA_PATH}"
echo ${AMIGA_STARTUP_FILE}

# Create user-startup
echo "cd \"${AMIGA_GAME_PATH}\"" > ${AMIGA_STARTUP_FILE}
echo "cd \"${AMIGA_PATH}\"" >> ${AMIGA_STARTUP_FILE}
echo "whdload ${AMIGA_SLAVE} Preload PAL" >> ${AMIGA_STARTUP_FILE}
echo "uae-configuration SPC_QUIT 1" >> ${AMIGA_STARTUP_FILE}

# Change qjoypad layout to UAE
qjoypad --update UAE

# Run e-uae
e-uae -f ${CONFIG} -G 1

# Reset qjoypad configuration
qjoypad --update "MythTV"

# Remove startup file for next clean boot
rm ${AMIGA_STARTUP_FILE}

You need to tune the parameters in the beginning, the game path to have the Amiga drive label, and the other is real path to the user-startup file. And you point to the .slave file of the game. I think it might be better to use the .info file, But I haven't had the time to do and test the change. This works for 99% of the games out of the box.

In Mythgame the setup is like this:

- Player name: Amiga
- Type: Amiga
- Command: run-uae ~/.e-uaerc %s
- ROM path: ~/Amiga/HDGames
- Working dir:
- File extensions: Slave, slave
- Uncheck the box for multiple disks

NES Emulation on MythTV

Thought that I might as well write about Nintendo emulation right away.

Game emulation in MythTV requires a MythGame plugin, which might be installed automatically, or it can be installed through the control center. It adds a new Games section in the MythTV main menu and in Settings.

I've tried several NES emulators, but I've liked fceux and Mednafen the most.

Fceux

Fceux wors fine, but I didn't find a way to quit it using only the gamepad. So I configured qjoypad so that one button in my gamepad is same as pressing esc key on keyboard. That helps a lot.
For mythgame to launch first the qjoypad and then emulator, I wrote a little script:


#!/bin/sh -e
# Script to launch FCEUX with correct settings
# First, sets qjoypad bindings, i.e. bottom triggers
# quit the emulator (or what ever is defined)
# then runs fceux, and finally changes qjoypad layout back

# Update qjoypad joystick lists and select FCEUX
qjoypad --update FCEUX

# Run fceux
fceux -fullscreen 1 "$1"

# Back to default mapping mode
qjoypad --update "MythTV"

I named it run-fceux, and in mythgame config, I call "run-fceux %s" and it works fine. Fceux has crashed on me some times, and it seems to have some minor issues every now and then. Otherwise it's fine.

Mednafen

Just today I tried Mednafen and already like it better than fceux. Only problem was getting the gamepads to work, but in the end it was easy:

- Start mednafen from command line, e.g. "mednafen /path/to/rom.nes"

- Press alt+shift+1 and you're asked to press every gamepad 1 button in order, up, down, left etc. You can bind many keys to do the same thing, when you're ready, press the same key twice.

- Press alt+shift+2 and do the same thing for second gamepad.

- If you want quit button in your gamepad(s), press F2, then ESC. Now you can press all different quit keys you want. Finish with double ESCs so keyboard will function as before.

- Done. Easy, huh?

I wrote similar script as before to get rid of my gamepad bindings for MythTV, and the command line to launch mednafen is following:

mednafen -nes.stretch 1 -fs 1 -vdriver 0 "$1"

Currently I suggest using Mednafen for NES emulation, it seems to be very clean and nice.