First of all this VMU project you have become interested in is very welcome. Without a doubt the VMU is an outstanding and unique device. Any and all work done on it is just cool. Now on to the latest version of Makaron and its implementation of the rumble feature. I just cant seem to get it to work. I tried various things to no end. I am using a XBOX360 controller (which may or may not be the problem). Anyway I get the Holly error message and cant keep the Maple INI configured without this error. I'm sorry not to be more specific , but do you have any suggestions?

Anyway great work as always :)

Hiropro

1) Change "Adres0x02 = MakaronPAD.dll" to have MakaronVMU in Maple.ini
2) Enable joypad configuration mode, run Makaron
3) Configure your controller, press OK when done
4) Makaron should start at this point
5) Exit Makaron, disable config mode
6) Change the line from step 1 back to MakaronPAD
7) Run Makaron, see if it works

Now, if the emulator dies at step 4 it's BAD. If it dies at step 7 it's also bad, but that means the problem is somewhere in rumble initialisation code. There's nothing you can do about either case, except maybe try a different driver for your hardware. BUT... if you're willing to sacrifice some of your free time I could whip up a program designed to pinpoint the source of the problem. With some feedback I might be able to fix what's broken - keep in mind though this will most likely mean a dozen attempts at it, each time you'll have to do some testing and send me results.

Deunan, don't waste your time. The Xbox 360 gamepad supports xinput, rather than dinput. Games and emulators that only support dinput (which I suspect is the case with Makaron) will still "work" in a sense that the gamepad will function, though many more advanced features including rumble will not. Assuming he has the "stock" drivers installed, he will have full support for rumble in xinput-based games, but will never be able to get rumble working for his pad with Makaron no matter how hard you try. Unless, of course, you write an xinput interface for Maple.

See some of the posts on this forum for further details (the community is badly in need of better drivers for this pad, particularly due to the rumble problem, especially the wireless version):

http://redcl0ud.1.forumer.com/index.php?showforum=2

After doing quite a bit of exploring on my own, I finally found what I would consider sufficient drivers for my XBOX 360 controller (the wired USB version). I had tried once before, but was greatly disappointed by the lack of fully functional drivers out there (most suffer from spotty performance and partial functionality). Anyhow I finally settled on XBCD+_Setup_v0.4.0.0. With this configured for 12 buttons on the controller and about 80% rumble (a generous estimate as the rumble itself seems to be quite unstable, however there seems to be some methods to assure better results). So more to the point now I can verify that the rumble functionality in Makaron seems to work extremely well with Capcom titles. I’m not really sure why that is, but I tested some 10 or so Capcom/2d fighting titles and found the vibration just great, it was neither to strong nor too weak(3 little bears anyone?). I will continue to try different titles as Makaron has become my favorite Dreamcast emulator of choice. A couple of things of interest; I hope that the VMU display will be included in the Makaron.ini (as I have enjoyed having it display automatically when the emulator is started), also I am hopeful that there will be some type of saving feature for the F12 menu configuration (I realize Makaron is still in it’s test stages, but being able to save this configuration could save some time in testing  ). I am very pleased with Makaron’s progress and the ability to contact you Deunan through this journal is just great. Thank you for all your hard work.

HiroPro d^o^b

Ok, first of all you have an old version of XBCD+. Go here for 0.9.0.0:

http://xbcdplus.truth-network.org/

With that said, even with the latest version, sooner or later you are going to have problems with the driver regardless because it is VERY buggy, and hence temperamental, causes more problems than it solves, and is not to mention intrusive to your OS. In fact it's a miracle it even works at all (it doesn't, actually, with the wireless pad).

Some day we'll have decent drivers for the Xbox 360 pad. Until then, I'd caution against using these.

There's a reason why F12 settings are not saved. My INI parser drops all the comments when writing the file back (actually, it simply rebuilds it from an internal tree of settings). I didn't want to add to confusion, as most people can't work even simple text files, so I opted for not writing the settings back to keep the original explanations.
As for testing, there are more 'developer' options that only I know about :) Most are disabled in the versions I release but some are still present, like that VMU overlay.

Anyway, that menu will be reworked when I have some time.

Interesting my version of XBCD+ is older. When I tried to install the later one my PC said that my installed version was newer?? Seems more then a few wonky drivers abound..lol anyhow I understand Deunan about the F12 save feature. I only meant it would be a nice extra, but really it's fine as is. I am just happy to finally have Vibration support in Makaron working for me :). As for the VMU displaying on screen I was referring to your mentioned method of adding

# LCD display
LCD = 2

to the Makron.ini which of course sets it to on permanently. I just hope you keep this great feature in future releases. Thanks for again :)

HiroPro

I wasn't going to remove that completly, just that my original plan called for overlay that could be relocated into any of the four corners of the screen. T9 series have it fixed in upper right.
But right now (rather then changing what's already done) I'm inclined to just add two more variables that would allow to freely specify the VMU LCD position in X/Y axes, as a percentage of the screen size or something. Not that I expect many people to make any use of it :)

Sounds great and as for use..well I have already used the VMU on screen display in Shenmue(the VMU displays move combinations), also in Skies of Arcadia. :)

HiroPro