problem with trackball/mouse can move outside game/screen/window

Halvhjearne

I have a problem using trackball with mame0139, its as if there is a limit to how far i can move to either side and its somewhat random as to how far i can move in either direction before it is blocked, making the games unplayable.

as an example in arkanoid i can move in either direction in the begining but after moving back and forth a few times it cannot go all the way to the edge.

i had the same problem with another trackball and they both work fine as mouse/pointer in windows and ubuntu, tho i havent actually tried it on mame with another pc yet, but i will test on another pc and a raspberry when i have time.

anyone else had this problem and maybe knows a way to fix it?

Halvhjearne

when i first start a game (marble madness, centipede maybe arkanoid) it seems fine to begin with, but after playing a bit, the movement to the right side will be somewhat restricted somewhere between the middle and the left side of the screen.
if i then move all the way to the right and keep moving the trackball further than game allows, it seems to "unlock" moving to the left side, sometimes only a bit, other times completely, untill the game randomly decides to block it again.

i am thinking maybe the "pointer" is moving "off-screen"?
it seems like the movement of the trackball is not "locked" or aligned with the screen.

it seems to only affect the x axis and only when moving to the left side.
i have not seen it happend on the y axis so far.

Halvhjearne

has nobody else experienced this?
if not, and you are using a trackball that works fine, then which emulator and settings should i use or change?

Halvhjearne

any help with this would be appreciated ...

Halvhjearne

after playing around with this for a while now, i am now certain that this is a problem with lr-mame2010 allowing the mouse outside the "window" where the game is played.

is there a way to lock the mouse to the current game/"window"?

Halvhjearne

can someone please help me find a way to lock the mouse to the screen/window/game?

is there a mame or retroarch option for this?

PaulMcClernan

Halvhjearne
Hey, I'm having the exact same problem with my trackball (which is an ancient 1980s cabinet trackball wired to an 1990s iMac puck mouse so I thought maybe there was a problem there, but it works fine as a mouse in file manager apps). It works great for about a minute (or random amount of time) of play and then it's like it's hitting an invisible wall on one side of the play area or the other (random location). But it's happening in lr-mame2003plus too I believe (have to double check).
Did you ever find a solution?

Halvhjearne

PaulMcClernan

i discovered that it is a problem in retroarch, which means it affects almost all emulators.
https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/9325

https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/commit/dacf9e327a7495b03cf6725432794ed23997359b
not sure if this recent commit has fixed the problem, but either way it most likely wont be fixed in batocera before 5.24.

PaulMcClernan

Halvhjearne
Oh wow, that's a bummer, but thanks for tracking it down. I guess while I wait I'll look into how to manually add standalone emulators to Batocera-Linux post build. I was going to look into that anyway because I already know the Stella Atari 2600 libretro cores don't support mouse/track ball but the standalone Stella app does. I really like Batocera for the easy setup, and PS2, Wii, etc. on X86_64, but I'm considering switching my cabinet to RetroPi over some small linux distro because of the little things.

ScootMagee

Just want to add that I'm also experiencing this issue in batocera. The mousepoll rate also seems to be off a bit. I'm using the latest build 5.24.

Halvhjearne

ScootMagee
its still a problem with newest retropie aswell, so i guess either it wasnt fixed in retroarch yet or batocera and retropie did not bump the retroarch version yet.

unscathed

I just asked this same question a few seconds ago then found your answer... lol

I run Batocera 5.24 and play games like Arknoid and Centipede, I noticed that I can play a little with full range side to side, then something happens and my "Range" gets shorter. The only way to fix it is to spin the track in the opposite direction, and back. until it happens again shortly later. Playing Crystal Castles is impossible.

The trackball works flawlessly in Kodi otherwise.

Running Ultimark Trackball on Ipac-2 v 1.51

beber

May be due to the driver of retroarch, you should change it from “x” to “udev”. It worked for me.

thefarnz83

beber Can you tell me where you set this in retroarch? I just posted the same issue with a spinner, opps.

Penguinthedestroyer

Did anyone find a solution to this? In looking at the configs for retro arch I believe it was set to udev but this is driving me nuts.

tomguy111

Totally have this issue. Has anyone gotten trackballs to work?
had this issue on retropie running on Ubuntu as well as batocera. Both running on a pc.
Trackball works fine on a raspberry pi running retropi.

MizterB

To finally solve this one…to use mouse/analog inputs on RetroArch without going “offscreen”, set the input driver to udev.

In Batocera.conf:
global.retroarch.input_driver=udev

ajmorris

MizterB This worked for me running v33 and using the Atgames Gamer Pro dual fight stick with Trackball.

It was set to ‘x’ and I changed it to udev

global.retroarch.input_driver=udev

duncan37uk

That didn’t work, for me anyway, with Batocera30. Only way I’ve got it to work is with setting thw mousefocus (or game focus, although that also stops the exit game working unless you press Game Focus again). I believe it’s fixed in later versions anyway? Perhaps it did mouse focus automatically rather than pressing a button to do so?

I put the following in system/batocera.conf which sets the hotkey+P1 button 4 on my control panel to turn on mouse focus and then I just do that whenever running a trackball game. Not found how to do that automatically as yet.

global.retroarch.input_grab_mouse_toggle_btn = 3 #P1B4

MizterB

That’s possible. I can only confirm that it solved the issue for me on v33 and the v34 beta.