I believe your suggestion for a new feature is an old feature that's since been removed.
It was called "sticky keys". There's mention of it in MAME 0.37B14 (April 2001) readme.txt:
- Changed 4-way emulation on a 8-way joystick to "sticky" mode. This makes Lady Bug and other 4-way games more playable. Explanation here: http://www.rentrondesign.homestead.com/JoyPrimer.html [Jeoff Krontz]
Don't bother with the JoyPrimer link above; it's long dead, and even archive.org doesn't have it.
It looks like it was changed in MAME 0.57 (January 2002) src/inptport.c:
/* If joystick is pointing at a diagonal, acknowledge that the player moved * the joystick by favoring a direction change. This minimizes frustration * when using a keyboard for input, and maximizes responsiveness. * * For example, if you are holding "left" then switch to "up" (where both left * and up are briefly pressed at the same time), we'll transition immediately * to "up." * * Under the old "sticky" key implentation, "up" wouldn't be triggered until * left was released. * * Zero any switches that didn't change from the previous to current state. */
And it was further tweaked in MAME 0.84u4 (July 2004), where it looks like it's remained mostly unchanged since.
There's also a (very) old conversation about it here, with some suggestions on key mappings that might help.
I was concerned about this when I started buying components for a cocktail cabinet, so I settled on joysticks with a rotating restrictor plate. With a pull and twist, the joystick goes from 8-way to 4-way mode, and back again. No need to even open the cabinet. See Mag-Stik/Mag-Stik Plus.
H@P
Edited by H@P (09/14/16 07:46 AM)
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