Johnny 5 Front-end Controls Viewer
 

With all the games that Mame provides, it is often difficult to determine what controls are actually used for each game. Fortunately the kind individuals involved in the Controls.dat project have made our lives easier.  They have provided several viewers (CPViewer, ___, and Johhny 5). I intend to investigate CPViewer soon but for now I have installed Johnny 5 and am quite pleased with it. It is easy to install and get running, and is a very impressive addition to the cabinet.

Johnny 5 is a visual controller application created by ____. It was created as a way of using the controls.dat information. In a nutshell, when you press a button in Mamewah, a screen pops up showing an image of your control panel with all the controls for the game is that highlit
being displayed. I have included examples of my screen image for two games below.                                     

How this is done
1) Download controls.dat from ______________ and place in _________.
2) Download Johnny5 from __________________ and unzip to __________.
3) In Mamewah (which file) you will need to add the following lines (show a screen print with the two lines highlighted).

4) Create an image of your control panel. An example of mine is here (link). I created it using Photoshop but it could be built using most any graphics program (Paintshop is one that comes to mind). This is done by:...
5) Add the text tabs to each control on your panel. A finished example of mine is here (link).
6) Change a keycode in Mamewah so you can pop up the screen.
7) Test.

I have some items that I wish Johnny 5 handled, the foremost being if I have remapped controls from default, the display does not show these changes. Not a big deal as if I have remapped the buttons, chances are I know what the new mapping is. I also believe that the soon-to-be-released update will address this issue.

Give it a try on your cabinet- you'll definitely be pleased with the result.

Conclusions