How to use USB Arcade Fightstick for MAME?

[Dochartaigh]

I'm trying to use my USB Fightsticks in MAME and I'm totally failing... I've never used MAME on a PC before (have been using RetroArch on a RetroPie Raspberry Pi 3 build extensively). I've tried a half dozen tutorials and I think they're all written for older versions of MAME as I can't find some of the selections the tutorials mention. I've posted on a couple MAME forums, the reddit group, Facebook group...and utter silence prevails…not a peep from anyone…is it really that hard to use a USB controller in MAME?

For specifics, I have these fightsticks:

HORI Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Arcade Stick (PS3)
Mad Catz Street Fighter X Tekken - Arcade FightStick PRO (2x of these, for Xbox 360)
Mad Catz Street Fighter X Tekken - Arcade FightStick PRO (PS3)
HORI Fighting Stick Mini 4 (PS3/PS4)

My system is running/using:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit PC
MAME 0.190 romset
GroovyMAME/MESS 0.190 (outputting 15khz for my Sony BVM CRT)

The fightsticks are 4x different types, by 2x different manufacturers, meant for 3x different consoles (although all say they're PC compatible). Do I need different drivers for all these (when I tried this mame wouldn't recognize keypresses when i tried to map buttons)? I just read an article (I'm not home to try this yet) saying I might need Xbox 360 drivers for Windows 7, paired with the beta ScpToolkit driver to spoof PS3/4 emulation or something like that? OR, do I go another route and somehow map the fightstick buttons to mimic certain keys on a keyboard using some program?


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After I hopefully get these connected and recognized, I would love some advice on how people setup controller button mappings in MAME. When I hit TAB from a MAME game and go to controls I get the longest list of button mappings I've ever seen. From looking at the “Default Keys” in the MAMEDev documentation you would think they would have already mapped up/down/left/right at least, and at least a couple buttons, but I didn’t see anything like that.

RetroArch lets me configure any controller in about 10 seconds, and it’ll act like pretty much any other controller I might plug into it. They (in a nutshell) have most controllers from SNES and later setup like a 6-button controller layout (think Street Fighter with two rows of three buttons). Is there a way to set these up like that?

I’ve read through the entire MAMEDev documentation (what I understood at least), and the section for “Stable Controller IDs” is literally a quarter page of text with a single example… I have no clue where to go from here.

It looks like I should use “mapdevice” so I don’t loose my controller configs when I reboot and/or plug or unplug a device? Is there an add-on I can use to take care of this or does it all have to be hardcoded into config files?

How do people setup "hotkeys" (key combinations, on my fightstick, to do things like load game, save game, enter setup menu, exit game, etc.)?