ESC button no longer exits MAME game [SOLVED-ish]

songnar

I've got this handy dandy arcade setup working (work was going to toss an old voting machine cabinet - yoink!) and everything is, for the most part, working great! I've just got this one conundrum, luckily still in the testing phase!

I'm running a Pi 3
with a 5amp power supply
running RetroPie 4.3
Built from pre-made SD image on RetroPie Website
Currently connected are a set of USB-powered speakers; a Track ball/TankStick, and a keyboard.
Controller: X-Arcade Tankstick + Keyboard
No error messages received.
Specifically regarding RetroArch Mame 2003.

I have enabled XArcadeToJoyPad [sic] and it does work - and I can use a button combo to quite a game without any issues, BUT I can't press escape on my keyboard to quit at this point. Even though the ESCAPE key is mapped to that particular hotkey in the retroarch config. That makes me sad because I've hacked another keyboard open and attached a microswitch to the Escape key; the plan is to mount that button by the screen so players can exit the game without having to figure out button combinations... coin-drop still works just fine when I press 5 and 6, but ESC does nothing.

I'll see if I can snag the config files shortly, but in the interim has anyone got any ideas?

EDIT: Snippet from RetroPie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

[snip]
"cache_directory = "/tmp/retroarch"
core_options_path = "/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-core-options.cfg"
system_directory = "~/RetroPie/BIOS"
config_save_on_exit = "false"
video_threaded = "true"
video_smooth = "false"
video_aspect_ratio_auto = "true"
video_font_size = "12.000000"
input_joypad_driver = "udev"
input_autodetect_enable = "true"
input_player1_a = "x"
input_player1_b = "z"
input_player1_y = "a"
input_player1_x = "s"
input_player1_start = "enter"
input_player1_select = "rshift"
input_player1_l = "q"
input_player1_r = "w"
input_player1_left = "left"
input_player1_right = "right"
input_player1_up = "up"
input_player1_down = "down"
input_player1_l2 = "nul"
input_player1_r2 = "nul"
input_player1_l3 = "nul"
input_player1_r3 = "nul"
menu_swap_ok_cancel_buttons = "false"
input_state_slot_increase = "right"
input_state_slot_decrease = "left"
input_exit_emulator = "escape"
[/snip]

Full cfg file at: https://pastebin.com/Gzd5jnGt

songnar

Observation - ESC DOES in fact still work to exit the game BUT only if the hotkey button is being held... todo: figure out how to disable the need to hold down a hotkey button to use hotkey functions on the keyboard.

As long as I don't assign any hotkey functions to my JoyStick configs, that ought to do what I need.

To the documentation, Robin!

songnar

Righto - I've gone ahead with a work-around solution. I mapped ESC to both "enable hotkey" and "exit retroarch" so that a single button-press will do both. I don't need the hotkey to do coin-drop, so it's win-win.

Guess I ought to solder some buttons on for those coin drops as well as TAB, huh? Anyhow, case closed!