Is this behavior the right one? (Ipac2)

axrst

Hi to all forum members.
I have this config:

Raspberry Pi 3B
Original Power Supply
RetroPie 4.3 installed from the image on Retropie.co.uk, last updated May 20th.
Ipac 2 USB interface
32 GB microSD card (Sandisk)
Arcade buttons and Joystics for 2 players.

Well, I'm new to retropie, but finally i managed to made my own arcade controller-machine. I read very carefully this Guide. In the last comments, there is a post about new firmware (1.36) for the ipac2 witch gamepad-enabled firmware enables TWO gamepad devices, one for each player. So i tried to test that as it supposed to be way too easier.

My question has to do with this. Having no previous experience with retropie and ipac2, I don'nt know if what I'm getting is the right and expected behavior. To be more specific: The retropie, sees my controller as 2 gamepads. But when I'm going to configure them, the system says for the controller: "keyboard". For both of them. I'm doing anyway the configuration.

Now in the games: I can play some arcade games as 2 players (eg. mortal combat, Track & Field and Passing Shot (tennis like game)). But in others (donkey kong, elevator action) I cannot use the 2nd joystick and buttons (except the 2 player start and 2 player add coins buttons).

So, is this a controller or game configuration issue (or something else)?

lostless

@axrst many arcade games back then only had 1 joystick and set of buttons. The original donkey Kong only had 1 joystick and you would share it. So the emulator is working just fine sharing the player 1 joystick.

rbaker

@axrst The fact that it is being seen as two game pads is correct. Mine was not seen this way hence the process of re-flashing.

Clyde

@axrst The I-PAC series are keyboard encoders that map your joysticks and buttons to keyboard keys, so it's also normal behaviour that Retropie sees them as a keyboard. edit: Among other information, there's a Default Keycode Table on Ultimarc's website.

As @lostless said, many 2 player arcade games are alternating the players instead of letting them play simultanously.

To check how many player controls a particular game had, you could either search the web for pictures of its cabinet or look up its rom name in the nplayers.ini. Follow this link and look under Download for Previous versions. Although the oldest nplayers.ini available there is for MAME 0.86, whereas Retropie's standard MAME core is based on version 0.78, they are close enough for this purpose.

In the file, you can see the player number of a rom followed by "alt" for alternating play and "sim" for simultaneous play.

axrst

Thank you all for your help. It seems I'm ok for now.

just another thing I noticed: The moment I'm beginning the arcade game (in the loading process I think), a message appears (with tiny letter size) in the lower left corner of the screen saying: "Ultimarc's IPAC controller not configured" (or something close to that). Is this specific to the current game, or emulator or what?

rbaker

@axrst Mine has always said this and I have never solved it. Has no effect on functionality.

Clyde

@axrst But the controls work nonetheless? Then you could disable these messages in RetroArch's RGUI menu (I'm not at home at the moment, so I can't look up the exact menu entry).

axrst

@clyde Yes, the controls work nonetheless.

So, all working OK. Thanks.

axrst

Hi to all again.

I'm returning to ask something else:
I can play with 2 players in the ARCADE emulator. But not at all in other emu's. I have done no extra configuration in any emulator. Just the startup setup.

Do I have to edit some config files in (e.g) snes, or neogeo and others, for 2nd player to work? Because in Arcade that was automatic.

Thank you again.

rbaker

@axrst ARCADE is not an emulator, its a folder where you place roms and then choose an emulator to run them using the run command. If you are electing to choose a non-libretro emulator such as mame4all or pifba, they will not be configured on startup.

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Arcade/

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Runcommand/