Exit | Mode | Start | Play - buttons ?

[Askeptic]

Hello,

I am working on building out my arcade cabinet and I see many cabinets to be used with RetroPie have Exit, Mode, Start and Play buttons on the front. What do these buttons map to as I assume they aren't used when doing the initial controller mapping? Is there somewhere else with in RetroPie I would go in order to bind these buttons to give them a purpose?

Thanks!

[Lurker]

There are a number of different ways you might want to set up your cabinet, but if I were to start from a most basic option;

A lot of cabinet templates and pre-built kits have 2 front buttons for each player that get assigned to Start and Select. Start and Select are also most often Player1 and Coin for games with the Select+start together being "exit"

The front layout would be:

Select/coin ----- Start/P1 ----- Select/coin ----- Start/P2
Or some combination to that effect.

Those doing a single player cabinet may still have four front buttons, The start and select as above but they will also add a Mode button to toggle turbo and or rapid fire on and off on the usb encoder and an 'exit' button.

Note the exit button has its own post worth of various ways to set it up so I will briefly say, some use scripts some use an independent hot button + start and some use the typical select + start default.

The one option will mention in just a bit more detail that I thought was novel was a set up where there was a button labeled exit and it was wired to trigger the hot button and start together making it a stand alone exit button in which select + start would not also trigger an exit. So there was a Start , Select (not assigned to the hot button) and an Exit (that riggered hot button + start together)

It had to be configured as a sole hot button and then wired to the start button as well but I thought it was a clever solution. That design though had a limitation as they didn't include an independent hot button so all the other hot button options where not easily accessible to them.

My advice... write down the functions/buttons you want and then cut out little circles of paper around the size you want for that button (30mm, 20mm, little 1/4" volcano dot) then place them on a similar controller deck paper cut out and see where you like them. I personally don't care for the coin and player buttons to be on the front. I like them in the upper corners when there is room.

[Askeptic]

@lurker Thank you! That is very detailed.

I also prefer the start / select (player / coin) buttons to be on the top control board as well.

The layout I was taking a look at interestingly enough had the start / select on top, but then 4 additional buttons on the front.

Example: https://goo.gl/1M6PK1

[MattyL42]

Hi I've done this with arcade cab. There's 1 and 2 play coin in buttons and 1 and 2 player start buttons (classic arcade style).

These buttons are just bound to a key letter in the ipac2 software and the iPac then acts as a keyboard does in mame. If you Google mame keyboard controls you will see- what I mean.
Player one start button acts like a 1 key
Player two coin button is num6

When setting up you can choose a 'hot key' example- player 2 coin in. Press this with other buttons gives you more functions so for example press with p1 start and it exits the game.

Recommend getting an ipac2 and setting up you controls up before finalising hard wiring later into your cab later.

You can change key values in the ipac2 software which gets around any problems or conflicts (remember this part) in retropie-mame-retroarch

[Askeptic]

@mattyl42
Thank you,

I will definitely map my Coin/Player# buttons over to my Select/Start, however I think I know what is going on with the (4) additional buttons in the front. I believe I will need to edit some config for macros. IE, each of those buttons will actually trigger the hotkey + something else to perform the Exit, Mode, Start and Play functions with a single press.

Now to figure out how to do that...

[m2306]

@lurker said in Exit | Mode | Start | Play - buttons ?:

Those doing a single player cabinet may still have four front buttons, The start and select as above but they will also add a Mode button to toggle turbo and or rapid fire on and off on the usb encoder and an 'exit' button.

I’m in the process of making a cabinet and I already decided on having 6 buttons for gameplay and start and select buttons but haven’t drilled the holes in the panel yet. I actually wanted to have autofire on/off buttons as well. I tried asking here but didn’t get a reply. I don’t know how to get them working without a tutorial, so I decided to scrap the idea. I can’t code so I need some help. Do you know if there is instructions somewhere on how to do this? Additionally, I don’t have iPac, I have a Controlblock.

This is my original post including a link to a video that showcases the autofire feature that I would like to include. https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/18468/how-to-add-autofire-buttons-with-controlblock

[MattyL42]

Re- the macros... if you find out how to do this please let me know. I have a CrT shader one-off button but I have to press the hot key.

I'm not sure on the Auto fire one-off is there a hot key for it already?

[Lurker]

@askeptic

Thanks for the image. For that build I have no idea what the intention for those front four button, since they also put (select/start) in the upper corners. I keep trying to come to a logic conclusion but there are just to many possibilities;

• They are set them to a macro keyboard input.
• They are redundant start and select buttons.
• The designers didn't know what they were doing and those buttons do nothing.
• The red blue yellow green keeps making me think the is a purpose, but maybe that's what they "WANT" you to think. it's how they get in your head man.

So ya... no idea.

@m2306
I don't have much experience with the IPac or Controlblock, so I can't offer much advise on that front. I watched the video in the post and they don't say they have an IPac or Controlblock in that build. That combined with the set up he has and how it functions matched with a USB encoder, so I think the build in that video is using a usb encoder.

The usb encoder has a turbo mode button and a clear button connection point and it works just like the video said. So unless someone else wants to chime in on how it is accomplished with a Controlblock or IPac , I think you choices are dig deeper to figure it out or get a usb encoder instead of a controlblock/IPac

[m2306]

@lurker Thnx. I checked out the USB encoder product and seems like this is the correct product for easily adding autofire. Maybe it would be possible to do it with the controlblock as well but requires more skills than I have. I like the power switch feature and ability to connect two cotrollers to the controlblock but the dufficulty of adding cooling solutions with how it stacks on top of the pi is annoying.