Help!.. just, HEEELLLLLPPPP!!

[jamietuley]

Hello all,

Firstly I'm new to here so please bear with me..

So I have just finished a bartop build and am having problems with the controls. My 2 player setup is wired up to an ipac2. I hooked it up to my Mac and used MACipac downloaded from Ultimarcs site to test my controls.. all of my buttons working fine.

Now that's all I did on the software, just tested my buttons, I didn't change anything.

So on my raspberry pi I have flashed a 32gb image I've had for some time from madlittlepixel which focused arcade which is what I'm after.. there's some consoles on there but I'll get rid of those another time.

THE PROBLEM:

So firing up my pi image and trying out the controls as defaults I have the situation where some arcade games are responding fine with the controls.. Insert coin button is inserting coin and my player 1 start is starting the game fine but then some other games there is no response at all!

After reading guides:

https://github.com/iberov/retropie_ipac2_setup_wiki

on editing the config files remotely with FileZilla. Its left me in more issue as it has left my controls even more less responsive! I did try editing the text in the ‘all’ config file to retroarch to the guides example (with my own key binds) but that  left my controls even more unresponsive!! This guide said they moved all the input commands to the top of the config file text which I tried but no cigar! ...Could this be because my retroarch is an older version than this guys??

THE HELP:

So I just need to know the exact order in which to configure my controls.. the essential ways to do things:

• Is Emulation Station config first port of call?

• Is my editing of the config files (via filezilla) not working as Im on the wrong version of Retroarch?

WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?????!!!

I really just need a dummy guide for this.. I thank anyone for their help in advance and I really really REALLY appreciate it!

Cheers

Jamie

[sirhenrythe5th]

3rd-Party-Images like yours from "Madlittlepixel" are not supported here.

[jamietuley]

@sirhenrythe5th

Thank you for your message.

As I mentioned I'm completely new to all this so was pretty out on my own setting this whole thing up. I'm happy to approach my whole set up the proper "supported" way and not use a 3rd party image - had no idea this was the wrong thing to do.

If anyone could give me a little more guidance that would be great.

Many thanks

Jamie

[Efriim]

I thought you wrote a lot, but then I read the IPAC setup.

Retroarch and Emulationstation both automatically set up most configurations, so I don't know how much of that was necessary.

Always you will want to use Input configuration in EmulationStation by pressing "start" and selecting 'configure input'
Retroarch and a few other emulators will now have a reference for the controls that have been assigned.

You should update RetroArch to the latest using RetroPie Package manager.
RetroPie-Setup >> Update RetroPie-Setup script
RetroPie-Setup >> Manage Packages >> core >> Install/Update all core packages from binary

You may want a keyboard on hand if you get stuck.
Navigate to the RetroArch in EmulationStation that will open RetroArch, this is the base retroarch config.
Go to the settings, change the drivers >> menu >> xmb or rgui if you prefer. Go back to settings >> input and assign aMenu Toggle Combo. Scroll down to User 1 Binds and check them out, you can assign all the buttons here. Pressing the "Start" button on any Retroarch setting will reset it to Default; the default for bindings is the (Auto) setting. Check out the Hotkey Binds and any other settings you want for general emulation. You will be able to create easily core and game specific options overrides when you are in any emulator libretro core.
Phew
Don't forget to save the configuration
It is all the way back at the Main Menu Configuration File >> Save Current Configuration

Non LibRetroArch emulators such as ADVMAME will sometimes need the inputs to be configured manually the usual place to access the mapper is by finding and pressing the menu button on a keyboard but sometimes it will be necessary to write the input-maps manually. The "TAB" key is the menu button for advmame.

The help:
Pressing the "Start" button on the input configurations in retroarch to set them to Default(Auto)

[jamietuley]

@Efriim thankyou so much for taking the time to write a lengthy detailed response.. really appreciate it. Hopefully have the opportunity to try all that out when I get home tonight. I'll let you know how I get on..

Thanks again!

[BobHarris]

@jamietuley Down the road you will probably run into more issues with that 3rd party image.
You're better off starting from scratch with the official Retropie image: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/

That way people here will help you out and it's actually a lot of fun creating your own customized image exactly how you like it.

[jamietuley]

@BobHarris thanks so much for your reply...
I'd actually be up for creating my own image if it's not too out of my depth! I'm actually only looking to have arcade games on my cabinet so I'm only really interested in MAME I guess..
Ahead of the basic installation of retropie from scratch have you any advice/resources for the project I want to do?.. best ways to achieve it with retropie.. best/most stable mame set?

I really am a beginner when it comes to building N image.. also entriged how these front ends are made with all the game footage etc?

Any help appreciated..

Many thanks

[mitu]

@jamietuley said in Help!.. just, HEEELLLLLPPPP!!:

Ahead of the basic installation of retropie from scratch have you any advice/resources for the project I want to do?.. best ways to achieve it with retropie.. best/most stable mame set?

Start here

I really am a beginner when it comes to building N image.. also entriged how these front ends are made with all the game footage etc?

This is explained in the Emulationstation page.

[jamietuley]

@mitu a big thanks for this.. it's exactly what I need 👍🏻
Thanks to everyone (bar one hostile comment) who took the time to help out and point me in the right direction..much appreciated

[rbaker]

@jamietuley Dont forget to post everything requested in here: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first before future posts to enable a quick helpful reply. Look at your title for example. Good Luck.

[omen_peter]

@jamietuley said in Help!.. just, HEEELLLLLPPPP!!:

Thanks to everyone (bar one hostile comment)

If the hostile comment you refer to was from @sirhenrythe5th I wanted to add that he was absolutely right to post that. It wasn't hostile. It was stating a fact. 3rd party images (apart from being illegal) are not supported here (it says so in the rules of the forum too). These images are usually poorly configured and because you (as the person buying it) haven't set it up yourself, you don't know what settings have been altered, and so neither does anyone on the forum. As has already been said, use the official image and build from there. Then people can help.

[jamietuley]

@rbaker thankyou for this, I now completely understand the rules. I was completely new to it all and didn't realise the rules against 3rd party images.. I saw this first via YouTube so got off to a bad start. I do appreciate the time you took to point me in the right direction and all the other helpful users on here (bar acouple).. now well on the way to starting my setup from scratch 👍🏻

[Efriim]

@jamietuley
Skyscraper is the one that I use for finding videos. I think I get videos from screenskraper.fr they aren't always the best videos, first 30 seconds of gameplay but they show the intro screen and are mostly uniform.
The only alternative that I know of is acquiring videos from https://emumovies.com/ and it requires an account, I found they have a sync download utility for adding them to your existing setup and I have not used this.

Here are some infos for mame's emulators and romsets, some of it should be discarded or modified most all of them cover a range, and I find the latest 0.208 works with lr-mame2010 but sometimes not advmame[3.9]

Advmame  0.94        MAME 0.94
Advmame  1.4         MAME 0.106
Advmame [3.9]        MAME 0.106 - ???

MAME4ALL             MAME 0.37b5 - ???

lr-mame2000          MAME 0.37b5
lr-mame2003          MAME 0.78
lr-mame2010          MAME 0.139
(under experimental packages) [build failure - ran out of memory]
lr-mame2003plus      MAME 0.78 - MAME 0.188
lr-mame2015          MAME 0.160
lr-mame2016          MAME 0.174
lr-mame              MAME 0.208

They increment by decimal values, 0.208 is greater than 0.78. The lr-mame emulators on experimental all failed to compile, I think this has to do with running out of memory, I don't know if there is a solution, they probably don't perform well anyhow, and I think the others have been enhanced and modified for extended rom support and pi compatibility.