Arcade Buttons - How Many? Layout?

[AndersHP]

I'm in the process of a bartop build, and I'm adding side buttons as well, primarily to have these as pinball buttons.

But what do you assign these for if not X,Y,A,B or L and R (my layout pr. player is 6 buttons)?

And is there a cool functionality to have for side buttons in Emulation station, e.g. letter browsing or something like that?

[backstander]

@AndersHP

I'm adding side buttons as well, primarily to have these as pinball buttons.

I like that idea!

But what do you assign these for if not X,Y,A,B or L and R (my layout pr. player is 6 buttons)?

You could use L2 and R2 (aka trigger buttons) or L3 and R3 (push in sticks buttons)

And is there a cool functionality to have for side buttons in Emulation station, e.g. letter browsing or something like that?

On my controller if you use either the L2 and R2 trigger buttons or the L and R shoulder buttons (can't remember which) you can move down or up a page. That might be a good use for those side buttons.

[pjft]

@backstander @AndersHP I love the idea of setting up side buttons for pinball games! Is it possible to get those to have the same function as existing buttons (I.e. having two buttons assigned to r2, for instance)?

I imagine that theoretically it would be, we'd just connect the two buttons to the same GPIO pin? But as I haven't done any such setup yet, I'd love to get your thoughts for when I do set up my bartop.

Thanks!

[backstander]

@pjft

I imagine that theoretically it would be, we'd just connect the two buttons to the same GPIO pin?

I've never tried it either but I think it would be possible. I thought I read once of someone doing something like that on their bartop.

[caver01]

@pjft said in Arcade Buttons - How Many? Layout?:

we'd just connect the two buttons to the same GPIO pin?

Yes. This is pretty common in the long history of BYOAC (build your own arcade cabinet). You can simply "double wire" the buttons so they operate in parallel with another button you already have. Ideally, you have enough inputs to map them separately (IPAC, etc. with a bunch of input screw terminals), but with GPIO you may be tapped out. I have seen plenty of examples of sharing input wires; the best example of this is the old "Franken-panel" where someone will wire up an additional joystick using the same inputs as existing Player 1 stick. In other words, Player 1 might normally use an 8-way joystick, but the builder installs an additional 4-way with a restrictor plate to improve the experience with classic games like PacMan, Donkey Kong, etc.

[AndersHP]

@caver01 Ah I can see the point in this.
I haven't thought of making the buttons do the same as the trigger buttons, maybe I should just do that.

I have spare slots on my iPac, so I think as a start I will try and see what L2 and R2 would do. I guess if in the end I want them to have the same trigger functions as buttons I already have, I could also hardcode the inputs in the config/all/retroarch.cfg to map to the same button as another.

[svendborg]

@dsstrainer Hi there - I have built a control panel, wicth could resemple yours - just with the coinbuttons on the side, to funtion as flippers in a pin-ball game. I built it with the Ultimarc Minipac Keyboard Encoder - which is the same as the ipac.

...anyways. Could you post me a working Retroarch.cfg with the layout you just pictured? That would be really helpfull :-)

[Ennio]

@dsstrainer I love your layout and am trying to do something just like in a full size arcade cabinet. I plan on using the coin return buttons at the Coin credit buttons to keep that look. I plan on purchasing the zero delay boards but noticed you also are using the xarcade keyboard encoder. Do I need both to do this setup. And like the last guy posted would you be willing to share your config file?

Thanks,
E

[neb]

@dsstrainer , I know that this is an old post but maybe still alive. I love the layout of your buttons and am new to Retro Pie and trying to decide how to setup buttons. I built out a quick panel to test the configuration with your layout. I'm having trouble configuring my buttons though when I run Emulation Station's controller setup. Since there is not a Select / Start combo do you have some hidden buttons for this? Do you then connect buttons such as your "Save State" button to the "select" and "right shoulder" buttons so that pressing it actually sends both keys to the controller?

This is my first build, any help would be great!
Thanks!
Ben

[dsstrainer]

@neb @Ennio

Sorry I hadn't seen these. Instead of Select/Start as exit, you can turn off hotkey support and just map a button to be exit. I did all of my mapping through the actual config file. I only used emulation station's mapping for the menu itself.. then I manually changed retroarch to a setup that worked for my encoder mapping. Finally mapped it through mame2003 for mame.

[caver01]

@dsstrainer I did exactly the same thing.

[dsstrainer]

Bringing this back up again in the latest versions of mame and retropie.
It looks like the powers that be claim that this is the correct end-all-be-all layout as far as what retroarch expects
https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/j5o21b/how_should_i_configure_a_6button_arcade_controller/
Y X L
B A R

I could live with this but what are people doing about Street fighter games?
Y X L
B A R
will default to
HP LK MK
LP MP HK
in mame2003/mame2003+

So are people going into each SF game and remapping the buttons just for those to be
LP MP HP
LK MK HK
?

Some people claim that if you use YXL, BAR then SF should all be correct by default but that does not appear to be the case

[dsstrainer]

@dsstrainer So after digging into the mame2003 menu I was right... it defaults the layout as
BAY
XLR
At least it was for me. When I deleted the default.cfg and sf2.cfg files under mame2003+/cfg it still used those
So I manually set the global to be
YXL
BAR

and viola... now all games work fine. Not sure why it was setting itself the other way but looks like this will work at least for most games setting button 1 as the starting button and for SF2 games they are all mapped fine.

[caver01]

@dsstrainer I think I did the same thing years ago, then saved a rom-specific mapping config for title that required it. It was handy to be able to go, OH, this is just the Street Fighter mapping? then drop in the appropriate cfg file for that rom.

By the way, it seems like it has been ages since I was on the forum here, but I finally have a P4 to play with, so that’s going into the cabinet this weekend. V4.8 was nicely timed for me ;-) so next comes a bunch of file transfers and re-configurations to get my power and volume working, test my spinners etc. etc. etc. It’s a lot of work, but I need to read posts again and re-familiarlize myself with stuff like this!

[dsstrainer]

So I'm again having second thoughts on this.
YXL
BAR
is what they say you should use... but I have a setup where I can use either the joystick and buttons OR use a gamepad.

So if I set up "BAR" as "ABC" in genesis using remap, that works great for the arcade buttons, but that means I have to use the B, A, and Right Shoulder on my gamepad. That's not so intuitive. And you can't have (nor want to have) per-controller remaps that I've seen.

Definitely thinking the best is to have
LXR
YBA
and remap them accordingly so that I would have YBA as the ABC buttons and on the gamepad it would be the bottom 3 buttons of the usual 4 (west, south, east) which is much more intuitive.

-EDIT- But then I guess arcade would be screwed up as L would be button 1 so in SF2, L is light punch, X med, R Hard.. I guess there's no way to win them all.

[caver01]

@dsstrainer I think everyone is going to have to reach their own conclusions based on whatever standards are out there. Part of the issue here is just flexibility—the huge variety of emulated systems we have available combined with the potential variability in individual projects requires decisions to be made on a case by case basis.

It seems clear to me that the standard, recommended mapping caters more toward hand-held controller use cases which is fine. For my project however, I align more with the legacy, native MAME application button mapping where the concept of AB or XY or LR have no meaning. In my world, it is all about button numbers Btn1, Btn2, Btn3, Btn4, Coin, START, etc. etc.

So, how these map to the ABXLYR is the issue. At some point, I simply had to admit that I am building an Arcade system whose primary function is play coin-operated video games. I may be a dying breed of cabinet builders using keyboard interfaces, so my challenge is to properly map my control panel layout so that my keyboard interface (ipac) triggers the switches I expect it to for arcade game. This has never changed, but I know the mapping through ES and Retroarch maybe has.

COIN START

SW1 SW2 SW3
SW4 SW5 SW6

This is always my goal, regardless of how these have to flow through “A” and “B” mappings

[dankcushions]

@dsstrainer said in Arcade Buttons - How Many? Layout?:

I could live with this but what are people doing about Street fighter games?
Y X L
B A R
will default to
HP LK MK
LP MP HK
in mame2003/mame2003+

i have no idea how it works now, but i for sure made mame2003 default to that when i was working on it years ago, as it's the sensible/standard layout...

i would check the core options for a 'controller type' option. maybe there's a way of getting the old functionality back.

[dankcushions]

@caver01 said in Arcade Buttons - How Many? Layout?:

So, how these map to the ABXLYR is the issue.

sure, but the issue was solved with street fighter 2 on the SNES in the early 90s :) that's where the XYL/BAR came from, and since libretro is geared around the retropad abstraction (effectively an iteration on a SNES controller), all libretro emulators must map back to that in a way that makes sense by default.

the issue is with 8 button controllers (eg playstation, xbox). fighting games of that era have moved to towards a
Y X R1
B A R2
layout, for whatever reason. back when i was masochistic enough to involve myself with MAME development, this was called the 'modern' controller layout and selectable in core options. i think SNES was called "classic".

[caver01]

That’s right. Retropad abstraction. . . Thanks for the reminder about that terminology.

None of this is actually a problem—it’s just a matter of development solving the needs of everyone AND configuration solving the needs of an individual project.

It has been a while since I was deep into these details as I tend to come and go with other projects/hobbies getting in the way. Someone gave me a Pi4 which is the first in my collection, so naturally, I put it into the arcade build and setup a fresh image of RetroPie 4.8. Now, I have LOTS of work to get it going again, so I am re-learning the controller configs, transcribing some stuff from 2003 to 2003 plus etc., not to mention getting some of my GPIO inputs working again, dealing with different HDMI cords, USB-C, and on and on.

There is actually what I will call a second generation of nostalgia in all of this nostalgia!