RetroArch isn't mapping the GamePad buttons correctly - RetroPie 4.4

mitu

Based on the evtest output, it looks like the device is registering a keyboard, mouse and joystick inputs. Looks like an Android gamepad.
Since the auto-configuration doesn't work, I'd take the manual configuration route and create the mappings manually in the .cfg file (see https://retropie.org.uk/docs/RetroArch-Configuration/#autoconfigurations). Your configuration file is in /home/pi/.config/retroarch/autoconfig/Gamepad.cfg - you should add there the keycodes as reported by jstest when testing your controller.

EDIT: or maybe the gamepad has a 'mode' switch that turns on a PC compatible connection mode - you could try to use that.

ANamelessDrake

I'll give that a try but I'd prefer to disable it on the system itself.

Fortunately I have a backup image of my last working version of RetroPie (3.8 I believe) and since I rarely logged into it interactively I have a fairly small bash history to look through. It seems I changed the driver for this device in the past to sd12. That doesn't seem to do anything now though.

Can you tell me if that's still a valid driver for devices? Maybe there's another package I can try to install.

Also I found this post (second answer) which describes a solution that involves modifying X11 configs: https://askubuntu.com/questions/632026/how-can-i-stop-my-controller-from-moving-my-mouse

Does the X11 that's shipped with Debian (rasberian) Stretch still use these config files?

mitu

@ANamelessDrake said in RetroArch isn't mapping the GamePad buttons correctly - RetroPie 4.4:

Does the X11 that's shipped with Debian (rasberian) Stretch still use these config files?

RetroPie doesn't use Raspbian, so that solution doesn't apply. Other input drivers available are hid and sdl2 ( I think default is udev, which is what you're using right now).

ANamelessDrake

@mitu I just tried to manually configure the inputs (/home/pi/.config/retroarch/autoconfig/Gamepad.cfg) but they seem to be correct.

Any other ideas?

mitu

@ANamelessDrake One last idea - use Xboxdrv to simulate an Xbox compatible driver and 'hide' the original device.

ANamelessDrake

@mitu said in RetroArch isn't mapping the GamePad buttons correctly - RetroPie 4.4:

@ANamelessDrake One last idea - use Xboxdrv to simulate an Xbox compatible driver and 'hide' the original device.

Okay I'll give that a shot and report back if that did the trick or not. One quick note is the documentation seems to be a bit dated. Installing the driver via the EmulationStation GUI wasn't possiable (at least it wasn't in the menu option location documented) so I ended up installing it via the command line.

sudo apt-get install xboxdrv

mitu

@ANamelessDrake The xboxdrv driver can be installed from the RetroPie setup packages - it's in the drivers section.

ANamelessDrake

I'm very sad to report, after trying tons of different things, I simply could not get this controller to work in RetroPi 4.4.

Unless anyone has any other ideas I'm going to restore my 3.8 image. :-(

Either way I do appreciate all the help!

mitu

I'm curious how does this work on the 3.8 image - what's the input_driver used in RetroArch and if there are any other configurations you applied to make the controller work.

ANamelessDrake

Currently the driver used in RetroArch is set to udev. Changing the driver doesn't seem to change the behaviour of the controller.

Previously it was set to sdl2 which seemed to do the trick.

I built the previous version quite some time ago so sadly I don't remember everything I did but like I said previously the bash history on the box was fairly small. It seems like all I had to do to get it work was create a udev rule (which I had to do again here in 4.4) and change the driver over to sdl2.

Since 3.8, it seems a major OS update was required. I suspect that Debian 9.8 (the current version of Debian) has made changes in how it handles hardware via udev since Debian 8.0 (the previous version used) .

I'm an automation specialist with limited experience writing hardware drivers so unfortunately I'm kinda at a loss as to where to go from here.

ANamelessDrake

I just checked my other fourm posts I made here and it seems like I had this same issue previously but changing the driver did the trick.

See the original post about this topic I made back in 2016: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/2097/controller-does-not-work-in-games/7

mitu

@ANamelessDrake thanks for coming back to this. I don't think that the udev or OS changes are all that important, but I think the SDL library (and the sdl2 input driver as a consequence) has suffered some changes.
Your gamepad is an IPEGA-9028, right ?

ANamelessDrake

I'm not 100% sure what the model is and udevadm doesn't report a model . It's some no-name gamepad I bought ages ago. It was cheap and has worked great up until this attempted upgrade.

Here is the Amazon link that I found searching through my old orders:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0104BDNW6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

mitu

OK, just one last check - you modified both the retroarch.cfg in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg and the gamepad.cfg file in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads and put input_driver=sdl2 ?

ANamelessDrake

@mitu said in RetroArch isn't mapping the GamePad buttons correctly - RetroPie 4.4:

OK, just one last check - you modified both the retroarch.cfg in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg and the gamepad.cfg file in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads and put input_driver=sdl2 ?

Awesome that seemed to fix the problem!!! :-)

It seems that I missed input_driver in retroarch.cfg. Previously I only changed input_joypad_driver

So for others who might be having the same problem.

Make the following changes:
/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

input_driver="sdl2"
input_joypad_driver = "sdl2"

/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads/Gamepad.cfg

input_driver = "sdl2"

Thanks again for all the help!