USB controllers/keyboard no longer work in games, only ES

billydent

Hello!

A year ago, I set up a Retropie for myself. Everything was great. It sat for awhile when I got busy, but this weekend I went back to it.

I fired up a game and...like subject line says, the input devices (a USB Xbox controller) didn't work. The game fired up fine, but once I was actually IN the game, nothing worked.

I tried a different controller (a USB gamepad) and still nothing.

I tried a keyboard. Nothing! (Although the Function keys and the Escape key worked. Nothing else, though!)

I rebooted and updated Retropie and the underlying Raspberry OS.

Still nothing. Controllers work fine in Retropie itself, but once I'm in an emulator...nothing.

I tried re-configuring the controller in Start -> Configure Input. Still nothing.

I can get into the Quick Menu, but once there, all I can do is use the arrow keys on the keyboard to go up and down the menu -- there's no way to select anything.

So it doesn't seem to be the controller itself because multiple controllers and a keyboard (all different brands) don't work. And they work fine out of the emulators. And I can't do anything in the Quick Menu to try to fix it because I can't select options there.

What the heck is going on??? What have I not thought of?

mitu

Please add the info requested in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first.

Looks like the RetroArch configuration is somehow broken, the keyboard should work as a last resort (F1 to bring up the menu, Esc to exit).

Can you remove the existing retroarch.cfg from /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg and re-install RetroArch ? This should copy the RetroPie default configuration for RetroArch. If you still have an issue after that, then to post a verbose log from RetroArch. You may need to use SSH to get it - post it on pastebin.com, since it will be a large file.

billydent

@mitu Thank you for this! I'm going to dive in once the kids go back to school and I have the time to sit with the system without being interrupted! 😂

billydent

@mitu Hey! It worked!

I didn't have to go through reinstalling Retroarch -- I deleted retroarch.cfg and rebooted and everything worked again!

(I still can't get Beyond Castle Wolfenstein for the Atari 130XE to work, but that's not your problem! Everything else works perfectly!)

Thank you so much!!!

mitu

@billydent said in USB controllers/keyboard no longer work in games, only ES:

I didn't have to go through reinstalling Retroarch -- I deleted retroarch.cfg and rebooted and everything worked again!

As I said earlier, re-installing will add the default RetroPie configuration, which you'll need. Just removing the file and running RetroArch will generate the default RetroArch config, which is not always suited for a Pi. YMMV.