Can you use a joystick to control the Emulationstation menu?

Columbo

I have heard that you can use a joystick to control the Emulationstation menu which is what I need for my arcade console. The problem is that when I run Emulationstation and the welcome screen comes up it says "1 control pad detected. Press a key to configure" or something like that. When I push the joystick up the display says "KEYBOARD" and then wants me to press keys on the keyboard to configure. How do I configure it so I can scroll the menu with the joystick and select a game by pressing one of the arcade buttons?

BenWlson

How is the joystick connected on your arcade console? It sounds like the joystick switches are emulating keyboard presses.

Columbo

Thanks for your reply. The joystick is connected through the iPac2 controller. What I found by experimenting is that even though it says "KEYBOARD", if I move the joystick up, it seems to recognize that it was pushed up. The problem I am having now is that when configuring Emulationstation, I configure the joystick up, down, left and right, and then I use the red button for “Start”, the yellow button for “Select” and the blue button for “A”.
I then leave everything else undefined. When I reboot I can scroll the banner showing the different emulators using the joystick, and I can select an emulator using the blue button. I selected the Commodore emulator because most of my games are C64 games. I can then scroll through the list available games with the joystick and select a game using the blue button but once the game loads, I can’t get it to start. I can press the red, the yellow or the blue buttons but nothing happens. I am, as you can tell, totaaly new to Retropie and Emulationstation, but I assumed that when configuring Emulationstation that assigning “Start” to the yellow button was what I needed to do to get a game to start. Any ideas?

PingSpike

I've not used the C64 emu, but on my ipac2 with mame emu I have to press the insert coin switch then I press the 1P Start button on the ipac.

Columbo

I have a 1Player and 2Player button but I have not installed them yet. I was first wanting to see if I could get the joystick and other 3 buttons to work. The games load fine but once loaded and the start screen is displayed, none of the buttons will start the game running. Do you know if the option "START" in the configuration process it actually for starting a game?

Thanks

Columbo

Through a lot of searching I discovered that setting up the joystick and buttons in Emulationstation only controls the scrolling through the game list and the selection of the desired game. Once that is done, Emulationstation passes control over to RetroArch and RetroArch has to be configured to handle the operation of the selected game. I am experimenting with that now.

Riverstorm

@Columbo said in Can you use a joystick to control the Emulationstation menu?:

Emulationstation only controls the scrolling through the game list and the selection of the desired game.

Yes the IPAC is detected as a keyboard and works like a keyboard but with fewer buttons than a real keyboard. You have a max of 32 connections minus ground (16 for each player). When you press a key and configure your inputs they are used to manage ES but they also are passed to Retroarch to run a game.

Once that is done, Emulationstation passes control over to RetroArch and RetroArch has to be configured to handle the operation of the selected game. I am experimenting with that now.

Once that is done you can change your ES inputs without affecting your Retroarch inputs. They are stored in separate files after the initial config/setup of the controller.

You can also further refine your inputs in the actual emulator which will take priority over Retroarch inputs. Basically it's a hierarchy. The lower/closer to the game the higher the priority so if you configure the actual emulator inputs (MAME for example) they take priority over Retroarch inputs.

If you're fully trying to run a C64 game from a joystick/IPAC you're banking on being able to start the game, play the game, save a game (if applies) and exit all with a few buttons. Many emulators for sure are perfect for this but the C64 doesn't seem like one of those. With that being said ScummVM doesn't seem to be one either but some of the games you can do just that.

nitrofurano

i want to know how to use the joystick or the keyboard for the same purpose - sometimes i have keyboard connected, and sometimes i have joystick, and i want to be able to use one of them or both when i wish

edmaul69

@nitrofurano you can use both at the same time in retroarch cores. Program keyboard like you do controller. You may then have to manually add configuration keys in /opt/retropie/configs/sll/retroarch.cfg. Find the controls section and add the keys if they dont already set them. You have to manually create all of player 2's config.