Using a Single Button to Exit Games?

[soonerdoc]

Is the only way to exit a game using a two button combo (currently select and start)?

I realize the select button is "enabling" the hotkey and start is the "exit". Is there anyway to exit a game using a single button? Getting ready to build mame cab and would like to be able to do this with a single button if possible.

Thanks!

[meleu]

@soonerdoc the "pure retroarch" solution is to use a keyboard, there's no way to achieve it using joysticks.
But we talked about an alternate solution here.

[Capeman]

Yes, if you build a mame cab, use a keyboard encoder for your controls, all secondary functions can be set alongside your controls as single button presses by disabling the hotkey. This only works on keyboard though, disabling hotkey on gamepad input will disable all the secondary functions.

Use something like this and map your controls to keys. It's the best way to do arcade cabs.

Look at the MINI-PAC (non bundle is $30)
http://www.ultimarc.com/store/section.php?xSec=3

[soonerdoc]

@Capeman

I am using a Xin-Mo dual controller. Isn't this basically the same thing as the minipac you suggested?

[Capeman]

No, they are literally 2 completely different types of HID input.

They look similar, but the XIN-MO is seen by the Raspberry Pi as two PS3 gamepads. The inputs will correspond to gamepad button 1, gamepad button 2 etc. It's the equivalent of connecting 2 wired ps3 controllers through USB. In retropie, gamepads cannot do alternate inputs (save state / load state / hard pause / exit emulator, etc. ) without binding a hotkey and pressing 2 buttons at once.

The Mini-Pac is a keyboard encoder. You will literally get keypresses from it, each button will correspond to a button on a keyboard. They are factory set to mame's default keybinding.
.

Keyboards have alot more options than gamepads due to their vastly larger number of available inputs. On a keyboard, all extra keys can be set a single keypresses without binding a hotkey. The minipac also has a dedicated escape key pinout, so emulators can be exited with one single keypress.

It's a very stable way to do controls on an arcade cab since you can hard code them into retroarch.cfg and then make per-system retroarch.cfg with alternate keybindings if you wish.

[soonerdoc]

@Capeman

Thank you for the info. Very educational and very much appreciated!!