@mitu thank you, excellent advice

After running the above I noticed that indeed those axis don't work. So I tried changing the position of the connector (this one towards the joystick knob didn't have wiring guidance) and tadaa, they work now. Also this fixed somehow the skipping part, now with a long press of a button I can properly skip it.

Now I'm just trying to figure what is the minimum amount of buttons that I need (directions, start, select, hotkey and ...?) , I don't want the arcade machine to have too much buttons lying around plus I don't have the space, I want to build a double control one this time. Just hope there won't be no more trouble ahead.

Anyway, to get back to the subject, for other folks, if the joystick misbehaves, don't forget to check the wiring also. In my case this inverse polarity allowed it to work partially.

@jb1486 Nope! It would require some rewiring of the actual LED's and adding an LED controller to make this work. The DR controller does not have the required functionality unfortunately.
In the end I bought the ipac ultimate controller and a load of RGB buttons to upgrade my CP.

@mitu
you got right!
i start the MetalSlug game and there is it all be correct and works fine.
its only non co-op games there will only player1 work.

will try some other games and will see if all be work fine

thx

Hi Mitu, Thanks for confirming that. I'll move the effected games to use a different Emulator. Cheers Simon

@neutrios

I have a DragonRise Inc. USB Encoder and haven't had any issues mapping the buttons in Retropie 4.6 on a Raspberry Pi 4 4GB

the config is here ...

/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/autoconfig/DragonRise Inc. Generic USB Joystick .cfg

and inside the .cfg is my button mapping

input_device = "DragonRise Inc. Generic USB Joystick "
input_driver = "udev"
input_enable_hotkey_btn = "6"
input_l_btn = "0"
input_load_state_btn = "0"
input_up_btn = "10"
input_left_btn = "11"
input_state_slot_decrease_btn = "11"
input_select_btn = "6"
input_right_btn = "9"
input_state_slot_increase_btn = "9"
input_r_btn = "5"
input_save_state_btn = "5"
input_y_btn = "4"
input_x_btn = "3"
input_menu_toggle_btn = "3"
input_down_btn = "8"
input_start_btn = "7"
input_exit_emulator_btn = "7"
input_b_btn = "1"
input_reset_btn = "1"
input_a_btn = "2"

Open the options on the Retroarch menu and there's an option whose label I forget that will "map directions to digital" instead of analog. It's set to analog by default. I had to do it a few days ago.

See if it works.

Hey bud, we are in the same boat. Run jstest and write down all the inputs and corresponding numbers. Use your Rii to hit f1 while in lr-mupen64plus-next to open the retroarch GUI and scroll down to "controls", then remap everything according to you jstest results. This got me to the point where every button works except for c-up and c-right. Please let me know if you can get any further or if you've already solved the issue.

@robca There's no automated 'translator' from the RA's auto-config file to AdvMame's configuration syntax. However, MAME 2003(-plus) have support for vector games - you should give them a try.

I think you can do it yourself - just edit your initial post.

OK. Apologies for posting I wasn't aware of this. I'll look for help elsewhere.

@kill if you have matching controllers or encoders you never have to configure player 2. Both players share the same config file. After you setup player one if you want player two working immediately in emulationstation just restart emulationstation. Retroarch emulators dont need a restart to have player 2 already working in it. You can create problems trying to find an issue with encoders wiring between both players if you setup player 2 as it overwrites any configuration you setup with player one.

I think your problem is that all controllers (both the arcade and the N64) have the same name and Vendor/Model IDs, making them appear as the same controller to the system.
When you configure your N64 controller(s), the arcade buttons configuration is overwritten - since they appear the same - and thus your configuration is broken.
Here's a topic discussing this - https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/6264/you-have-to-use-identical-controllers-for-multiplayer-games-please-prove-me-wrong - but it's not the only topic with this problem.

@retroboii Good luck! I’m glad you sorted it out in the end.