@mitu It does actually makes sense. Thanks for the advice!

@mitu Got it. Thanks for the answer. I guess I wish it were a bit more flexible but I'll go with the hot key enabled then.

Got it, thank you very much sir appreciate it.

@Odd_Pixie said in Having issues with HotKeys not working and saving games.:

Problem 1: Hotkeys do not seem to work when running SNES games but seem fine for N64.

What button have you mapped as Hotkey during the controller configuration ?
If you don't choose a button, the configuration dialogue will ask you if you want to use Select. You problem is that RetroArch doesn't know which is your Hotkey (the N64 emulator is not a RetroArch emulator, so I think it's set by default with Select + Start, that's why it doesn't work).

Problem 2: I seem to be having issues with game saves. As I understand it, the save doesn't actually write until you perform the Start + Select to exit the game. Is it possible to save progress in a game without using an in game save point first? Is there another way to work this or do I misunderstand something?

Yes, you can use Save States , which are handled by the emulator itself (RetroArch most of the times). You can use the Save State and Load State commands to save/load your save states (see https://retropie.org.uk/docs/RetroArch-Configuration/#default-joypad-hotkeys). Note that you still have to exit cleanly the emulator with Hotkey + Start. Shutting down your PI while the emulator is started is not advisable anyway, you should always use the Emulationstation menu to shutdown your PI (unless you have a button that does the shutdown).

The docs have a detailed page on overclocking here , including how to actually do it (https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Overclocking/#overclocking-methods).

I wasn't going to bring that up in this thread but since we went that direction...
I was actually planning my cabinet to have player one as one set of joystick/buttons off of Pi USB 1, player two as the second set off Pi USB 2, the dedicated buttons on the third controller on Pi USB 3, and then a hub stuck into Pi USB 4 which would tie (via extension cables) to two external USB ports on the cabinet, to which I could plug in a keyboard, or two SNES joypads or other types of joypads or joysticks. I was going to cross that "hot swappable/which is active/how do I program that" bridge when I came to it.

It sounds like, from above, it actually matters which of the 4 USB ports on the Pi I plug into? I figured they were all just addressed the same. Is that true? If so, I assume I plug a hub into USB 4 and those become 4, 5, 6, 7...?

To clarify what I'm actually doing...

I'm making a portable console like those ones you can buy online, which simply has a power cord and an HDMI cable and can be plugged into a TV anywhere. But my intent is to have the central portion of the panel have all the "hotkey default" dedicated buttons - save, load, exit, reset, etc. - and then have each of the two joy/button controller areas be small pull-out boxes with long cords, so the "base" can sit on the coffee table while the two controllers get passed between the kids sitting on the sectional sofa. I have plans in my head, and I'm using USB extension cables as the "pull out" cables (connecting the zero-delay boards to the Pi in the base).

But what this means is that I can't (at least easily) use the pin plugs on the zero-delay boards in each "remote controller" for the buttons which I want on the base. Each zero-delay board will be in the pull-out box, and the "hotkey" dedicated buttons will be several feet away in the base on the coffee table. The only way to have those "hotkey" buttons plugged into the boards which operate the joysticks and action buttons would be to do some wire dissecting and soldering, and I don't want to bother with that.

So my original question above was, can I use a third zero-delay board in the "base" which would only have those load-save-exit-reset-RGUI dedicated buttons, but NO actual controls tied to it? I suppose another way of looking at it is, can you "null" out all the hotkeys on player one and player two, and then null out all the directional/joystick/X/Y/A/B stuff on player 3 and still assign the hotkey commands?

I'm working up a sketch of what I'm imagining for more clarity and will post when done, if this isn't clear... or too long that you didn't read it... :)

The 'Auto Config Buttons' dialog allows selection of single keys for each of the control functions, then, right at the end, it asks for the 'hot key' button. Without a 'hot key' assignment the control buttons work on their own. If you hold a key down for more than 2 seconds while at any selection (including for 'hot key') the dialog will assign 'nul' as the button.

If you don't have very many buttons/inputs then the use of a 'hot key' + 'game button' is the only way to control Retropie. This also is the mode you will have to use if you use genuine console pads which do not have any control buttons, just game action buttons.

If you do have spare buttons/inputs then assign the control functions to unique buttons and set the 'hot key' to nul. This can be done by running the config buttons dialog manually with - 'Settings -> Inputs -> User 1 Binds -> User 1 Bind Default All' or by manually editing the file it creates at '/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg'

I'm also new to this and awaiting the delivery of extra hardware to experiment with how to add an extra Zero Config board that is used exclusively for the control buttons. (Maybe configure it as Player 5? does anyone know how to do this?)

bye for now ...

@samuelsson

What are the contents of your /opt/retropie/configs/nes/retroarch.cfg file?

We don't support custom 3rd party images - https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first. You free to try the image from retropie.org.uk/download and we'll be glad to help you if you have questions or run into trouble.

@mitu Thanks for the links, I'll have a look and try to figure it out. I don't think it's shaders though as when I go into that menu for either it doesn't say any shaders are set and when I enable one I get serious lag issues. The only difference I could see was the colour palette was different. But when I change that to be the same I only get a very slight green tinge. So I'm a bit stuck on what's causing that 😅

After running the update my high scores now save ok.

Im stilll have no luck changing the hotkey from "num6" to "h"
If I edit it with notpad++ it looks right but no changes to how it functions.
Also ive tried to change in ES controller config. When I get to the hotkey input at the end- I press my new button and get a key h input from the ipac2... still doesn't seem to actually change the hot key.
I have game and core remap files for tons of games if this matters. Can anyone help me?

@67120 said in mixing simultaneous keyboard and gamepad hotkeys possible?:

should i be adding this all to rc.local or is this supposed to go somewhere else?

You should only add a command to rc.local if you need a map to work at startup for Emulation Station.

testing a simple ui-buttonmap A=A \ line. and when i reboot i see "get_event_type(): unknown even type prefix A." what's up with that? using A=JS_[*] for some reason doesn't do that.

If you're looking to remap the controller buttons buttonmap should be used rather than ui-buttonmap. For key-mapping using ui-buttonmap, where the correct syntax would be ui-buttonmap A=KEY_A \

i get errors when i try A=A:A+X:1500 or A+B=A+X.

Using ui-buttonmap, here, it would be A=KEY_A:KEY_A+KEYX:1500 or A+B=KEY_A+KEY_X

i can use keyboard events such as --ui-buttonmap A=KEY_F1 or A=KEY_ENTER to make retropie see a different button being pressed, but it's always button 10 no matter what i set it to. so that's useless.

Using the key-map approach, would also require you map your emulator to expect keyboard input, rather than controller. I actually do this almost exclusively to avoid controller assignment issues. Most every emulator supports keyboard input.

then retroarch or in-game ignores any input from the controller.

Have you set the udev rule outlined at the very end of section 3a of the guide?

@neonjuggalo Use the RetroArch menu and - after making the adjustments you need - choose to save the Core (or Game) remap file (https://retropie.org.uk/docs/RetroArch-Configuration/#core-input-remapping).

@dankcushions finally, it's working. Thanks again!

@fredbuilder This was discussed earlier in this thread, but via direct editing of the config file. Thanks for the addition about the GUI and for the video. Nice handheld. 🤩

Ok, I noticed that the Retroarch setup screen was the blue menu (older version?) vs the green checkered menu so I was really worried about some sort of weird corruption so I restored the image from a backup and all is now well again.

Friendly reminder of the importance of good backups! :-)

Incidentally, does anyone know know what the difference is between the blue menu and the green checkered menu in Retroarch? Is the blue version an older version?

@mitu Yes of course the docs overrule tutorials, but obviously there's a place in the universe for tutorials, especially for beginners. (And in doubt, I asked in the forums!)

Thanks guys you've all been great,

-Actually since I'm a developer I might come back to be a contributor later.

Thanks agian

bog

Looks like I accidentally fixed it.

Yesterday I bound all the hotkeys to the same button, since that seemed to be the only way to "free up" the other buttons for normal use. Today I went back through the retroarch hotkey binding menu and re-bound the hotkeys to the proper buttons. Now they work! Button presses register as normal button presses during gameplay, and register as hotkey presses when the hotkey enable butten is also pressed. I tested on a couple different systems to be sure, and it seems that all is now OK.

I have to assume that something was wonky in one of the cfg files, and even though it was showing hotkey bound in the menu, it wasn't actually bound and that caused the problem like you said. I guess the act of manually re-binding them fixed the issue.

Thanks for the help.

@johnny5126 I am new to Vice having only installed it over the weekend.

The video tutorial above that I used to map my joystick encouraged me to Save current settings, Save hotkeys and Save joystick map each time I made a new mapping.

I followed this advice and when I looked at the Vice config files in /opt/retropie/configs/c64, I noticed that changes were only being made to sdl-joymap-C64.vjm and not sdl-hotkey-C64.vkm which was the same as when first created.

For your maps to the virtual keyboard, for example, you should choose Save joystick map for them to persist. You can check this by looking at sdl-joymap-C64.vjm and you should see a line like 0 1 0 5 Virtual keyboard.