@edmaul69 Hello! Well I've got Boulderdash running with vice (not lr). But Im going to re-install Lr-vice again. But heres what works for me. in case anyone has the same difficulty.
[All from the ViceMenu GUI]
1- Restore defaults from 'settings management' (this is a different pref set than the package, you can tell as it changes the display filter to emu crt display)
2 - Set Machine settings / Joystick settings / Joystick device 1 -> Joystick
3 - Set Machine settings / Joystick settings / Joystick 1 mapping -> !Go set this!
4 - Save your settings in 'settings managment'
I think my naviety was !assuming! that because I've configured controllers for retropie that the mapping would naturally carry over to the emulator. Not for vice it seems. Lesson learned.
On the keyboard front, I loaded up the mac version of Vice, found the symbolic and positional keyboards for mac. I then loaded those into the C64 rom section. Then loaded those keyboard layouts in vice. However this made no difference. Unless you have to save the keyboards .kvm's in a specific location I think keyboard mapping is broken in vice
What worked was the virtual keyboard. And knowing that you have to press f1 to start the game. Yep pressing fire button wont do jack (it's 1984) https://ia600707.us.archive.org/20/items/Boulder_Dash_1984_First_Star_Software/Boulder_Dash_1984_First_Star_Software.pdf
Thanks Edmaul for the tips to keep lookin.