Everything is fine now, the site came back online, restarted the install and it went fine till the end. Thanks!

@jbuente I got this game to run from a non-merged mame 0.78 rom pack, indytemp.zip, 352kb. I think you may be using a rom from a merged rom pack, as the errors seem to indicate mame is looking for parent/children roms. Before I eventually found it from the non-merged pack, I was using the German version. It works perfectly, other than the spelling is in German.

@grant2258 Hi Grant - yes I think I've realised that this is the problem. The default RetroArch setup creates a virtual gamepad and binds both virtual gamepad and keyboard. I think the problem with Defender is that these mappings overlap - so the virtual gamepad is triggering as well as producing a keypress, and these are both bound to different things (eg thrust AND fire). Thanks for your help!

EmulationStation has the X button mapped for choosing a random system or game. If you're in the system list, X will position you to a random system, if you're in a game list (inside a system), it will position you to a random game - you just have to press A to start the game. Modifying the existing behavior - to start the game automatically - means you're going to have to program it into EmulationStation - something that's non-trivial for someone that's not familiar with programming or EmulationStation's source.

@dankcushions That's waht i thought. Thank you.

@stoney66 Thanks for that. I had a look at those cfg files and they all looked fine. So I did a completely fresh install of RetroPie. Tried it out, R-Type controls worked fine. Then I started adding nice tweaks such as ES Themes etc, and suddenly R-Type had the same problem - P1 right not working unless I re-configure the MAME2003 controls every time. Not sure what change I applied that caused this, so I'm going to do it all again step-by-step and see when it reoccurs. My gut feeling is this is a bug in the Pimoroni Picade HAT drivers.

did you compile the latest version from source ?

@mitu I redid the controls again for the "v" key (from everything I can tell this is not used elsewhere). This time I used the in game menu with the tab key. Still the right direction does not work. Also I have several existing directional buttons mapped to keys that are used for other functions but all of those keys are functioning normally.

@mitu that was my first thought as well but the retropie user that's being used on my system is already part of those groups.

Problem is I don't think that works with my overlay as I've set a custom viewport size and location so that would also have to be flipped

@zfa said in Retropie Bezel Project & lr-mame2003 cfg does not persist after update?: I guess the real fix is to get The Bezel Project guys to use the names as per the Retroarch guys, or make sure they include symlinks where there are name changes across versions of a core. If this doesn't work then update your emus again in case you have a version reporting itself as being mame2003 as per @Virtualman post. This name change/folder change came from RetroArch leadership rather than the mame2003 core. The code logic for this is kind of obscure but it has to do with enabling netplay between a broader range of different systems. Based on the RA rationale for making the change I expect it will be permanent.

The thing is, I've tried everything. Last night, I had it where the left stick worked, except it would not go up. The right stick would open the configuration menu, in addition to firing. Some how I got it reset, but now I can't get the left stick to work, and from what i'm reading, that's the one that should by default?

nothing needs setup the default retropie config is set to system_directory = "~/RetroPie/BIOS" your problems are arising from messing with the default config , you need to be careful when changing the configs on retropie. retropies default mame install copies the the cheat dat from here https://github.com/libretro/mame2003-libretro/tree/master/metadata to the bios folder on install. your not supposed to save retroarch configs with retropie unless you know what you are doing fully. The cheats do work on a default install nothing needs done.

We have quite the setup guide here if anyone comes to this post looking: https://support.xgaming.com/solution/articles/5000554993-how-to-use-x-arcade-with-raspberry-pi

@markwkidd @mitu I have just made it a habit to update my Retropie system and packages from time to time. Of course, an update may break something, but I think the benefits outweigh the risks by far in general.

No problem. Oh and i would suggest testing out most of your games using fbalpha first before going to mame cause i found some games works better using fbalpha over mame.

@dankcushions Got it. Thanks for all your help!

mame2003-plus has a new input mode specifically for this purpose. It is activated via a core option which allows the core to process input through the either mame_keyboard interface or the retropad -- or both simultaneously as with classic mame2003 (although that is not as useful as you are finding out).