Hotkey Help :(

rgnmud

I downloaded retropie a couple weeks ago for my kids. They are having a blast except for one problem. While playing they always hit the select and start button exiting the game and the tears come. I would like to change the exit emulator from select+start to the escape key on my keyboard. I have looked online with the gethub site and floob on youtube. I follow exactly what they say to do but i cant get the config to pull up to change it. Can someone please dumb down to a first grade level how I can do this? I have the USB,2-axis 8 button gamepad

mediamogul

@rgnmud

First, you might want to reconsider the 'esc' key in favor of a two-key combination. Making RetroArch exit with one key will disable the hotkey modifier, causing the rest of the hotkeys to activate on one push of the controller button. Another alternative would be to eliminate all the hotkey functions on the controller entirely and then map them all to the keyboard as single keys. Deciding which way you want to go will determine what to do next.

meleu

@rgnmud assuming first grade kids know how to edit files:

Open the file /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads/YOUR_JOYPAD_NAME.cfg.
Put a # character in the beginning of the line that have input_exit_emulator_btn. So, in the end the entire line will look like this:

# input_exit_emulator_btn = "11"

Note: there are several ways to edit this file. If your raspi is connected to a LAN, you can access that file in a Windows machine in the same LAN opening the file \\YOUR_RETROPIE_IP\configs\all\retroarch-joypads\YOUR_JOYPAD_NAME.cfg. I recommend editing the file with Wordpad, don't use Notepad.

mediamogul

@rgnmud

Using @meleu's advice and assuming that you go in the direction of a two key combination for your keyboard exit command (let's say ctrl+esc), you can add the following two lines to /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg:

input_exit_emulator = "escape"
input_enable_hotkey = "ctrl"

rgnmud

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! Finally An easy way to do this! I used my LAN connection and used Wordpad to put a # in front of it to disable it. Kids are happy and im happy!

rgnmud

@meleu Thank you, finally after days of trying an easy way to fix this that took less than five minutes!

mediamogul

@rgnmud

Good to see you got it going. What way did you decide on for exiting the emulator?

meleu

@rgnmud said in Hotkey Help :(:

Thank you, finally after days of trying an easy way to fix this

You're welcome. By the way, reading the docs would have taken, let's say, 15 minutes. You can see what some of those lines mean in the table here:
https://retropie.org.uk/docs/RetroArch-Configuration/#default-joypad-hotkeys

rgnmud

@mediamogul I put a # in front of the exit emulator to disable it, so now to exit I press select+x to bring me to the main menu and i scroll down to Quit RetroArch and im out.

mediamogul

@rgnmud

A nice kid-friendly prevention.