Mapping buttons to hotkeys; restart game and exit retroarch

[SacGyver]

I'm having the hardest time configuring buttons for Restart, Quit RetroArch, and toggle hotkeys. My ultimate goal is to have one button restart the current game and another button exit to Emulation Station without toggling hotkeys. It seems like every time I make changes in RetroArch, the buttons I set affect some emulators but not others. NES and SNES will work, but only Restart works in MAME. A Game in MAME will work, but other games in Arcade wont.

Here's the setup. I have a Pi3 with a standard clean install of RetroPie 4.2 and a brand new ControlBlock all connected. Everything works ok with the hardware; power button, led indicator, and all inputs work great. I configure the two ControlBlock gamepads and all buttons map ok. Just working with a few roms for NES, SNES and MAME/Arcade.

What am I missing here? I feel like there's a very simple step that I'm not aware of. How are all these controls related? What affects what?

Thanks for any help or guidance.

[meleu]

@SacGyver said in Mapping buttons to hotkeys; restart game and exit retroarch:

It seems like every time I make changes in RetroArch, the buttons I set affect some emulators but not others.

My intuition is saying that you played with the retroarch config_save_on_exit option...

Also, you must say what exact file(s) are you changing the button mappings.

[SacGyver]

Ok, so just to make sure I wasn't missing anything, I did the following...

1. Re-download and install RetroPie.
2. Connect to WiFi and install updates.
3. Download and install ControlBlock driver from RetroPie setup.
4. Configured new controllers on startup.

After doing some more testing, I discovered that my conltrol settings responded the same for NES, SNES, and all lr-* arcade emulators. Anything using mame4all seems to be governed by different setting. So for the moment, I'll stick with libretro emulators.

Now, when I go in to RetroArch from the RetroPie setup menu and make changes to the button configurations, a few things happen. Setting buttons for Restart and Quit RetroArch requires that I set a button for Toggle Hotkeys. I'd prefer not to have to do that. Making those button changes also causes Select+Start in NES and SNES to stop quiting RetroArch.

I feel like I'm getting closer, but the hotkeys are still throwing me off.
Any thoughts? Thanks.