Controller

jca

Hi everyone. I am new to this forum and to the Raspberry world.

I have just installed retropie on a micro SD card for my Raspberry pi 3. I have managed to copy some roms (NES, PSX, sega genesis) into a pendrive which emulationstation runs perfectly. I am a linux user so I am familiar with the basics.

I have found that I don't know how to configure the controllers. Details: I have a bluetooth pad IPEGA PG-9025. I connect it to the raspberry and configure the buttons at boot. So far, everything is fine. But when I start a game I find that the ipega controller has a weird behaviour. It looks like it loses its configuration (for example, I find that the start button has been mapped to the Y button). This controlled has different modes (pad and keyboard) and I find the same problem in all of them.

I have just tried the controller on my laptop under the fceux emulator and it works perfectly. That leaves me clueless.

Is there something I am missing or I should be aware of?

And a side question: what to do with all the buttons you don't want to map? I mean: you want to play NES with a 4 button controller and you don't need triggers and such.

mitu

@jca said in Controller:

And a side question: what to do with all the buttons you don't want to map? I mean: you want to play NES with a 4 button controller and you don't need triggers and such.

Skip the buttons you don't want to map by long pressing one of the buttons on the controller, while in the setup screen. It says so in the setup screen.
For the other problem, try using jstest to see what your controller inputs when pressing each button and how it differs from your expected configuration - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/RetroArch-Configuration/#determining-button-values

rbaker

@jca said in Controller:

Is there something I am missing or I should be aware of?

You don't provide enough info - https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first, for example which rom and emulator? What do your configs look like? have you tried it in MAME4ALL which is not retroarch - press TAB - configure, see what happens.

And a side question: what to do with all the buttons you don't want to map?

Do nothing, "hold down a button to skip".

jca

@mitu

Using jtest I have found the following: the direction pad gives the values 'Axes 4: +/- 32767' and 'Axes 5: +/-32767'. The pad buttons A, B, X and Y give the values 'Buttons: 1, 2, 0, 3' respectively. I am not sure what to do with these values. Should I edit the 'ipega gamepad controller.cfg' file? I have nano-ed it and I have no idea on what to change.

jca

@rbaker said in Controller:

I am sorry my post was not precise. I am using an out of-the-box retropie image, no custom configs. I have had the same problem trying PSX wipeout, megadrive bomberman and NES super mario bros 3.

I have also found that the controller works fine on the emulationstation menu (x for random, start for config and such). But when I open a game, start button moves to x.

rbaker

@jca said in Controller:

I am using an out of-the-box retropie image, no custom configs

Yeah but which emulators? I want to post you how my configs look. Also, did you set this up yourself from the image here?

jca

Yes, I downloaded the image for raspberry pi 2/3 from https://retropie.org.uk/download/
And the MD5sum was fine.

I don't know exactly how to find out which emulator I am using. I have just copied the super mario bros 3 rom into a pendrive (in a NES folder that retropie created) and emulationstation makes it appear and run automagically.

mitu

@jca It seems your controller is correctly detected, but for some reason the configuration is not carried out in the RetroaArch gamepad.
I'd say you try to remove any controller config and start from scratch. Start the RetroPie setup from the RetroPie system in EmulatonStation, then go to Configuration / Tools -> core Manage core packages -> emulationstation and remove all configured inputs. Restart ES and re-configure your controller.

Alternatively, you can try opening the RetroArch gui (RGUI) while in game with Hotkey+X(usually Select + X if you don't have a dedicated hotkey button) and try to configure the input from there. If it works, you can save the configuration for the emulator core, so any games played with that emulator will use the same controller inputs.

jca

Hi, I have removed all configured inputs from ES. Then restarted ES and reconfigured controller. The problem remains the same: I can browse the ES but when I start a game it just won't work.

But this time I have noticed that just after I run the game this message appears in tiny yellow characters at the bottom right corner of the screen: ipega gamepad controller (0/0) not configured (it goes away very fast and I am not sure about the (0/0)). That clearly points towards the problem.

mitu

@jca Try the advice here given here - https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/184.

Ladyslayer0160

I had a similar problem with a bluetooth controller, which I fixed by manually editing the config file in the terminal.

jca

@mitu @Ladyslayer0160

Thank you all for your answers!

I have found some information on the ipega controllers and retropie. It is a common problem: the controller is detected, configured, and works out of the box in ES. But when the game starts it stops working.

Some people have made this controller work. I have followed their answers in some posts (basically editing retroarch.cfg) with no success at all. This is a solution I have not tried because I don't have another working controller (for this reason I cannot just configure the input from RGUI as @mitu suggested).

If someone knows how to make this specific controller work please let me know! I will keep trying a solution and will post here if I succeed.

mitu

@jca said in Controller:

This is a solution I have not tried because I don't have another working controller

Don't you have a keyboard - you can configure it as controller for player 1 and do the steps suggested by @meleu in the post you mentioned.

jca

@mitu

I don't have a keyboard! I borrowed one from a friend so that I could enable ssh. I always log in from my laptop. Probably I should buy a cheap one for the raspberry, I know.