Questions about controller buttons, logins, and Steven Scraper

Mebejedi

Pi Model or other hardware: 3B+ with 32gb card
Power Supply used: Stock Canakit power supply
RetroPie Version Used: 4.4.4, with Emulationstation 2.7.6RP
Built From: Raspian 4.4.12(1)
Retropie USB Devices connected: mini wireless keyboard
Controller used: Hori RAP4 (Playstation version)

First of all, I wanted to thank all of you. I've only had my RPI for two weeks, but reading your posts, I've installed RetroPie on top of Raspian, and enabled VNC to access /opt/retropie/configs (which has been handy when I had to go back and find config backups when I screwed something up) or swap ROMs between folders. I've got 50+ ROMs in Arcade, all set up to run their appropiate emulators (FBA, MAME 2000, and MAME 2003 so far). I've also got some in Atari 2600, 7800, and Lynx (5200 emulation is 95% successful, but that's not a biggie right now). I can transfer files from my Windows PC to my shared Pi drive, and I use a mini wireless keyboard to enter commands when necessary. I also installed Steven Selph's scraper, and even redid some of the videos that had improper ratios (Galaxian, Frogger, Double Dragon, etc).

That said, I still have a few technical questions, and some of the discussions are kinda over my head, so if you'll please spare me a minute of your time, I'd appreciate some help on these details.

A) First of all, it bugs me that I have to use the X key to make choices, and the Z key to back out, but doing so means the keys are correctly laid out in the games (except for games like Defender, which I had to remap) . I'd like to swap them to the "Desired layout", but I just wanted some clarification. 1) What are the labels for the keys where I've put question marks? I'm trying to make a map to help me remember which key is where because from what I've gathered, 2) If I switch to the desired layout, then I will have to remap every ROM, correct? I don't mind doing this....I was just wondering if there was a simpler way to do this BEFORE redoing all those configurations. and 3) Will I retain these configurations when I update RetroPie and/or Emulationstation, or might it overwrite them, and I have to redo everything?

Atari Keys
Current layout
A------------S------------???------------???------E= Start (Playstation)
2sw1------2sw2 -------???------------???

Z------------X------------W------------(Q)??------R=Coin (R3)
1sw5------1sw6------2sw4---------2sw3

Desired layout
S------------A------------???------???------E (Same)
2sw2------2sw1--------???------???

X------------Z------------(Q)??------W------R (Same)
1sw6------1sw5--------2sw3------2sw4

I'm also planning on getting a Hori RAP3 for my son, so we can play 2-player games. It's also an 8-button controller. Might someone know what the letters would be for that setup?

B) Before I updated Retropie for the Steven Selph scraper, hitting CTRL+ALT+F4 dropped me into the command line, but I was still logged in. Now, I have to log in everytime (so I can run EmulationStation). Is there a script where I could automate the login? Better yet, I've seen some discussions about possibly creating an App in the desktop that I could click on to automate dropping out of the desktop and into ES, but I've not found any information on how that might be done. Any ideas? (Yes, I know....some folks would question why I bother with the desktop, but it's been really handy to be able to go back into the desktop to make necessary changes or look for files....I'm not adept enough at Rapsian commands to do all of that from the command line....yet. Everything I've done so far has been copying commands I've found on these forums.)

C) I just wanted to verify that rerunning Steven Selph's scraper won't mess up my existing pics/videos, especially the ones I've redone. When I looked into the gamelist (to delete entries for games I removed), it had already updated itself to include the new games I had just added without me having to scrape (but no game information or videos had been added yet). One post I read said to choose -append rather than -overwrite, but another post said their custom data was overridden regardless, and he needed a custom xml file to restore his custom data. I always back up the SD card before doing big changes like this, but I shudder to think of all the time I would have to spend fixing the custom stuff. Eventually, I intend to offload the ROMs onto a USB stick, but that's a ways down the road for now. I've only filled 10gbs of my 32gb card, so there's no rush.

[EDIT] 2 more quick questions. I have a 2600 ROM called depthcharge that apparently doesn't have a Start button setting. It's an old black-&-white game. Anyone have any experience with a game like that? Also, when I leave ES and type startx to go back to the desktop, the desktop doesn't always let me click on anything, and I can't see it with VNC. I just reset the RPI now, but what could cause it to behave like that?

mitu

@Mebejedi Welcome to the forums. Some clarifications to your questions

(A) you can re-map your buttons in-game through the RetroArch GUI (RGUI) - like you did for Defender - and save the remapping per-core (i.e. emulator). This remap is RetroArch specific and it's not modified by RetroPie's setup script. Of course, if the RA developers change the format of those remap files they have to be re-done, but AFAIK this only happened once so far, when they re-wrote the input mapping section.

(B) You can choose what you want to run at start-up from the autostart module configuration - see here.
What you might see is an update for Raspbian which disabled the auto-login. Doing the steps in the link above and re-configuring the autologin or using raspi-config to choose Auto-Login to Console/Desktop from the Boot Options should fix that.

(C) You'll have to test out how that works for the gamelist.xml, but when we're talking about custom tags, they could be something that's not part of the normal ES gamelist.xml definition and they're not guaranteed to be understood by a scraper.
That being said, the scraper could wipe out the favorite/playcount/lastplayed tags for entries it processed (I know Skyscraper doesn't do that, not sure about Stephen Selph's scraper).

Mebejedi

@mitu said in Questions about controller buttons, logins, and Steven Scraper:

but when we're talking about custom tags,

Thanks for the quick response. I'll try the autostart and login.

I don't have any custom tags...I just want to make sure that the redone videos aren't overwritten by the original videos. I'm not too worried about the favorite/playcount/etc stuff right now. I just want to get this all up and running. I ordered a replacement SANWA JLF-TP-8YT-SK joystick to swap into my controller. The stock stick is not very accurate, but I got it super-cheap and couldn't pass it up.