Specific retroarch emulator settings are being over written after i quit the game.

meleu

@Concat said in Specific retroarch emulator settings are being over written after i quit the game.:

@meleu
Interesting. I obviously need to trace how the configs are being called to determine the problem. What you've described does shed some light on things because my /opt/retropie/configs/SYSTEM/retroarch.cfg files do not have the #include line.

I think the file was overwritten. Try to find an /opt/retropie/configs/SYSTEM/retroarch.cfg.rp-dist. This file contains the default config.

And when I edit via RGUI while in game, and it saves to /opt/retropie/configs/SYSTEM/retroarch.cfg (confirmed via yellow text at bottom left), the changes DON'T stick when I relaunch the ROM.

Pay attention at the filename when the yellow text appears. Maybe it is not retroarch.cfg (if the "configuration per core" is on).

Take a look at the /opt/retropie/configs/SYSTEM/emulators.cfg and search for the line that begins with "default=". And then look for the line that begins with the string after "default=". This is the command that will launch RetroArch. See that it calls a specific retroarch.cfg. This is the config file that will be used when executing the respective system.

I've been using RetroArch for a couple years now on Android, so it's been a maddening experience not to have my old methods work properly... and to not understand why.

Same here. My luck is that I'm an old Linux user, and I was noticing these details as I was facing these problems.

The wiki needs a flowchart for this config circus... it's got to be one of the most common sources of confusion in RetroPie.

fully agree.

Concat

@herb_fargus
Honestly, I've read that page multiple times now. The missing piece, for me anyway, is how making changes via RGUI (and saving) will affect everything. Everything on that page talks about manually editing the config files.

It seems I wrongly assumed Retropie plays nice when saving settings via RGUI. Hell, as soon as I got my RPi I turned on Per Core Config and went to work changing settings and saving via RGUI... just like I do with my Android tablet.

Thankfully Remapping seems to work the exact same as I've come to expect, so I didn't have much issues with controls.

Concat

@meleu

Pay attention at the filename when the yellow text appears. Maybe it is not retroarch.cfg (if the "configuration per core" is on).

I'm 100% positive it is. I watched it like a hawk when troubleshooting. :)

But I did not analyze the contents of emulators.cfg and follow the chain of events. I'm going to do exactly that to understand where it's going wrong for me. If I need to restore all the defaults and just manually edit the configs from now on, I will just have to do that.

Thanks for all the info!

Floob

@Concat Did the video above help explain what gets written and why? I tried to show how RetroArch makes saves back to the RetroPie directory structure and how to avoid creating conflicts.

As you can see by reading the emulators.cfg file in a given system directory, it is the system retroarch.cfg that is read by Retroarch, this in turn reads the global setting, but can be overridden by a game/rom specific config.
So the priority is

Game specific retroarch.cfg
System specific (everything above the #include line will take priority over the global file)
Global Settings

This allows a high level of control over exactly what settings each system (or game) will apply. By updating settings in RGUI it just wont/cant? re-apply those in the correct config files quite so specifically. You can of course use RGUI to do this, but its not quite as elegant as using the config files yourself as it results in one big mashed up config - but then if it does what you need I'd run with it. As shown in the video, its a pretty quick one time tweak to set your custom RetroArch settings without screwing up the way RetroPie wants to process the configs.

Plus, if you dont want to manually edit anything, the config editor will let you easily make changes that will be saved in the correct manner:
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Configuration-Editor

Concat

Yes, and no.

In your video you are missing a RetroArch option. I actually see 2 save options while in RGUI.

Save Configuration
Save New Configuration

The option to Save a New Configuration file will create a "SYSTEM-1/2/3.cfg" much like your video. However, I never use this option because I've always known that RetroArch won't autoload it. I use Save Configuration File, which saves to /opt/retropie/configs/SYSTEM/retroarch.cfg and overwrites the existing file.

It was a helpful video though. I've had a number of aha moments in this thread, and I did watch the entirety of your video, so thank you :)

Floob

@Concat Ah - ok, so by overwriting your existing config you are effectivly doing this bit from my post above

You can of course use RGUI to do this, but its not quite as elegant as using the config files yourself as it results in one big mashed up config - but then if it does what you need I'd run with it.

So that would work, but then you are sort of opting out from being able to fine tune your setups. I'll try to cover this in more detail in a future video.
And thanks for the comments :)

herb_fargus

@Floob don't forget to make a visual flowchart ;)

dankcushions

the 'proper' way of doing this is to edit these files using the retropie config editor:
https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Configuration-Editor

can't go wrong with that!

mediamogul

This is the type of complexity that only a puppet show can fully illustrate. Too bad the price of felt and googly eyes has skyrocketed in recent years. I blame trade relations.

Floob

First attempt. Plenty of room for correction and improvement.

alt text

herb_fargus

@Floob oo very fancy you work fast. You using draw.io?

Floob

@herb_fargus Yep!! Its great isnt it! :)

mediamogul

@Floob

Very illuminating. Jim Henson himself couldn't have done better.

Concat

You rock Floob. Fast indeed.

Other things that (could) affect the config structure:

Core Remap files
Configuration Per Core = ON
User per-game Core Options = ON
Load Override Files Automatically = ON

It sounds to me like RetroPie has it's own way of managing at least the last three items, so there could be conflicts and unexpected results.

meleu

I think the new users must know that editing configs using RGUI on RetroPie is contraindicated. But maybe it's is only my personal opinion... So I'm not sure if this should be written on the wiki.

Floob

@Concat Thanks.
The core remap is largely covered here

Buzz added "auto_remaps_enable" to be true in the global retroarch.cfg to support it. But yes, I could add details of the file and directory it creates.

Yes, the last 3 are largely dealt with by RetroPie/RetroArch config setup really, so I wouldnt tweak those in RGUI myself.

dankcushions

@Concat said in Specific retroarch emulator settings are being over written after i quit the game.:

You rock Floob. Fast indeed.

Other things that (could) affect the config structure:

Core Remap files

this is as per usual retroarch.

Configuration Per Core = ON

retropie doesn't use this really i think?

User per-game Core Options = ON

this isn't to do with retroarch.cfgs - this is just how the retroarch-core-options.cfg is made up. i could go into more detail, but it functions exactly the same as vanilla retroarch, so just google that :)

Load Override Files Automatically = ON

i believe this is just per game.cfgs (eg zelda.zip.cfg in your nes rom dir). this works as per vanilla retroarch.

retropie doesn't really do anything special with configs. it's just using the standard --config and --appendconfig commandline arguments to invoke global and per-core configs. see https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/wiki/Using-the-command-line

(i think the unique thing it does it creating temporary cfgs via the runcommand, but that's only for framebuffer and stuff like that i believe)

hakan1708

Thanks everybody for great info. Chart is awesome. King of the charts, but that would be great if we had the emperor of the charts. What is that? That is the chart that you will either need a big commercial printer to see everything or a small printer and a nice microscope. This chart will explain every step in detail (including every option and what happens when you change them). While explaining the changes in the file, chart will start to grow arms, long fingers, scary nails and it becomes a monster. Monster will try to kill you but if you survive, you will rule over him, and it will be your servant forever. Finally your Retropie Kingdom will have some peace that it's been longing for.

naddel81

just wanted to adjust screen aspect ratio on the different cores (gbc/gba/nes) but even when I select save config (to retroarch.cfg) it is completely ignored on the next boot of the same game. so in my opinion the "save settings" option is totally broken and the "configuration editor" is not a proper replacement for an ingame emulator function that is supposed to work in real time without additional config tools.

why doesn't it work as it was intended?

edit: guess I am not the only one that finds this troubling:

http://libretro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4773

I can't believe that this basic function doesn't work after all those years of retroarch.

FAB2TB

@Floob @meleu Thanks for your video and explanations on this topic, it works but I still have one big problem which is every retroarch.cfg files are never reloaded with what I saved into them when I shutdown and reboot my Pi3, Retropie 4.0.2 and emulation station ...it always reload original retroarch.cfg skeleton files without the modifications I made (for eg. uncommented lines in the /all dir or added lines in the /{system} dir) .
Also selected the option "save on exit" as explained but changed nothing...event "save on exit" is no more ON after shuting down and restart everything. Did you faced the same problem once, any advice to help me?