Pulling my hair out trying to get joystick and buttons to work on my arcade cabinet

Lugzyboy82

Hi peeps. This is really driving me mad and I cant seem to get the help and answers I need anywhere on the internet.

I have successfully wired my buttons and joysticks through my ipac2. I have noted down all the buttons that have been assigned to each pin using the ipac desktop software.

The problem I have is updating the retroarch config file to show 2 joysticks and 2 sets of buttons. I have followed various tutorials on line which states that I can copy the player 1 section, paste under the player 1 section and then change it to player 2 and enter the corresponding buttons.

The next issue is the hotkey section. In my config file I cannot find anywhere that states exit emulator etc. Can anybody help me as this is the final step before completion of my cabinet.

Thanks in advance

lostless

@Lugzyboy82 what is the iPac showing as? Keyboard or joystick? Second of all, if the iPac is designed to show as one keyboard or joystick, retropie is not designed to see 1 Device as 2 players. You would need a separate encoder for each joystick.

laydock

the ipac should be detected as keyboard, and its buttons are (by default) matched to MAME style keys on your keyboard.

So if you press your "insert coin" button it should register as the number 5 on your keyboard (retroarch will think someone pressed the number 5)

I have only tried retropie and not tried to manually config retroarch so i cant help you there. Cant you leave the ipac to its default settings (because it is like a simple keyboard) and remap retroarch to the basic keyboard codes?
Here's how they are mapped:

https://www.arcadeworlduk.com/pages/IPAC-2-Code-Table.html

Good luck

Lugzyboy82

@laydock

Thanks for getting back to me. I bought it because I thought it was just plug and play but its far more in depth than that. I don't mind doing the work its when I keep hitting dead ends that infuriates me. The ipac has been configured as a keyboard, so when I press certain buttons on the arcade machine it shows the corresponding keyboard letter.

I have done this with and it is all mapped perfectly. The only issue I have now is amending the config file to show to joysticks, 2 sets of buttons and setting up my hotkeys.

Capeman

@Lugzyboy82
Opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

Scroll down to the input section and set the player 2 controls manually in the keyboard controls section.

Lugzyboy82

@Capeman

Hey buddy. Thanks for your reply. This is my issue. I have gone to the config file and there are no player 2 controls there. I also cant see any hotkey to "exit emulator".

laydock

This guy here had the same problem and he found a way of making it work.
Apparently the way to go is to configure retroarch to use a standard keyboard then swapping the real keyboard to the ipac.

Over here https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/1722/if-you-have-purchased-an-ipac2-and-want-to-save-time