Dragonrise controller not working in MAME emu, but is elsewhere

pacrat

I’m having a hard time getting the controllers to work right. I have the generic Dragonrise USB encoders.

When I drop down to the shell/CMD prompt, I run:

jstest /dev/input/js0

And it indicates all buttons are working great. When I boot into ES, I can configure input for the controllers no problem. I can use the joystick/A/B/select/start buttons to navigate MAME and the Retropie menus no problem.

The issue I’m running into is once I start a game, the controller doesn’t do anything. I’ll plug a keyboard in and press <tab> to bring up the controller mapping within the MAME emulator. MAME doesn’t detect motion from the joystick or buttons, only the keyboard. So when I attempt to nap my buttons, nothing happens.

Any ideas? I’d appreciate any help.

Raspberry Pi 3B+
Retropie image 4.5.1

mitu

Which MAME emulator ? There are quite a few included in RetroPie.

pacrat

@mitu said in Dragonrise controller not working in MAME emu, but is elsewhere:

Which MAME emulator ? There are quite a few included in RetroPie.

The MAME emulator. I don’t use Arcade, FBA, etc.

mitu

Again, which one ? RetroPie includes several MAME based emulators - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/MAME/. You can see which one is used when you start the game, in the launch screen.

Are other games - besides arcade games - working ?

sirhenrythe5th

I recommend to answer mitus question, even if have an idea whats "wrong".
But i am pretty sure Mitu is on the same path 😉

pacrat

@mitu thanks for your help. The emulator I tested was lr-mame2003. I have a a few generic SNES-style USB controllers as well as a Monster joystick and they all work fine. Technically as far as Retropie and Raspbian go, these joysticks work fine. Any ideas?

pacrat

@mitu and regarding other games, I’ve not tried anything else yet. I’m out of town for the weekend until Monday but I will try a few ROMs that will use pifba and mame4all.

grant2258

@pacrat I have these usb encoders and there is no issues for me. What problems are you having exactly ? Mame2003 isint setup very well for retropad you need to map it strangely for it to work and there are input hacks in it as well that make barcades hard to work with.

mame2003-plus will get you to where you want to be. https://docs.libretro.com/library/mame2003_plus/ and you just select the layout in controllers that you mapped with retropie. youll also need to set quick menu options to digital and youll be good to go.

for mame2003 youll need to set your controller like this

a l r
b y x

for the best results street fighter games will be messed up as the input code in the driver for the games was changed from the default youll just need to use mame2003-plus or remap the sf2 games

grant2258

This post is deleted!

pacrat

@grant2258 I don’t suspect it’s the controllers. I can get responses when in Emulation Station. I can even navigate games, start games, and pull up the start and select menus. The problem is when I start a game, I get no response from the controller. If I plug my keyboard in and press <tab> to pull up the menu to map controls within the emulator, my controller isn’t even recognized when trying to map/re-map buttons.

Is there a way to remove and re-set up controllers within an emulator? Or maybe return them to the original config?

pacrat

@grant2258 I map the buttons in ES exactly like that. ES sees and can accept input. It’s just not working once a game starts.

grant2258

to reset mame to defaults just

rm -rf /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-libretro/mame2003/cfg
rm -rf /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/arcade/mame2003/cfg

pick which one you need depending on the roms your using

pacrat

@mitu ok just got back home. lr-mame2000, lr-mame2003, lr-fbneo, and for grins, I tried NES (lr-fceumm) and all exhibit the same behavior.

To clear the air, I quit ES, deleted the es_input.cfg file in the .emulationstation directory, then restarted ES. It (retroarch?) found 4 controllers (even though I only had my keyboard and 2 Dragonrise controllers plugged in). I re-mapped controller 1 according to https://retropie.org.uk/docs/lr-fbneo and restarted ES one more time. I rechecked the emulators and still nothing.

As an add’l troubleshooting step, I plugged the Dragonrise controller into my Windows 10 laptop and I was able to play games in MAME with the joystick with no problem.

What do you think? Thanks for your help.

mitu

@pacrat The es_input.cfg configuration file is only used by Emulationstation, but not by emulators. The configurations for your gamepad(s) are store in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads - there should be one .cfg file per gamepad. You might want to clear that folder and then re-configure the Dragonrise P1 gamepad once more, so the .cfg file for it will be re-generated.

Can you start an emulator (lr-mame2003 for instance) and choose Verbose logging from the Runcommand launch menu ? This will produce a more detailed log file in /dev/shm/runcommand.log, which you can upload to pastebin.com and we can take a look to spot something wrong.

pacrat

@mitu Thanks again for taking time to help. Here's what I did:

Quit ES
Went into retroarch-joypads and deleted every config file. I did note that the dragonrise joystick config file was not in there.
Went back into .emulationstation and deleted es_input.cfg again.
sudo reboot. Retoarch detected new joysticks. I only defined one of the Dragonrise joysticks. Not sure it totally matters, but I mapped the buttons as:
a l r
b y x
Went into MAME and launched Defender (lr-mame2003). Still cannot get any response when attempting to add coins, etc. When I went in to map Went back into /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads and there were no joypad definitions, so the dragonrise contorller mapping isn't defined in retroarch-joypads.
Used the keyboard to exit, enabled verbose logging. Uploaded the log (and es_input.cfg if that helps) to pastebin:

pacrat-dragonrise-runcommand.log
https://pastebin.com/HC7XeMHu

pacrat-dragonrise-es_input.cfg
https://pastebin.com/hcvg0MRL

Thanks again I really appreciate it.

73's

grant2258

anything in this directory

ls -al /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/autoconfig

ls -al /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads

should point to here make sure the symlink is valid

lrwxrwxrwx 1 pi pi 46 Nov 18 18:47 /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads -> /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/autoconfig

mitu

@pacrat Your RetroArch (auto)configuration files for the gamepads are not created, hence why they're not working. Btw, it's Emulationstation and not RetroArch that detected the joysticks.

Did you disable the Joystick auto-configuration in Emulationstation from the RetroPie-Setup script ? Otherwise, upon completing the configuration of the gamepad, Emulationstation should have created a .cfg file for your joystick in the said location ( /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/autoconfig, or /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads, they're the same folder).

How did you install RetroPie ?

pacrat

@mitu I did not disable it intentionally, but I can verify that it is either enabled or disabled when I return. Is that option available in the menu in ES? If you can point me where to look I'd appreciate it. Else I'll google it when I get home.

I downloaded the image from retropie.org.uk and burned it from my laptop to an SD card. Nothing fancy there. Life started for this emulator as a stand-alone MAME Retropie box w/SNES clone controllers. Then, I moved the RP w/the SD card into a Monster Joystick, which uses the 40-pin onboard I/O bus. Later, I bought a new RP for an Arcade1up mod and I moved my SD card to that new Arcacde1up. When I reset the contollers, I blew away the Monster and the SNES controllers, so it should be default in that regard.

I can also plug in my SNES clone controllers to see if they create a config file. Thanks again.

73's

mitu

@pacrat said in Dragonrise controller not working in MAME emu, but is elsewhere:

@mitu I did not disable it intentionally, but I can verify that it is either enabled or disabled when I return. Is that option available in the menu in ES? If you can point me where to look I'd appreciate it. Else I'll google it when I get home.

If you're using a stock RetroPie image, that should be enabled. You can find the setting by opening RetroPie-Setup from the RetroPie system in Emulationstation, then going to Configuration/Tools and choosing emulationstation from the list.

It should look like the image below:

pacrat

@grant2258 said in Dragonrise controller not working in MAME emu, but is elsewhere:

ls -al /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/autoconfig

The symlink is /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads -> /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/autoconfig

/opt/retropie/configs/all $ ls -al
...
lrwxrwxrwx 1 pi pi 46 Oct 1 01:23 retroarch-joypads -> /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/autoconfig

But to answer your question, there is nothing in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/autoconfig (the symlink destination). This is the directory that I deleted the maps from this morning.

BUT...now when I hook up my trusty SNES clones, they aren't generating a config file. Odd?