Can't get to play with 2nd (working) controller in retroarch bound to Port2

thelazydesigner

Hi there everyone.. newbie here but I swear I'm reading pages and pages and still seems I'm missing something...

So I have Retropie v 4.7.11 on Rasperry Pi 4 (armv71) and everything is pretty amazing worked from day one, until I tried to play lr-mame2003 games with 2 players using 2 controllers: no way to get them work together.

I have one 8BitDo zero BT and two generic snes USB controllers.

In emulationstation everything is okay after mapping: no matter how I connect those, they can work all together for navigating interface.

In retroarch (1.8.8) (playing only games via lr-mame2003 0.78) two controllers are detected and I can bound them to Port 1 and Port 2, even when I connect the twin USB controllers they show as "USB Gamepad (#1)" and "USB Gamepad (#2)" but:

no way to make them both work in game (not even start-coin button on player 2 works)
if I select Main Menu > Settings > Input > Menu Controls > Unified Menu Controls > OFF then both controllers can navigate retroarch menus at the same time (.. Input > Menu Controls > All users control menu is ON)
if I select Main Menu > Settings > Input > Menu Controls > Unified Menu Controls > ON then only first controller works and the other is dead in retroarch menu too

I've checked configurations files for joypad_index and show 0 and 1 for player1 and player2 both in general and local emulator. I've tried installing Joystick Selection tool from meleu and seems i can assign player 1 and 2 to the right controller. Only devices bound to Port 1 works in game no matter which device is bound, Port 2 is always dead seems never connected to player 2. What am I missing??

mitu

Did you use the MAME input menu to configure the controllers ? Delete the default.cfg file where the MAME input configuration is stored - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/lr-mame2003/#mame-menu - and try again.
You don't need to configure anything in RetroArch, if the controllers are detected and configured (as they are) they should be set automatically to P1/P2 in Mame2003.

mahoneyt944

Also a reminder that arcade games commonly shared a single set of controls, for example pacman. So player 2 actually uses player 1 inputs when it's their turn. There were also games that had distinct player controls such as tmnt or mortal kombat. It would help to specify the game your trying to play to determine if that plays any part in your issue.