Help with saving controller config on Mupen64Plus-Next

[Golden Shellback]

Hello everyone! I am new here so please bear with me. I have made an Arcade that is four player, with two Sinden Lightguns as well. My joysticks and buttons are the DragonRise brand. I was also concidering adding two Xbox One controllers as so I could play the N64 games.
I am running the Arcade on a Rasp Pi 4b (8gb) with the Rasp Pi power supply. I originally downloaded Retropie and was creating a custom build, but had some major issues getting the Lightguns to work, so I ultimately went with the BareBones 8.1 image. It is working great, except for a couple issues. The 1st issue I have run into, which I would love your advice on, is saving the controller configuration on the Mupen64Plus-Next emulator for N64 games. I have gone into the configs, set me Xbox controllers to be the primary controllers for said Emulator, but when I exit a game, or the emulator, none of my configs save. I even went into Retroarch and turned on the "save on exit" option, and then went into configuration and "saved current config." For some reason, it just wont save my configs. Its not really a big issue, as I can go into Retroarch and make the changes when I want to play with the Xbox controllers, but I would prefer it to just automatically start with the Xbox controllers set as the primary controllers.
I have reached out to the creators of the BareBones image, and asked these questions on Discord, but they are more concerned with helping with Lightgun issues, not necessarily concerned with emulator specific issues. They have been extremely helpful otherwise up to this point! Any help or advice in this matter would be greatly appreciated! Thank you for your time in advance!

[sleve_mcdichael]

@Golden-Shellback are you using mupen64plus-next, or lr- mupen64plus-next?

[Golden Shellback]

@sleve_mcdichael...it looks like Im using lr-mupen64plus-next as the default for all N64 games...

[sleve_mcdichael]

@Golden-Shellback okay just checking.

I even went into Retroarch and turned on the "save on exit" option, and then went into configuration and "saved current config."

This is not the correct approach and may have corrupted your system config for N64 (well not so much "corrupted" it, as "isolated it from RetroPie's custom hierarchy of default settings and config overrides," but still not something you want. This will cause more problems than it solves. My first recommendation is to delete the file /opt/retropie/configs/n64/retroarch.cfg and then re-install the emulator lr-mupen64plus-next to restore the default version.)

You can use the RetroArch menu to explore new settings but, aside from shaders and remaps through the Quick Menu, shouldn't be saved this way. To make them permanent, use the configuration editor or manually edit the settings into your global or system retroarch.cfg or create a game override config.

For some reason, it just wont save my configs. Its not really a big issue, as I can go into Retroarch and make the changes when I want to play with the Xbox controllers, but I would prefer it to just automatically start with the Xbox controllers set as the primary controllers.

What setting(s) did you change to make it work the one time?

I'm thinking it may be something like:

input_player1_device_index="6"
input_player2_device_index="7"

...this would go in the system config so it applied only to N64 games. Default is player 1 index=0, player 2 index=1, etc. So your p1-p4 arcade sticks would be indices 0-3; I suspect the two light guns will be 4 and 5 which means if you plug in two Xbox controllers, they'd be 6 and 7.

[Golden Shellback]

@sleve_mcdichael...oh wow! I was a little perplexed after reading your suggestion, but ultimately found the solution! I went into Retroarch and changed the port 1 binds to Xbox One Controller and even changed the video aspect to 19:12...and proceeded to save as a core override. Now when I start the N64 games, my Xbox Controller is the primary controller, and my joysticks are NOT! SWEET!! Thank you!