KeyMapping Assistance

battlecat

Hello:

I have been looking all over for some good tutorials that would help me really understand how to set up non-xbox or non-playstaion types of controllers.

I want to use MAME, NES, SNES, and GENESIS on my arcade cabinet.

I have an iPac2.

I am really really confused on how to set up the Retropie software.

What I have is

Two 8-way joysticks
Two sets of 6 buttons
p1 button
p2 button
And a few extra buttons on each side of the cabinet that I can hook up. Sorry not sure what I mapped them to on the ipac2 so long ago. I will look.
A coin door with a working set of coin mechs.

If anyone can point me to what they think of as a great tut or write up I would be grateful.

Thank you,
BC

PetroRie

@battlecat said in KeyMapping Assistance:

am really really confused on how to set up the Retropie software.

Did you configure the controller in Retropie yet? It's early in the morning here and I still need to go to bed. I will post later the details. But start to configure it trough RetroPie.

edmaul69

@battlecat https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/1722/if-you-have-purchased-an-ipac2-and-want-to-save-time/14

battlecat

Thank you for the responses.

I have been looking over the link and I still feel confused. Of course this is because I am used to the iPac2 being a plug and play type of hardware. There was no configuration with this in the past. Of course RetroPie is worth toying with it to get it to work.

I was given a link to a site called gameroomsolutions.com

I have printed this site and will try this one out as it is more of a linear tutorial. Once I get through it I will report back.

Thanks again!
BC

battlecat

Well after several attempts and reading and re-reading articles from the great google and this forum I am now more confused than ever.

I get that when I turn on the RPI3 the first time it asks me to go through a key mapping process. That seems to work from the the Emulation Station portion of the setup. I just want to get MAME running for now and it doesn't seem to carry over to the default MAME key commands.

I have tried the Game Room Solutions tuts and they failed.

I have read through several meandering forum posts that usually leave me more confused than ever.

Any other suggestions? Shelve the Rpi3 and go back to the normal setup with an old comp?

Thanks in advance!
BC

battlecat

So far here is what I have. Unfortunately formatting on here is very difficult.

I am not sure if I placed the new bindings in the correct position in the text file retroarch.cfg for the keyboard. I have included the first two lines above where I have pasted the J1&2 commands.

Keyboard input, Joypad and Joyaxis will all obey the "nul" bind, which disables the bind completely,

rather than relying on a default.

Keyboard Joystick - Player 1

input_player1_left = left
input_player1_right = right
input_player1_up = up
input_player1_down = down

Keyboard Player 1 Button - Player 1

input_player1_start = num1

Keyboard Coin 1 - Player 1

input_player1_select = num5

Keyboard 6 Button Setup - Player 1

input_player1_a = ctrl
input_player1_b = alt
input_player1_y = shift
input_player1_x = space
input_player1_l = z
input_player1_r = x

Keyboard Joystick - Player 2

input_player2_left = d
input_player2_right = g
input_player2_up = r
input_player2_down = f

Keyboard Player 2 Button - Player 2

input_player2_start = num2

Keyboard Coin 2 - Player 2

input_player2_select = num6

Keyboard 6 Button Setup - Player 2

input_player2_a = a
input_player2_b = s
input_player2_y = q
input_player2_x = w
input_player2_l = i
input_player2_r = k

battlecat

@battlecat According to the iPac2 site https://www.ultimarc.com/ipac2.html this still leaves out 4 keybidings for the iPac2.

The four IPac2 Keybingings not used are:

1 A P
1 B ENTER
2 A TAB
2 B ESC

What I have found difficult is understanding the where to place the text in this buried file called retroarch.cfg and what keybinding from a joystick would correspond to that on the MAME keyboard.

Is there any chance ever that retro-arch will ask if your using a 2 player set up or perhaps a keyboard emulator such as the iPac and make this all much easier?

Thanks for all the hard work!
BC

battlecat

Update

Yesterday I went ahead and FTP'ed the retroarch.cfg to this folder on the SD card:

\retropie\configs\from_retropie\configs\all\retroarch.cfg
-- Note to be honest I am at work and not in front of the RPi3 so I am guessing that was the path to the file.

I rebooted the Rpi3 and went down to the game-room to see what the controls now did. Well they worked! They all did something and that was great. No they are not all correctly mapped to the MAME/iPAC2's default settings. One example of an issue is that in MAME to exit MAME you traditionally do a P1 & P2. On this current button configuration I have to do a P2&P1. This will need to be changed in the config.

I also noticed that Player 1's buttons correspond to getting into and out of menus. I will need to disable those menus and the white dialog config box in the end.

Otherwise MAME setup is looking good!

One question is this can I create a retroarch.cfg file for just the MAME versions I am using and let the original mapping work for all other consoles? What I eventually want to do is to have matching USB joysticks on a hook on either side of the cab in case I want to hit some SMB3 or old school SNES game.

Thank you,
Battlecat