Experience with default configuration and paths to make joy-pad works in retroarch

Martian

Hello,

Thank you for the wonderful project!

Few weeks ago I installed Retropie 4.0.2 downloaded from website on Raspberry Pi 3. Long ago I wanted to give a try something similar as I'm a huge fan of retro games. :)
I faced few issues during the setup that I would like to share.

Here is how it started:
I had USB keyboard connected to support me until I connect my joypad. I skipped first device configuration window by F4 and then I directly went to Retropie Setup, where I:

Connected my Bluetooth controller successfully - Moga Pro 2 HID.
Updated all installed packages, including OS related
Performed reboot
Successfully configured my joypad in emulationstation

Up until now I was using no documentation, just acted on common sense.
The first issue that I faced was that NO any system was available in emulationstation. Then I needed to read some documentation to realize that es_systems.cfg is the file that configures these. I found some examples in git that showed me how to add retropie menu. Eventually I managed to bring back the menu and installed packages for lr-snes9* to play a SNES game. I copied the ROM in zipped form via Samba (network share) to snes directory and restarted retropie. Again there was no menu for Super Nintendo. I thought maybe it needs to be added again in es_systems.cfg, but that would be a stupid thing to do for every system I add. So I looked around and found out that the file /etc/emulationstation/es_systems.cfg contains all the systems possibly known, but the one that is currently being used was the local one in home directory /home/pi/.emulationstation/es_systems.cfg. I had to copy the one from system /etc directory to the home location. Is that expected behavior? I think for a newcomer or beginner that would be hard to know?

Another issue that was harder for me to catch. My joupad was detected and worked ok in emulationstation, but when I started a game emulation station actually starts retroarch which has different configuration than emulationstation, but automatic detection was made to allow configuration via emualtionstation to be "translated" to retroarch configuration for the default behavior. Unfortunately in my case each time I start my SNES game I saw in the bottom of the screen yellow note "Moga Pro 2 HID (8406/25201) not configured". Then the only way to quit the game was to kill retroach. I spent some time to find the log location and to realize the retroarch is overwriting configuration variables for each system if own configuration file for that system exists. So what I have in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg is overwritten with what I have in /opt/retropie/configs/snes/retroarch.cfg, which is ok, but by default in SNES config I had joypad_autoconfig_dir = "~/.config/retroarch/autoconfig" and in ALL config I had joypad_autoconfig_dir = "/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads/" which is where emulationstation generated profile for my controller setup. The directory ~/.config/retroarch/autoconfig was empty and I decided to make it symlink of /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-joypads/ that resolved my problem with joypad not working in retroarch.

I decided to share this information here just in case somebody is just getting starting to know the retropie as I am. In case this is not the expected default behavior then it seems like something not expected has happened. I guess this could be because I started first with upgrades then with trying to start playing a game. Who knows. If someone is interested I could try to reproduce what happened by collecting some more details on the way.

Martin

dankcushions

yeah there should be no reason to manually configure/edit any of these files. i'm not sure what you've done but it's not clear what your starting point was. retropie image? raspian? etc

Martian

As I wrote it was Retropie 4.0.2 downloaded from website installed on Raspberry Pi 3.

dankcushions

@Martian you can download the image or script from the website, but i'll assume image....

Martian

@dankcushions Yes. Sorry for not being specific. It was image. I copied that image on SD card. I assume that upgrade was the reason for this or even if I remember well I made core packages uninstall/install again using binaries from retropie_setup script.

Now as I am getting more familiar with retropie I will save my current configurations and I will try to reinstall it and to make a note for each and every step to see if I could reproduce that. If not then eventually I will have just a system that works as I want. :)

BuZz

Please install following the instructions here - https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/First-Installation