Weird Controller Problems (yes, again)

mediamogul

Something else worth mentioning that I'm pretty proud of with my setup for Wolf3D is my mapping for weapon selection. Since the game relies on keys 1-4 for weapon selection, rather than having an option for progressive selection like 'DOOM' or the Quake games, I mapped my own to the 'x' button of my controller using:

--ui-buttonmap x=cycle-key:KEY_1:KEY_2:KEY_3:KEY_4

Now I can cycle through my available weapons with one controller button, rather than having to map four dedicated ones.

I could geek out about this stuff all day. Part of the fun for me is finding a better, more efficient way to control a game.

edmaul69

@mediamogul so can i use xboxdrv just for this? I just dont want all my controllers seen as an xbox controller. I have adaptors that use multiple controllers but dont share all the same button numbers. Could make a real mess for me.

meleu

@hansolo77
The __joy2key_dev is used only by the scripts which call joy2key.py. If you are curious, here are links to the exact line in each file:

runcommand.sh
helpers.sh (used by retropie_setup.sh)
jsfuncs.sh (used by RetroPie-joystick-selection tool)

I'm away from my raspi now, but I'll try to find a solution when I get home. And the first thing I'll try is to put that export line at the end of /etc/profile. :-)

mediamogul

@edmaul69 said in Weird Controller Problems (yes, again):

so can i use xboxdrv just for this?

Sure, you can use either one of two methods mentioned in the guide for selective launching of xboxdrv. I don't use it for everything myself.

edmaul69

@mediamogul sweet. I will look into that. I should get my replacement apple iie keyboard adaptor tomorrow. (Not sure why it is taking usps 5 days to ship something two hours away) The keyboard overrides the other two as the first joystick (even though it has no joystick functionality) in jstest and stuff. Doesnt bother me to use the keyboard for that stuff anyway. I also wanna play around with using the apple IIe mouse and keyboard and see how well fps' work on that archaic hardware. 😄

hansolo77

@meleu said in Weird Controller Problems (yes, again):

@hansolo77
The __joy2key_dev is used only by the scripts which call joy2key.py. If you are curious, here are links to the exact line in each file:

runcommand.sh

helpers.sh (used by retropie_setup.sh)

jsfuncs.sh (used by RetroPie-joystick-selection tool)

I'm away from my raspi now, but I'll try to find a solution when I get home. And the first thing I'll try is to put that export line at the end of /etc/profile. :-)

Thanks @meleu I'll be waiting for your solution. :) Looks like a couple of guys hijacked my thread though lol.

mediamogul

@edmaul69 said in Weird Controller Problems (yes, again):

The keyboard overrides the other two as the first joystick (even though it has no joystick functionality)

I actually believe you can fix that with a udev rule, but I may be mistaken.

edmaul69

@hansolo77 i apologize. I didnt mean to hijack it. We are both in the same situation and its possible the same northwest fix we both did caused this. I was hoping we both could get the answer we needed without trying to do it in two seperate threads. If meleu finds a way around it i am all for it. If you get it working please do share your steps and i will do the same if i get it working.

mediamogul

@hansolo77 said in Weird Controller Problems (yes, again):

Looks like a couple of guys hijacked my thread though

I'm sorry I took the money!

hansolo77

LOL I was just kidding. No worries. We're all in this thing together. I'm spending my time soldering a blue LED to my NES, and learning about resistors because I want to have it wired on the GPIO rather than the Mausberry Circuit because the circuit cuts the LED before the system is fully off. Lots of good learning stuff. Have it working now. So my time is being well spent. :)

I just wish I knew more about Linux and programming so I could figure this stuff out on my own without having to ask for somebody to just do it for me.

edmaul69

@hansolo77 yeah a 220ohm resistor is good. If your blue led is a clear plastic and not blue if you use some wet 2000 grit sandpaper you can dissapate the led so it doesnt blind you when you look at it. But a colored led will always look better.

hansolo77

@meleu and Anybody Else...

Did you come up with anything I can try? This is still an unanswered issue. I'm game for anything (lol pun unintended). I tried to do some figuring out on my own.. these are some things I tried that didn't work:

Change from " (double quotes) to ' (single quote) in the export command (I saw some scripts other people had written on other sites for other projects that said they had to be single quotes)
Change the location of the export command to a totally different file (ie; crontrab by using @reboot, or a different autostart.sh file)

Something I've not tried to do is just manually edit those files you have listed that are calling on __joy2key_dev and just replace the input it's looking for from js0 and make it js2. That would probably be a harsh way to make it work but it probably would. The problem with that is if I ever get some kind of other controller issue, I might need to change them again. Changing 1 file is ideally easier than 3.

Is __joy2key_dev being implemented as a variable, or does this create a file somewhere that those other scripts are looking for? It looks like it's just creating a declaration for a variable. If that's the case, how do the other scripts find it? In my limited experience and examination of other scripts, variables are exclusive to the script it's running in. Is that what the export command does - make it a system-wide variable? I'm just trying to wrap my head around what's actually happening, in the hopes I'll be able to fix it on my own, or at least understand how the eventual fix actually works. :)

meleu

@hansolo77 said in Weird Controller Problems (yes, again):

variables are exclusive to the script it's running in. Is that what the export command does - make it a system-wide variable?

Not exactly system-wide. The exportmakes every child shell of the current shell "inherit" the variable.

I made more tests and realized that problem is that when you sudo a script, it doesn't inherit that variable.

Setting the device in a file was what I tried with this non-merged PR but it would work runcommand.sh only (what I now agree that isn't the best approach).

I can use different controllers setting this variable when the scripts are not launched with sudo, but it doesn't solve your issue...

Unfortunately your issue remains unsolved... I'll keep trying.

hansolo77

At least it's a step in the right direction, and identified a possible cause as to why your original proposed fix didn't work. :) I'll keep my fingers crossed you'll figure something out.

hansolo77

I had a thought.. is there a way to maybe incorporate the Joystick-Selection addon into this? Since it goes in and configures default controllers on a per-emulator basis, could you simply add another "emulator" option called "EmulationStation", that would essentially set a default controller for everything outside RetroArch? Or is this something more deep-rooted into the OS, that a simple script to alter configs wouldn't work?

Still hoping a solution is found.

meleu

@hansolo77 I've found a way to make the sudo environment inherit __joy2key_dev. You have to add the following line to your /etc/sudoers

Defaults	env_keep += "__joy2key_dev"

After the Defaults string there is a <TAB>. Note that using the sudo visudo command is the recommended way to update /etc/sudoers content, since it protects against many failure modes.

My /etc/sudoers looks like this:

# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# Please consider adding local content in /etc/sudoers.d/ instead of
# directly modifying this file.
#
# See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file.
#
Defaults	env_reset
Defaults	mail_badpass
Defaults	secure_path="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"

# added to export __joy2key_dev to sudo environments
Defaults	env_keep += "__joy2key_dev"

# Host alias specification

# User alias specification

# Cmnd alias specification

# User privilege specification
root	ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

# Allow members of group sudo to execute any command
%sudo	ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

# See sudoers(5) for more information on "#include" directives:

#includedir /etc/sudoers.d

@hansolo77 said in Weird Controller Problems (yes, again):

is there a way to maybe incorporate the Joystick-Selection addon into this?

Well, I was thinking on implement such functionality, but the main dev said that will do some more work on this subject, then I prefer to leave it to him.

hansolo77

Awesome work. I will give this a try later today (after Thanksgiving lunch is over and company has started leaving). I'm excited to find out if this is the fix I needed. So just to make sure, I still need to make sure I have the export __joy2key_dev="/dev/input/js2" inside the autostart.sh file correct?

hansolo77

Ok new problem.

First of all, it didn't fix it. I tried to load up a game and pressed as many buttons as I could on the run-command window with my xbox controller, and nothing happened. I rebooted and checked to make sure, and YES, I have the export command in the autostart script, and the /etc/sudoers file looks like yours. I even added the # comments, and made sure it was a <TAB> between Defaults and env_keep.

The new problem is that now the NES controller doesn't trigger anything in the run-command now either. I further tested this with just the NES controller connected and the Xbox dongle disconnected, and it still doesn't work. Both controllers will work fine on their own as far as navigating inside ES, and playing games, but none of the joy2key functionality works.

hansolo77

So I played around with this some. I think the problem I'm having is related to the fact that the __joy2key_dev variable isn't created until right before ES starts. So when ES's autostart script finally creates the variable, the system environment still doesn't know that that should be stored in the /etc/sudoers path. I managed to get everything back to normal (launching the run-command setup menus with a keypress on the Xbox controller and no NES connected) by # commenting out the entire export __joy2key_dev="/dev/input/js2" line from the autostart.sh file and removing the added line to the /etc/sudoers file.

I was just about to test re-adding the line to the /etc/sudoers file and leaving the autostart.sh unmodified (with the # comment still in), but now my system is fucked up. Don't know what happened, but I got a lot of text errors on my HDMI output. I unplugged the power, reconnected, and now all I have is the rainbow splash screen. So I might have just borked my whole system by trying to fix this. I've been doing nothing but SSH'ing into the Pi, and rebooting using sudo reboot, so I don't know what happened. :(

I hate my life.

meleu

@hansolo77 WTF?! Calm down bro! I think that your current problem is unrelated with the __joy2key_dev we are messing...

Sorry for giving incomplete instructions. I achieved what you are wanting to do here, using the following method:

add __joy2key_dev="/dev/input/jsX" to the file /etc/environment. Obviously you need to replace jsX with the joystick you want to use.
add Defaults env_keep += "__joy2key_dev" to the file /etc/sudoers (using sudo visudo is the best way to edit this file).
reboot.

Keep in mind the following:

It is a "hardcoded" workaround, if you unplug or plug new controllers to the system, their respective jsX file may change. And it can bring confusion.
the scripts that use joy2key.py make it convert the 0 button into an <enter> keystroke, and the 1 button into a <tab> keystroke. But these buttons differs from joystick to joystick (model, manufacturer, etc.).
if the file you specified in your custom __joy2key_dev doesn't exist, the scripts won't get another one. (this can be improved with simple changes).

I hope you solve it and love your life again.