Some mame roms auto-generating an incorrect input config?

FarrisGoldstein

I have a mostly-virgin retropie image from August in my mame cabinet, with an IPAC for controls. Everything works fine, but somehow the input controls for a few roms (sfa2, sfa3 for example) keep getting swapped even though I deleted the rom-specific .cfg files. Any ideas where to look to see what I've screwed up?

The only rom-specific config files I see are the cfg files in /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-libretro/mame2003/cfg/, but (a) even if I delete them, the next time I run the affected roms and look in the tab menu for "Input (This Game)" the buttons are out of order and (b) since those files aren't in a text-format I can't really tell if they're the culprit.

FarrisGoldstein

Is there a way to reset all rom-specific input to defaults?

dankcushions

@FarrisGoldstein the /cfg/ files are generated automatically. they are not overriding anything.

if SFA3, how do you think the controls are being overriden? from what to what? i don't fully understand your issue.

FarrisGoldstein

@dankcushions Well, I think I've narrowed it down to just the sfa series. When I push P1/P2 B1, which I've always thought should be low-punch, the player kicks. If I verify in the mameui, it looks like the correct buttons are mapped, but the punches and kicks are swapped.

I don't know the exact punches and kicks that are swapped, I will write those down tomorrow when I'm near the machine again.

Am I just barking up the wrong tree? Is it a known configuration that the SFA series have button configurations that are different from the other capcom fighting games?

dankcushions

@FarrisGoldstein with mame2003 and other lr- mame emulators it's best to think of them in terms of the retropad buttons not the mame button numbers. the mame default for street fighter etc is like the snes:

L - High Punch
X - Middle Punch
Y - Low Punch
R - High Kick
A - Middle Kick
B - Low Kick

so when mapping your cabinet to the retro pad, you should map it accordingly. (eg. top 3 buttons are Y X L, bottom 3 B A R)

FarrisGoldstein

@dankcushions Thanks. I actually understand that part, since the comparable buttons work as expected in other Street Fighter and Capcom fighting games. It's only the Alpha series in which the buttons are out of order.

dankcushions

@FarrisGoldstein just tried sfa3.zip and it seemed fine with the default settings - mapped to my pad as above.

FarrisGoldstein

I have a hunch, which I won't be able to confirm for a few days. The above behavior was observed on my brother's cab/Pi, which is identical to mine except that his IPAC is newer. I've read elsewhere that newer IPACs get recognized by retroarch as a USB gamepad and thus don't necessarily send the corresponding key.

On my machine, which has an IPAC that I bought in 2001 or 2002, everything shows up as a keypress, and the above behavior isn't an issue.

I'm going to see if I can retroarch to ignore the IPAC and just treat it as a keyboard so that we can share config without remapping. Otherwise, I might have to remap and get used to a different default layout. This is the layout I prefer, as it makes sense to me in ES, mame, and console emus:

(A/B1) (B/B2) (Y/B3)
(X/B4) (L/B5) (R/B6)