N64 emulation with game specific controls?

[Valkyr1983]

Bought launchbox premium for big box and loving it so far

my goal of having a fully seamless controller only driven emulation pc for my family is almost complete, but I’m struggling with n64 games

project64 itself is running fine. Have my 64 rooms all loaded ok and project 64 set as the emulator. It launches and goes full screen from big box no problem

controls are a whole other story. In project 64 the c buttons are mapped to right stick so games like goldeneye and perfect dark have a modern FPS feel, same with Turok, etc

this doesn’t work well in games that have actions tied to c buttons though like castlevania, Zelda, army men, etc. it doesn’t feel good at all to push an analog stick left to slash a sword for example, it also throws the kids off when they bump the right stick and suddenly sarge dives into prone position for example.

has anyone found a way to build custom mapping’s per rom?

ive heard RetroArch can do this but isn’t that just another front end like launchbox in a way? I don’t want to use big box just to load RetroArch and then the game. 

Another option I was going to look at manually building controller layouts in project 64 for each game, saving as named files then leverage a batch file to copy over the top of the default config based on what game I pick, but does launchbox support launching an emulator and specific rom via a batch file?

with how popular launchbox and n64 is I’m assuming someone has thought of this before 

 

ANy advice? Thanks

[Johnny T]

I wouldn't say Retroarch was a "frontend" as such. It's more just a way of organising emulators. So it takes the guts of different emulators and calls them "cores" and then loads your game with the chosen core. 

It does allow you to remap keys on a per-game basis as I'm using it for the Spectrum and obviously different games used different keys to play. So I have to map each game individually (or I will have to over the next 1000 rainy days as it's going to be a looooong task). 

I'm sure it would work with N64. You would just pick the most generic key map and use that as your default and then just do a per-game map for the odd ones that didn't work right with the generic map?

Unfortunately I've not used Project 64 yet as I haven't got as far as setting up the N64 so can't comment on that. 

Good luck

[putnamto]

Retroarch  is  like  a  middleman  between  launch box  and  your  game, it  can  set  a  control  scheme  that  will  automatically map  itself  to  whatever  core/platform  you  are  playing, think  of  it  like  a  virtual  gamepad  that  you  map  your  physical  controls  to.

 

For  your  question  of  game  specific  controls, that  should  be  doable, i know you can do custom button maps per core, wouldnt know how to do it per game, but im sure its similar.

[Retro808]

Retroarch simply is a frontend. Even they call it that on their main page. 

To set per game controls in RA simply load the game with the core you want. Hit F1 to go to settings. Find the input user 1 and input user 2 settings and bind your controls. Back out in the Quick Menu and go into Configuration Override then choose the Save Per Game option. 

[neil9000]

Yeah although Retroarch is a frontent for libretro cores it doesnt need to be used as such. When using it through Launchbox/Bigbox you dont need to see its UI if you dont want to, launchbox/Bigbox will simply load straight to the game skipping the UI. As for setting the controls @Retro808 is mostly right there, do what he said to setup your actual controller in retroarch, but the per game controls are done through the quick menu not the main menu. When you have a game loaded you get access to a different menu the "quick menu" so load a game you want to edit controls on then hit F1 or the guide button on your controller, and you will automatically be in the quick menu, scroll to controls in that menu and change them, then in the same menu is a "save core remap" and a "save game remap" option, just choose the one you want and that will save and auto load that config next time you load that core/game.

[Retro808]

Thank @neil9000 for better clarifying. Yeah, I meant to say in Quick menu look for the user 1 and user 2 settings in Controls. 

[neil9000]

13 hours ago, Johnny T said:

It does allow you to remap keys on a per-game basis as I'm using it for the Spectrum and obviously different games used different keys to play. So I have to map each game individually (or I will have to over the next 1000 rainy days as it's going to be a looooong task). 

What i do for spectrum is set the controller to "Kempston" most games support the joystick and you just need to press the relevant key in the main menu of the game to start the game with Kempston controls, its often K or a number, just bring up the onscreen keyboard with select/back and press whatever button that game wants to start the game with Kempston control.

[neil9000]

@Johnny T See in this first image i have user 1 device type set to Kempston.

Treasure island dizzy wants K to start the game with Kempston control, as you can see at the bottom of the screen

So just bring up the onscreen keyboard with select/back and navigate to k and press the button.

[Johnny T]

Hi Neil, thanks for the info 

What are the keyboard controls for Kempston though?

My cabinet uses the standard MAME keys (ie. Arrow keys for up/down/left/right and then Ctrl key for fire etc) do these keys relate to Kempston? Or have actually got a joystick you plug in?

(Sorry to hijack the thread for a moment)

 

[neil9000]

Just now, Johnny T said:

What are the keyboard controls for Kempston though?

My cabinet uses the standard MAME keys (ie. Arrow keys for up/down/left/right and then Ctrl key for fire etc) do these keys relate to Kempston? Or have actually got a joystick you plug in?

Ah that i actually dont know as i just use a xinput controller, either a xbox one or a 8bitdo, or sometimes my arcade stick which i have set to dinput. My guess would be though that if your controls are already setup in Retroarch then it should just work, its just emulating the kempston Joystick in the core, so whatever controls you already have setup "should" work and be emulated to use kempston just like a controller would. You may just need to change the controls slightly in the quick menu for the fuse core and just save a core remap. As long as your controls are working in the UI then it shouldnt be a problem to map them correctly for the Fuse core and emulate the Kempston Joystick.

[Johnny T]

That's great Neil, thanks. I'll experiment with it. Speccy was my first computer so holds a very dear place in my heart. I spent most of my youth messing around in BASIC and typing in long programs from Spectrum User etc. Happy days.

[neil9000]

18 minutes ago, Johnny T said:

That's great Neil, thanks. I'll experiment with it. Speccy was my first computer so holds a very dear place in my heart. I spent most of my youth messing around in BASIC and typing in long programs from Spectrum User etc. Happy days.

Yeah speccy was my first also, me and my brother got one to share one xmas in the mid eighties, it changed my life.  

[Johnny T]

27 minutes ago, neil9000 said:

Yeah speccy was my first also, me and my brother got one to share one xmas in the mid eighties, it changed my life.  

How strange, I was exactly the same. My brother and me got one to share too

And we got three games with it - Ant Attack, Jet Pac and Manic Miner. I think those were the top three in the charts when we got ours. 

My brother was big into the games but I preferred messing around programming it. 

The Speccy lead to an Atari ST, then a PS1 and then eventually a PC in the late 90's. 

I still play Chaos - Battle of the Wizards on the Speccy with my 12 yr old lad. Despite the graphics there were some timeless games. 

[neil9000]

lol yeah we got some sort of bundle, it came with a shit load of games, first one we fired up was Rambo. Anyway i think we have derailed this thread enough.  

Feel free to join our discord server were you can just chat more freely about what you want to. 

https://discord.gg/Qw3aDP

[Johnny T]

Yep, waaay off topic. 

Apologies peeps. 

Thanks Neil will have a look at the Discord link

[Valkyr1983]

Great feedback and thanks!

going to download RetroArch and try it since I won’t have to see it’s UI which is great

having some issues with n64 games in project64 anyways so maybe mupen64plus will be better?

[Valkyr1983]

It’s working! I can launch my games from bigbox and Retroarch will auto load my per game controller config a which is great

now I’m just trying to figure out a smoother way to map them per game. The Retroarch GUI isnt exactly easy for this

[Johnny T]

You can manually edit the config files in a text editor as well (not sure how much easier that would be for you though?)

[Retro808]

25 minutes ago, Johnny T said:

You can manually edit the config files in a text editor as well (not sure how much easier that would be for you though?)

Input remaps per core or per game are usually saved as a .rmp file and you are correct you can edit it. However, they can only be edited once one is created. So he would have to use the GUI to edit on a per game basis his controls. Also the remap file will only contain the data that differs from the .cfg file. For example if you set a core config control as one set of controls and for a certain game you only changed the "A" button to a different control the remap file will only show that field and not the rest of the controls since that is the only one that differs. 

[Johnny T]

Yep, very good points Retro. You would have to open each game in Retroarch, immediately save it as a per game config and then copy/paste the content of one of the others you did via the Retroarch GUI and edit to suit. Phew.... Probably easier to just get used to the Retroarch GUI!