RetroArch will not configure controls anymore

[thegreatiandi]

Hello all.

I'm having a new issue with RetroArch. Every sense i installed a new usb 360 control emulator ( CronusMAx plus ), RA will not configure the 1st player controls. The Cronus Max plus has been amazing so far!

Im using generic USB emulators for my 4player build...and they play nice with everything. LB sees them, Windows sees them, BB sees them...they are great. The only issue as Windows games will not see the controllers most times using these....

 

Enter the Cronus Max...and i have a 360 controller now. Windows see it, LB sees it, BB sees it as well.  Now any steam games i want to import into my LB/BB library works  just fine with the generic usb encoders. 

The issue has become RetroArch. When i go to configure the 1st player controls, it sees each button press just fine once i go to map buttons to my inputs. It recognizes the controller as a Xinput controller. 

Once i go to launch a rom however...it has placed buttons wherever it wanted. I have deleted my configuration file, started from scratch, over and over...it just will not actually map anything where i tell it to.

I then tried to run a stand alone emulator...not a core from within Retroarch...and it all works perfectly. It didn't matter what emulator i ran...there was no issue. Only within RA.

So i already updated RA to the newest version and still, no go. I've deleted config files over and over...mapped keys and saved as User 1 bind auto configs...nothing works.

 

Last thing i could think of was to remove the Cronus Max plus and try to just run the regular generic usb encoder into the pc...and it was recognized as always. By LB, BB and windows. 

As soon as i went to map buttons...the same thing happened...almost like there are some wierd RA settings that are saved and will not delete. 

So im at a loss here. I reached out to the discord for LIBRETRO...and they told me to update RA. Then go through the same steps i have. Nothings worked.

 

Any assistance would be great guys.

 

Thanks!

 

 

[Retro808]

So is the issue RA is showing the controller on a different Port # each time you start a game in Retroarch?  I had a similar issue on one cabinet because the USB ports were set to selective suspend. When a game would launch and the port was active it would reassign it to another port # in Retroarch. Make sure the USB ports are not set to selective suspend in your

[thegreatiandi]

17 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

So is the issue RA is showing the controller on a different Port # each time you start a game in Retroarch?  I had a similar issue on one cabinet because the USB ports were set to selective suspend. When a game would launch and the port was active it would reassign it to another port # in Retroarch. Make sure the USB ports are not set to selective suspend in your

I guess im not sure if that is the case...as far as the usb slots being suspended.

I would say no...as every time i start the PC...it seems to be seen under that " configure usb controllers " tab as USB 4. 

I would prefer it was USB one...but i don't think i can change that in windows(?). If i can and you know how...i'd like to know :).

 

The thing that got me was stand alone emulators see the controller and maps it however i want. It's RA that ( in game only ) will not. In the F1 configuration windows...i can map things how i want. Each button registers in the slot i choose...IE; Button one: X, Button 5: B. 

AS soon as i save and head out to the game is where things are all over the place.

[Retro808]

4 minutes ago, thegreatiandi said:

I guess im not sure if that is the case...as far as the usb slots being suspended.

I would say no...as every time i start the PC...it seems to be seen under that " configure usb controllers " tab as USB 4. 

I would prefer it was USB one...but i don't think i can change that in windows(?). If i can and you know how...i'd like to know :).

 

The thing that got me was stand alone emulators see the controller and maps it however i want. It's RA that ( in game only ) will not. In the F1 configuration windows...i can map things how i want. Each button registers in the slot i choose...IE; Button one: X, Button 5: B. 

AS soon as i save and head out to the game is where things are all over the place.

Yeah that was what I thought weird. Other emulators had no issues. I am not sure if it is the issue for you or not but just make sure your USB ports are not set to suspend. 

I think there is a way to set your controllers to a stable ID. There is a Youtube video that showed how. I will try to find it. The guy had a channel dedicated to arcade cabinet stuff. 

[thegreatiandi]

54 minutes ago, Retro808 said:

Yeah that was what I thought weird. Other emulators had no issues. I am not sure if it is the issue for you or not but just make sure your USB ports are not set to suspend. 

I think there is a way to set your controllers to a stable ID. There is a Youtube video that showed how. I will try to find it. The guy had a channel dedicated to arcade cabinet stuff. 

I appreciate it...im so at a loss here. I guess i could take the control panel apart and place the buttons where they seem to want to be mapped?  Or i can get a separate emulator for every one of my systems?...i would like to not do that though, lol.

And again...i tried this now with the Cronus in line...and without it in line. RA just wants to place things where it wants to. I thought deleting the CFG would fix that...but i swear it's like there are settings saved somewhere that won't go away. 

I already updated from 1.7.3 to the newest version...that didn't wipe anything away...so not sure what else to do there. 

 

I should make a quick video of what it's doing so it makes sense as to what im saying...

[DOS76]

is your Dolphin Bar causing the issue perhaps?

[Retro808]

@DOS76 I did not even think of that. We did have a couple threads a good while back about a similar issue. 

 

Edited:

@thegreatiandi not sure if this will solve the issue, but it might be worth a read. 

[thegreatiandi]

12 hours ago, DOS76 said:

is your Dolphin Bar causing the issue perhaps?

 

11 hours ago, Retro808 said:

@DOS76 I did not even think of that. We did have a couple threads a good while back about a similar issue. 

 

Edited:

@thegreatiandi not sure if this will solve the issue, but it might be worth a read. 

Interesting...

I will try today and see if perhaps? Come to think of it...i believe the dolphin bar is showing up as like 4 mayflash bars instead of the single bar i actually have???...

I can say the controls were fine before I introduced that to the arcade..but this was also before I decided to get the cronus max as well. ?.

Of course...when i forgo the cronus, its still doing the same thing so at this point I'll try anything.

[Bedwyr]

Try this MS tool perhaps to analyze what's happening?: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/tracking-down-usb-devices-in-windows-10-with-microsofts-usb-device-viewer/

I remember something similar happening when we had to use USB-Serial devices for a robotics research project. In Linux, serial port assignments are easily manipulated and symbolic links are just as easily generated. In windows, com ports are assigned at boot time and the vagaries of physical USB location could shift those around. So we would have to either keep devices permanently plugged into the exact same ports or figure out programming workarounds to find the correct serial port. Perhaps something similar is happening here.

[damageinc86]

Jeez, retroarch needs to see things better.  I have problems sometimes with it not letting me map things for certain controllers, but like you, in standalone emulators it is detected right away when a button is pressed.  That's why I still mainly use mednafen, on the screen, on-the-fly controller re-mapping and it just works.

[thegreatiandi]

21 hours ago, damageinc86 said:

Jeez, retroarch needs to see things better.  I have problems sometimes with it not letting me map things for certain controllers, but like you, in standalone emulators it is detected right away when a button is pressed.  That's why I still mainly use mednafen, on the screen, on-the-fly controller re-mapping and it just works.

Mednafen.....ehh? Ive honesty never heard of it before??. Is this similar to Retroarch?? 

Of course im going to look it up after this....but im wondering from the perspective of someone who uses it.

Having an all in one is desirable for sure. Since I'm now prepared to just download all stand alone emulators and try to go about using Big box like that, im willing to look at other options. 

Any pros and cons of that one??

[damageinc86]

57 minutes ago, thegreatiandi said:

Mednafen.....ehh?

Having an all in one is desirable for sure. Since I'm now prepared to just download all stand alone emulators and try to go about using Big box like that, im willing to look at other options. 

Any pros and cons of that one??

The only con I can think of is that it doesnt have overlay options like retroarch, and only one basic crt shader that is ok. 

I use it for nes, snes, genesis, sega cd, psx, virtual boy, and sega saturn.  So that takes care of quite a bit.  I also use it with rocketlauncher so I still have bezels (overlays) applied to it through that program, so the look still matches anything I have with retroarch.  I can see how if you didn't want to learn how to apply a bezel to mednafen via rocketlauncher but you have them on in retroarch, that it might be annoying.  But if you dont care about that then I think it might be a great solution.

 

Edited September 13, 2019 by damageinc86

[thegreatiandi]

15 hours ago, damageinc86 said:

The only con I can think of is that it doesnt have overlay options like retroarch, and only one basic crt shader that is ok. 

I use it for nes, snes, genesis, sega cd, psx, virtual boy, and sega saturn.  So that takes care of quite a bit.  I also use it with rocketlauncher so I still have bezels (overlays) applied to it through that program, so the look still matches anything I have with retroarch.  I can see how if you didn't want to learn how to apply a bezel to mednafen via rocketlauncher but you have them on in retroarch, that it might be annoying.  But if you dont care about that then I think it might be a great solution.

 

Well i only use bezels for my arcade stuff....and that runs through MAME.....so that would be ok :).

Now as far as the shader goes, most of the emulators have there own basic ones i do believe. I think i should be good with those. 

Question though...i can use any emulator i want for the system i desire though? Like Znes or Nestopia for the nes? That would be amazing! 

Do you use this in conjunction with Bigbox? or have you tried...just to see what it does? 

[damageinc86]

29 minutes ago, thegreatiandi said:

Well i only use bezels for my arcade stuff....and that runs through MAME.....so that would be ok :).

Now as far as the shader goes, most of the emulators have there own basic ones i do believe. I think i should be good with those. 

Question though...i can use any emulator i want for the system i desire though? Like Znes or Nestopia for the nes? That would be amazing! 

Do you use this in conjunction with Bigbox? or have you tried...just to see what it does? 

No mednafen IS the emulator, and it covers those systems I listed.  Should work with launchbox right away. 

[thegreatiandi]

On 9/13/2019 at 1:02 PM, damageinc86 said:

No mednafen IS the emulator, and it covers those systems I listed.  Should work with launchbox right away. 

Im going to try this tomorrow. Awesome.

So is there a GUI? I've seen someone on line do  a quick setup...and it was weird...like DOS. Then i saw another video where a guy was setting it up and there was a " menu " of sorts. 

That's why i wasn't sure if this was a RA type deal where you need cores/stand alone emulators...or if it was the emulator.

 

By the way...thanks for all the help!