mame games via retroarch do not start automatically + F1 issue (trial and error)

[Morris Schaffer]

I made a video.  Since a few days I'm having the following issue which could be retroarch related but I'm not sure.  So far it only happens with mame.  I click play to play a game, in this case Aero Fighters 2 for the neogeo.  Then watch what happens, in the taskbar a retroarch window seems to want to open, as it should, but then plops away and is immediately replaced by another retroarch window, which then becomes yellow as if to say 'there is a window open' but refusing to open or maximize.  So I click on it and we see the screen is frozen and in top right corner is indeed the pauze sign.  All this I did not experience say 5 days ago, no idea what I changed.  To 'solve' this I hit F1 to bring up the menu, pauze sign is still there and hit F1 again to exit menu.  And the game starts.  Then it gets weirder still.  When I hit F1 again, it sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't.  It's flickering like there is something overruling it.  Like the current screen is not the primary one, but after a few tries I can bring up the menu.  So in short, I can game, but it's rather annoying and of course the issues extend to bigbox as well with games refusing to simply load as soon as I click play  So in big box I select the game, click play, it seems to load, then a black screen with the words 'game over' and back to the game screen in big box where I can select play once more.  To no avail naturally.  And sometimes it doesn't even happen with some other mame games, although it still happens frequently enough.  For example, while typing this I tried Alien 3: The Gun and it boots up immediately although I still get the trial and error while hitting F1 key to bring up the menu so perhaps these are 2 separate issues after all?  Tried T2: The arcade game and sure enough, the same 2 issues as in the video.     Also tried SNES, NES and Genesis cores and none of the above issues are there.  They work exactly as before, hitting F1 is not trial and error and works 100%.  So it must be core related, in this case MAME I suppose, but I have no idea where to look although I tried a few things without succes.  One more hint perhaps.  Hitting P no longer pauzes the game which it definitely did a few days ago.  It now brings up a menu with a few options such as resume game, view high scores, reset game, exit game, load and save state.  So this is new to me as well.  Although hitting P during a snes game brings up the same menu by the way, but I definitely recall that in mame hitting P meant pauzing the game.  It no longer does that.  

Please ask if you require additional info.

[GAR]

I have the same problem as you...

[skizzosjt]

 Hi @GAR I think you and @Morris Schaffer should check your hotkey assignments. the key (no pun intended) from Morris is

 

 

On 5/29/2021 at 5:34 PM, Morris Schaffer said:

Hitting P no longer pauzes the game which it definitely did a few days ago.  It now brings up a menu with a few options such as resume game, view high scores, reset game, exit game, load and save state.  So this is new to me as well.  Although hitting P during a snes game brings up the same menu by the way, but I definitely recall that in mame hitting P meant pauzing the game.  It no longer does that.

 

 

The P key is assigned to pause as default in Retroarch. I would bet the only way it no longer pauses is because it was changed, whether on purpose or on accident. Hotkeys are global, not core/system or game specific, hence why if it happens in MAME it would happen in SNES9X

 

Check if the pause hotkey got changed to same hotkey as menu toggle, F1.