I seem to have lost control of my Xbox controllers in BigBox

[Rexnebular]

I'm getting double inputs with each button press. The worst part is trying to exit Big Box from the menu, navigation jumps two menu items at a time and the stupid thing lands on shutdown every time....! Or if I'm in the system menu one press and I'm 2 levels down and ready to start a game. lol. its sooo frustrating. 

I have 3 Xbox controllers, one old 360 and 2 Xbox "One" controllers they all have the same behavior. So I tried my 8bitdo M30 and it works just fine.

I deleted all the controller config files for launchbox and the mapping I did in retroarch.  (trying to exit games without walking over to my pc to hit "ESC" all the time.)

Then I reinstalled launch box over itself hoping to refresh whatever I did wrong. But no luck; they worked till I launched a game then it went straight back to pissing me off.  

 

Any ideas about where else configs or settings might be hiding? Or what I should backup for a clean reinstall? I admit that I am likely the cause of all my pain... 

Edited May 31, 2022 by Rexnebular

[Rexnebular]

I reinstalled Launchbox. Now the controller defaults are (select)=mame menu/add coin. and (Start)=start game/exit game immediately!!!!!!!!!!!!!! f**k my life.

I have Batacera on a pi4 and the experience is flawless with the controllers, I guess I thought this would be the same. 

 

[Rexnebular]

Losing control in bigbox is due to me turning on the option "enable controllers" "enable all controllers". If I turn it off navigation works again but the B button no  longer controls back, instead its the start button that is back.  This has to be a bug. It essentially means I cant use mame. 

 

Maybe someone has some controller config files they could post? 

[neil9000]

5 hours ago, Rexnebular said:

Losing control in bigbox is due to me turning on the option "enable controllers" "enable all controllers". If I turn it off navigation works again but the B button no  longer controls back, instead its the start button that is back.  This has to be a bug. It essentially means I cant use mame. 

 

Maybe someone has some controller config files they could post? 

Launchbox has absolutely zero to do with your controls in MAME, if your controls are broken in MAME, you need to fix them in MAME. As for navigation in Launchbox use a keyboard to alter what you need, or simply delete the inputbindings.xml in Launchbox/Data when Launchbox is closed and it will generate the default file when you next start Launchbox.

[Rexnebular]

Thanks for pointing out inputbindings.xml. I think I see the BigBox navigation bug now. The controller and its bindings are set in two places, inputbindings.xml and BigBoxSettings.xml.

I swapped the A and B binding in BigBox xml and was able to stop the double inputs from happening. (eg. press A and 2 A's are pressed. Press Up/Down two up/down presses happen etc.)

This worked because input bindings.xml was only reading BigBox xml once when it was created. Now any changes you make in bigbox are writen to its xml and not copied to inputbindings.xml, so they conflict. 

Deleting inputbindings made it read the key swap I made and stop conflicting inputs. I still have enable all controllers off and Mouse on. Not sure if that was anything to do with it too. 

 

Mame: Yeah I understand that mame controls are "Mame's" controls, what I didnt know till today is that mame resets its bindings at every opportunity. If the hadware id's change it treats it as a new controller. And apparently that can happen if you change the usb port your using (I was using 3) or just rebooting is enough to do it.   I'm still looking at this part. 

I'm guessing that other frontend's (Batocera on Pi4) copy the key bindings on exiting a game then restore them when you launch the next game, that way mame can keep resetting all it likes and the user doesn't have to deal with the pain. 

[Rexnebular]

The reason I want a bomb proof controller setup is for my son. He has CP and not good control of his hands, I got the 8bitdo fight stick because it has a big easy to hold control stick and well spaced buttons. I dont have controller issues other then mame and that stupid double input bug in BigBox. And now its just mame. lol.

[Rexnebular]

On 6/3/2022 at 5:43 AM, neil9000 said:

Launchbox has absolutely zero to do with your controls in MAME, if your controls are broken in MAME, you need to fix them in MAME. As for navigation in Launchbox use a keyboard to alter what you need, or simply delete the inputbindings.xml in Launchbox/Data when Launchbox is closed and it will generate the default file when you next start Launchbox.

This turns out to be incorrect. There are indeed key bindings in lauchbox and Bigbox. And they directly influance exiting the game from the controller. In fact they make setting it up in emulator redundant as they seem to stomp all over some of those settings.   The frustrating part was figuring out why it was different in LB vs. BB.

In LB its under tools/options/gamecontrollers/keybindings and is called "exit game". I also nulled out everything that wasn't necessary to navigation.

BB its under options/controller mappings/ "close the active window".   I set both to "Select" then "start" to exit every game no matter what the emulator wants to do.

Turns out it was that simple.