controller settings for VICE

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone. I am new to raspberry Pi, and started my foray into this world with a retropie project. All was going well until trying to play c64 games. I can configure the controllers (usb snes controllers) upon loading a game, but the settings refuse to save no matter what i do. I have googled for hours and found limited information. Many said to create the.vice directory, and check file permissions, but it already exists. Only owner had rw permissions, so i changed all to rwx (suggested on a post i found). When i try to save the settings in the vice menu, it states that it cannot save still. This is really driving me crazy, any help is appreciated.
I have a raspberry pi 2 B and running retropie 3.3.1 SD card image.

[herbfargus]

In all your googling did you look at the official documentation?

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/Commodore-64#controls

There were some similar issues with gpsp (that still aren’t quite resolved) where we had to change perimissions of the files in the /opt path. It’s possible there is something similar going on with VICE.

[herbfargus]

For reference for others:

C64/VICE Joystick Config Help

[Anonymous]

These are two posts that i have looked at numerous times in my googling, but they haven’t helped at all. I follow the steps in the wiki, they don’t save. I create the directory as mentioned (says it already exists), change file permissions, still doesn’t work. This was my last resort as i have no idea what i am doing wrong. Please be assured that i am not being lazy and merely posting here with the first issue i encounter. Cheers.

Also, when i quit emulation station back to the Linux module (?), in the text information from loading the c64 game, it says in there that it failed to open both the ‘…sdl-joymap-C64.vjm ‘ and ‘…sdl-hotkey-C64.vkm’. Does this have any relevance?

[Anonymous]

Here is some more information that can hopefully help:
When looking at the.vice file, it says that it is ’empty’ and unlike other files, it doesn’t have ‘l’ to say it is a symbolic link.
Also, if i go to the /opt/retropie/configs/c64 directory and use pico command on the 3 files there, sdl-joymap-C64.vjm and sdl-vicerc are both empty. Only emulators.cfg contains anything.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.

[herbfargus]

Apologies, alrighty here’s what I’ve come up with. I updated the wiki with saving settings (as there is an option to save settings in the f12 menu – see the aforementioned wiki page for the changes -note its still not complete, just a rough reference)

So I think you are correct with the following being the files for joypad configs:

JoyMapFile="/home/pi/.vice/sdl-joymap-C64.vjm"
HotkeyFile="/home/pi/.vice/sdl-hotkey-C64.vkm"

when you save the settings from the f12 menu it will create these (if it doesnt create them, create them manually and then they will be populated when you save in the menu)

I personally couldnt get consistent results though that may have been due to conflicts with my xbox controllers/how I configured the controllers, which configs, etc.

But perhaps you may have better results with the information I’ve gleaned.

[Anonymous]

Thanks so much for your reply. It won’t let me create a new file. What command should i be using for this? Also, if i call the ‘cat’ command on.vice, nothing happens. Whereas if i call it on.scummvm, it says it is a directory. I’m baffled here. I’ve included a screenshot that i hope posts, to show how all the other emulators listed, have pointers to the real directories, but.vice doesn’t. Is this the issue? I can’t think what i could be doing wrong… thanks again for helping out.

[herbfargus]

It’s a symlink to /opt/retropie/configs/c64 so you can just add it there.

You can use sudo nano newfilename

Or cat > newfilename

Or it’s editable over samba shares which may be an easier option.

https://github.com/retropie/retropie-setup/wiki/First-Installation#samba-shares-needs-an-active-internet-connection

But they should just be created when you save them from within the emulator.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, I’ll keep persevering. I have no idea why it won’t save from the f12 menu. I just get a message that vice can’t save. It’s frustrating. So even though the.vice file doesn’t have that ‘l’ in the permissions like the others, it’s still a symlink? Trying to tie all this information together…. it’s not easy :)
Thanks again for your assistance.

Edit: went to add the joymap file directly into the opt/retropie/configs/c64…. but it already exists… what is going on?? Aaagh.

[herbfargus]

Looking at your previous image its not symlinked (it should be). You can symlink it with

ln -s /home/pi/.vice /opt/retropie/configs/c64

What version of retropie are you on? Are you using the latest image? (If all else fails you can try with retropie 3.4)

[Anonymous]

Okay, so it seems that may be the issue. I will test it out soon. The SD image says 3.3.1. I may upgrade as well then.
Thanks so much for your help. If you don’t mind, are you able to explain the ln -s command you used to help my learning? After your initial help and exploring myself i thought this symlink was the issue, but couldn’t find information on how to get them ‘linked’. Cheers again. Your help is appreciated.

[herbfargus]

Each Linux command has a manual or “man” page for commands so for ln:

http://linuxcommand.org/man_pages/ln1.html

The -s stands for symbolic link which is described more here:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/108771/what-is-the-difference-between-a-hard-link-and-a-symbolic-link

Basically we are linking an essentially imaginary file to where wthe real file is installed for the configs for c64. We do it for a lot of configs to keep everything structured. (We also do it with the Genesis rom folder to the megadrive rom folder etc)

[Anonymous]

I think we have some success!! It didn’t work initially. But then i switched the order of files with the ln -s command, which didn’t work as it said.vice already exists. I then removed the.vice file and ran the command again which worked, now it seems to be saving the settings on my initial tests! No idea why this happened! The SD image was a fresh install. Once again, thank you for your help! My hair can now begin growing back from being pulled out. Cheers.

[herbfargus]

BTW you can use ln -sf to overwrite the file if it already exists.

Glad you got it sorted. I appreciate the feedback as that was one setting I failed to note on the wiki.

[labelwhore]

If anyone is struggling to set up controls for vice on an xbox 360 controller, I’m gonna update the xbox 360 controller page on the wiki tonight with some config files that may help.

My way basically bypasses all of the above.

[Author]

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