Request: Step-by-step guide for configuring emulators

[borlandoflorida]

Hi,

This is my first post (if that matters), but would it be possible to have a step-by-step guide to configuring individual emulators after the installation of Emulationstation please?

I am relatively new to this game, but have done other RPi projects recently so have a good understanding of certain aspects, but the one area I have struggled with is configuring individual emulators post-installation so that they run they way I would like.

At the moment I have managed to successfully get the Wiimote running over bluetooth and the wireless Xbox 360 controller working within emulators, but I had to do a lot of digging around to get the retroarch-joystick (apologies if this is not the correct spelling – going from memory here) script in order to configure the button inputs to an output file I could then use for the emulator.

The only issue I have at the moment is that I would like to be able to access the emulator menu so that I can configure internal aspects of each emulator (i.e. screen size, audio, overlay etc) but I’m struggling to understand how to do this. I did manage to get this up once by pressing F1 on my keyboard, but then I lost the option of doing this and could not figure out how to get this back.

Also, when I did manage to get into the menu, any changes I made to the configuration were not saved, despite having the setting enabled to save on exit. I was usually presented with an error message along the lines of “permission denied” (again, can’t remember exactly as I’m posting this at work).

I am also finding it problematic setting the resolution on the screen so that everything fits. I use HDMI and I have managed to alter the overscan settings so that the RPi console fits, but when ES boots, it does not fit and I cannot see a way of adjusting this. If I set it to VGA mode in config.txt, it does fit but then the resolution is (obviously) lower and does not do ES the justice it deserves.

What I would like to do is be able to go through a step-by-step guide on how to set up and import the controller config’s into each emulator, whilst being able to adjust the resolution of each emulator so that the fit my 16:9 HD TV.

I have attempted to amend the retroarch.cfg files in the “all” folder, but this does not tend to translate into my setup for some reason.

In an ideal world, I would also like to use the “home” button on the Xbox 360 controller to bring up the emulator settings menu from within the emulator, but despite trying to add this to the retroarch.cfg file using button “10” and “15” (I saw conflicting button maps online), which did not work. I also attempted to use a button that I knew was 100% correct (i.e. used one that had be inputted using the retroarch-joystick set up script) but that did not work either.

Can anybody help or point me in the right direction?

[borlandoflorida]

Mutex Wrote:
The mame emulator cannot save the config since you’re running mame as pi user. The config folder in the mame emulator belongs to the root user, so you’re not allowed to make any changes to that folder. The easiest thing would be to run mame one time by hand as root user

/opt/retropie/emulators/mame4all-pi/mame

configure your controls by pressing and then restart emulationstation. The pi should now have your new controls saved. The other solution would be to change the ownership of the config file but that is a bit more complicated.

zSprawl Wrote:
At the end of the retroarch.cfg file, it is a good idea to add the following to allow you to press select+start to exit the game.

input_enable_hotkey_btn = “6″
input_exit_emulator_btn = “7″

I also like to take advantage of the save and load states in emulation, which some people consider cheating. Add the following lines to enable these buttons on your joypad.

input_save_state_btn = “8″
input_load_state_btn = “10″

Keep in mind, you must hold the “input_enable_hotkey_btn” to trigger the other functions. In other words, using save state would require you to press button 6, and hold it while pressing button 8

I just saw these in other posts, which could explain the settings not being saved when making changes to the emulator whilst running through ES and setting buttons to exit emulators / access menus etc. I’ll give them a go later and see whether this has any effect.

Thought I would dump this post in here as it might become useful for others later on…

[zSprawl]

Playing Old Skool Games on a Raspberry Pi

[borlandoflorida]

[quote=12079]
http://zsprawl.com/iOS/2014/06/playing-old-skool-games-on-a-raspberry-pi/
[/quote]

Thanks – I will check this out. I take it I would need to reconfigure some of the scripts to be compatible with ES 2.1?

So…

cd ~/RetroPie/emulators/RetroArch/installdir/bin
./retroarch-joyconfig -j 1 >> ~/RetroPie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

Would become:

$ cd /opt/retroPie/emulators/RetroArch/installdir/bin
$ ./retroarch-joyconfig -j >> /opt/retroPie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

Also, how do you specify screen resolution in each emulator? Is it easier running the emulator as root, accessing the settings menu to scale them accordingly, or is it something easier done by editing a config file somewhere?

One other question. If I wanted to access the emulator menu using a control pad (Xbox 360 wireless through the USB wireless receiver), do I need to press the hotkey then press the button assigned to the menu command?

[zSprawl]

Once you configure RetroArch.cfg itself, all the emulators share the same settings (unless you use pisnes, which my writeup also walks through).

The writeup is for pre-2.0, so it does have a few paths that need changing. You may need to use a root account to configure the files in /opt, but you should not need to use root to run the emulators.

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