Resolving second controller issues

[submarinoff]

Hi, all.

I was having a problem with my player 2 controller on the retropie. I’m running RetroPie 2.3 and using two Acme usb controllers (pretty generic), which are kinda different (i.e. one has the analog inputs, the other doesn’t, etc., basically not the same at all). When I configured my player 2 controller, it didn’t show up in 2-player games, or as in the case of Mario 3, when I entered 2-player mod, both players moved when I used the player 1 controller. However, the player 2 controller was still unresponsive.

What I did was this:

I configured my controllers in the following way:

sudo chown pi /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg
cd /opt/retropie/emulators/RetroArch/installdir/bin
sudo ./retroarch-joyconfig -j 0 >> /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg
sudo ./retroarch-joyconfig -j 1 >> /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

Then I used nano text editor to change the definitions to match for player 2

sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

At the end of the file you will see the configuration for both controllers. You will see two different configurations. You have to change the definitions for one of them (doesn’t matter which one). So, wherever you have stuff like input_player1, etc., you’ll have to change it to input_player2.

From here, you’ll have to copy all the definitions and put them into the corresponding console’s retroarch.cfg file. For example, for the NES, you have to dump the configuration options into /opt/retropie/configs/nes/retroarch.cfg, so you run

sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/nes/retroarch.cfg

I’m still a linux noob, so I’m not very sure if this will work, but alternatively, you can try

sudo chown pi /opt/retropie/configs/nes/retroarch.cfg
cd /opt/retropie/emulators/RetroArch/installdir/bin
sudo ./retroarch-joyconfig -j 0 >> /opt/retropie/configs/nes/retroarch.cfg
sudo ./retroarch-joyconfig -j 1 >> /opt/retropie/configs/nes/retroarch.cfg

and then

sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/nes/retroarch.cfg

in order to edit the configurations for player 2. If you want to see the directories for all supported systems, run

cd /opt/retropie/configs
ls

As far as I understand, every system has its own retroarch.cfg file that overrides the global settings, so you can edit them with the abovementioned commands… I think. I tried it and it worked for the NES, haven’t tested it with anything else. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to delete all the configuration options from /all/retroarch.cfg (don’t delete the comments, they’re kinda useful :D)

I hope I’ve managed to help someone, if not, eh, well… Let me know if it works for someone else. These boards have been very useful and I hope I’ve managed to give back a little.

[Author]

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