Retroarch.cfg Fast Forward Help

[Steve]

Hey can someone help me with this?

I can’t seem to get input_toggle_fast_forward_btn to work here’s what I got in my .cfg

input_player1_joypad_index = 0
input_player1_b_btn = 5
input_player1_a_btn = 4
input_player1_y_btn = 7
input_player1_x_btn = 6
input_player1_l_btn = 8
input_player1_r_btn = 9
input_player1_start_btn = 13
input_player1_select_btn = 12
input_player1_l_y_plus = -1
input_player1_up_axis = -1
input_player1_l_y_minus = +1
input_player1_down_axis = +1
input_player1_l_x_minus = -0
input_player1_left_axis = -0
input_player1_l_x_plus = +0
input_player1_right_axis = +0

input_player1_left_btn = 2
input_player1_right_btn = 3
input_player1_up_btn = 0
input_player1_down_btn = 1

input_toggle_fast_forward_btn = 10

input_enable_hotkey_btn = 12
input_exit_emulator_btn = 13
input_save_state_btn = 8
input_load_state_btn = 9

where 10 is my Right trigger on my xbox controller

I’m thinking maybe the RPi is not powerfull enough to fast forward emulators. tried it for NES SNES but nothing. any help would be great.

[Steve]

Tried with
fastforward_ratio = -1.0
and
fastforward_ratio = 2

still nothing

[deaftolight]

Has anyone else figured how to get hold fast forward working? I’m trying to set it up with the hotkey, so I can hold select and R2 to fast forward, i.e.:

input_enable_hotkey_btn = "0"
input_exit_emulator_btn = "15"
input_save_state_btn = "4"
input_load_state_btn = "5"
input_hold_fast_forward = "9"

I can’t seem to get it to work.

Also wondering if you can have different hotkeys for different controllers. I have a SNES controller as player 2, and would like to enable “8” as it’s hotkey.

[deaftolight]

Is this feature called fast forward, or is it called frame skip?

I can’t find a frameskip feature, so I assumed that fast forward was the feature we were looking for (the one that speeds up the emulator so you can skip through stuff).

Am I thinking of something different? I’m wondering if the fast forward feature is related to the rewind feature, and only works with rewind? I can’t seem to find a way to hold a button and speed up the emulator. I’ve spent the last 2 hours on google and this forum, and surprisingly can’t seem to find an answer. This is a common emulator feature, surely people have gotten it to work?

[deaftolight]

Bumping this in the hopes that someone has figured this out.

[deaftolight]

I found something, but unfortunately it doesn’t solve the problem.

changing
input_hold_fast_forward = "9" to
input_hold_fast_forward_btn = "9"
got rid of an error message that would come up before the ROM would load that said the 9 key couldn’t be found. So even though input_hold_fast_forward is what is in the retroarch.cfg skeleton file, input_hold_fast_forward_btn seems to be the correct one… it still doesn’t work though.

[RetroMarine]

Take the quotation marks out of your command.

[mysticdirk]

I actually just set this up last night. These are the steps I took:

1) in /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg – edit the file and add this piece of code:

input_menu_toggle_btn = “<your button choice>”

This will allow you to directly enter the menu while playing a rom.

2) When in an emulator open up the menu by pushing the button you assigned above (you will need to hold in the enable hotkey button as well)

*please note, if you do not have the left analog enabled you will need to use a keyboard for this part. when I did this I had to use both the controller and the keyboard to navigate through the menu*

3) when in the menu go to Settings >> Input Options. Scroll down and program the following buttons:

Left analog X+ (right)
Left analog X- (left)
Left analog Y+ (down)
Left analog Y- (up)

Fast Forward toggle

If you click the A button you will be able to input these controls by pressing the corresponding button on your controller. (ie press A, then when prompted press right on the d-pad to enable Left analog X+).

The analog buttons are crucial so you can navigate through the menu without having to use the keyboard. The Fast Forward Toggle will do what you are looking for.

THIS IS IMPORTANT –> press back to get to the first menu and SAVE the configs (there is an option to do so on the bottom of the first menu screen).

WHAT THIS DOES: Saves a new configuration to the /opt/retropie/configs/all/ file path.

4) Exit Emulation Station and go back to the command line. From here, go to the file path where the retroarch.cfg is saved. At this point I recommend making a copy of that file and naming it something different (retroarchBACKUP.cfg or something).

5) the file that you made in the emulationstation menu should be called libretro.cfg or something, RENAME this file to be retroarch.cfg. This will ensure that every time you boot up the emulationstation, the changes you made are the default controller (ie you can navigate through the menu and you can enable fast forward).

save and exit. Next time you enter emulation station this should work.

ALTERNATIVELY:

You can just do this all manually in the retroarch.cfg (adding in all the proper button toggles and such). If you would like I can share some code with you but I will need to boot up my pie, currently I’m just typing this from memory.

[laoracc]

Looking through this thread – are we sure that the hold and toggle buttons don’t work? I tried using input_toggle_fast_forward_btn , and I’m fairly positive it was successful, however the speed increase was so low it’s hard to tell that it did much of anything. That said, I didn’t see any increase when messing with the fastforward_ratio property. This makes sense, I think, as it is set to “-1” which indicates it will attempt to run at the max FPS allowed.

My question is this: Is the Pi not capable of increasing the frame-rate high enough to see a noticeable effect when using fast forward? Would overclocking the CPU/GPU help (I expect it would, but would we really be able to pull 2x/3x on FF)?

[mysticdirk]

I know that the toggle button works on my end. While playing through older games I can definitely see noticeable differences.

However, I have not experimented with increasing the toggles at all. I will take a look at this the next time I am making updates and report back if I find anything.

[laoracc]

What console/game were you using to test, mystic?

I tried both the SNES and Genesis, and realized there was barely any change – but when I went to try an atari game, there was a clear difference. This would indicate to me that it’s a hardware constraint (since it’s easier to emulate and then increase the frame rate on Atari than SNES/Genesis). Did you notice anything different?

[mysticdirk]

I tried this out on NES/SNES, and had success on Burgertime/Super Mario World.

It would make sense that it would be a hardware constraint though. I am using the following:
Mystic’s Model

Are you using a different model of Pi?

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