Speed-link Competition Pro USB joystick HELP

[dube68]

Hi,
firstly let me apologise if I’m running over old ground, but after a week of trying everything even remotely related here on these forums, we’re still no closer to getting this sorted.

Ok,
so I’ve been helping my 12y/o son try to build a standalone arcade gaming machine. We’ve got a Raspberry Pi B+ 512MB, running RetroPie v2.3.

We’ve purchased 2 x Speed-Link Competition Pro USB joysticks that he wants to use as Player 1 & Player 2 without having to use a keyboard.

Problem is, we can’t find a way that actually works the joysticks satisfactorily.

a. Can get the keyboard to work everything but he doesn’t want a keyboard hanging out of his gaming machine (not cool dad, real game machines don’t have keyboards hanging out of them).

b. Can get the joystick to merely navigate the EmulationStation & select a game but not start the game or anything else.

c. Can get one joystick to navigate EmulationStation, select a game & sometimes play the game, but cannot exit the game or the emulator back to EmulationStation.

We’ve seriously tried that many suggestions throughout this Forum that we’ve got ourselves 120% confused & just now need to ask for your help.

I think we need to delete all joystick configs & start again, but we’re both so confused now, we don’t know where to begin.

We’d be so very appreciative if someone could help us out with some DUMMIES STEP BY STEP GUIDE to achieving the outcome my young-bloke’s looking for.

I’ve included a picture of the joysticks for info.

Many thanks in advance,
duBe & Dogga

[trimmtrabb]

There is a good step by step guide here: https://www.petrockblock.com/forums/topic/updated-for-2-3-step-by-step-guide/

[dube68]

Wow,
thanks for the SUPER-QUICK reply.

We’ve typed in the following code from the tutorial you mention above:

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

But we get the following error:

Couldn’t open joystick #1.

Just so you know, I’m a very old motor mechanic, so my understanding of computers is very limited & my son is just starting out on his journey. So we are very appreciative of any help.

[peter]

dube68, how many buttons do those joysticks have? Two? if this is the case there is probably no workaround to exit the emulator with the joystick. quitting with the keyboard goes by pressing ESC. quitting emulation with a joypad works like this: you press a defined button (usually one you normally dont use when you play or seldomly use, e.g. the “select” button) then press another button (another one you normally dont use when you you play, e.g. the “start” button) while the other one is still being pressed.

I’d suggest to buy a pair of decent joypads instead of those joysticks.
it should be okay if you configure only one of them if they’re both identiacl models, then configure one
console:
cd home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/
./retropie_setup.sh
-> select 3. then chose “set up controller” or something (dont know the exact line out of my memory) and configure it. try to remember the numbers it shows for your start and select buttons during the configuration. you can repeat the configuration anytime if you fucked up.

open the file
/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

add the these lines on the very bottom
# Quit Game: Select + Start
input_enable_hotkey_btn = “enter_number_of_your_select_button_here”
input_exit_emulator_btn = “enter_number_of_your_start_button_here”

that should be it. I use joypads that look like these http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-10-KEYS-SHOCK2-CONTROLLER-PC-GAME-PAD-New-/300569127352?pt=US_Video_Game_Controllers&hash=item45fb50e9b8
and they have 12 buttons, so I decided to exit emulation by pressing L2 and R2 because none of those old consoles ever use such buttons

[dube68]

Oh sorry, my bad, I didn’t have both joysticks plugged in.

I ran that command & it took me through a setup procedure that has the following buttons / movements to map:

B button (down)
Y button (left)
Select button
Start button
Up D-pad
Down D-pad
Left D-pad
Right D-pad
A button (right)
X button (top)
L button (shoulder)
R button (shoulder)
L2 button (trigger)
R2 button (trigger)
L3 button (thumb)
R3 button (thumb)
Left analog X+ (right)
Left analog X- (left)
Left analog Y+ (down)
Left analog Y- (up)
Right analog X+ (right)
Right analog X- (left)
Right analog Y+ (down)
Right analog Y- (up)

So, we know this is “mapping” button presses & stick movements to the config file:
/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg

But so we’re clear, our Speed-link Competition Pro USB joystick controllers have only 4 buttons & 1 joystick which (when pressed) return the following values:

Bottom Right Round Button = “0”
Bottom Left Round Button = “1”
Middle Right Triangle Button = “2”
Middle Left Triangle Button = “3”
Joystick Left Move = “Axis 0, Value 32767”
Joystick Right Move = “Axis 0, Value -32767”
Joystick Up Move = “Axis 1, Value 32767”
Joystick Down Move = “Axis 1, Value -32767”

So can we go in to the config file & manually type these in & also delete any unnecessary ones? As the above procedure has was too many things for these joysticks.

[peter]

oh yeah, if you run the retropie_setup.sh script, make sure to enter 3. and select “configure controller” or something. do not select anything else or muck around with the other stuff in the setup.

[dube68]

Hey Peter,
you are my son’s newest HERO!

That works a treat!
Thank you so much for making it simple to understand.
We would never have gotten this far without straight-forward instructions.

We’ll take your advice about the joypads you suggest, as he really does want to make it a 2 player machine.

One other thing if you don’t mind.
Is it possible to have the screen ROTATE 180deg to face PLAYER 2 just like the old “cocktail” gaming tables?

Thanks again,
greatly appreciated

[peter]

great I was of help to you guys. I’m a noob myself, just got my pi 4 days ago and been mucking around with it since then, every spare minute I have. I wrote my instruction out of my memory with a bit of googling for the commands/paths.

as for your other questions, sorry but that’s something I don’t know about, but I think it is highly unlikely.

one more thing you guys should know as well. you are able to save during the game and load if needed. all you need to do is add some more lines to retroarch.cfg, here is the exceprt from my file

savefile_directory = /home/pi/RetroPie/
savestate_directory = /home/pi/RetroPie/
#Save State: L2 + L1
input_save_state_btn = “4”
#Load State: L2 + R1
input_load_state_btn = “5”

whenever your button defined in input_enable_hotkey_btn is being pressed followed by input_save_state_btn you make a save state, whenever your button defined in input_enable_hotkey_btn is being pressed followed by input_load_state_btn you load the last save state

[dube68]

Hey, that is AWESOME!
Dogga (my son) LOVES that idea of being able to save his game.

4 days eh!
You’re obviously quite a bit more intelligent than an old-fart mechanic & a 12 year old boy. Funny, I thought 12 year old boys knew EVERYTHING! lol.

We’ve had ours a week now & all we managed to get sorted was grafting an old car DVD monitor to the composite out & getting most (SUPER NINTENDO doesn’t play nice) emulators to display the games nicely on that particular screen.

To be honest, grafting the screen to the Raspberry Pi was a tad more involved than we gave it credit for. The pin-outs on the jacks were completely different so we had to decipher those, then jury-rig them together, then work out how to get it to display nicely. (again, we haven’t quite worked out how to get SUPER NINTENDO to display nicely yet but others are nice).

But now it’s done, we’re gonna try & get the raspberry pi moulded inside the rear casing of the screen & just hang a couple of USB ports out the side of it as well.

That way, he’ll have a portable RetroPie that he can play in the car & caravan.
AWESOME!

Thanks again Peter,
we REALLY appreciate your help mate.

[Author]

Posts