XArcade Tank Stick

[mavic19]

I’m going to be setting up a Retropie gaming system for a friend and he has an XArcade Tank Stick. I did some Googlin’ and poking around the forum here and a lot of what I’m finding is old, out-of-date setup tutorials and a general mixed bag of information.

One post states that the XArcade option in the setup menu wasn’t working well (trackball didn’t work and some button issues). Another post listed a general setup for Retroarch inputs, but it was for an older version of Retropie.

My question is, for anyone currently using a Tank Stick and Retropie 3.0, what is your config setup and any other tips for a smooth and successful implementation of this two player joystick? Thanks in advance!

[jihalizad]

Hey Mavic, I’m having the same issue. I’ve done both setups (manually and setup script) and I get nothing in the way of controls/ability to setup using the standard controller setup that starts up. I’m replying to this topic so that hopefully someone will look at it and post back for us.

If anyone happens to know if the instructions are missing steps or possibly just happen to not work in 3.0 then please just let us know.

[drvenkman]

Until the other night, things were working fine with my Tankstick. I started off with 3.0 Beta 1 and periodically did binary updates to keep things current. After the last update I did a couple nights ago, my Tankstick is basically useless for most things. It’s working okay in AdvMAME and MAME4ALL, but all the Retroarch emulators don’t work at all – they all default to keyboard inputs and I can’t get settings to “stick” when I reconfigure them from inside each emulator. Something is borked.

[drvenkman]

Okay, I solved my Tankstick issues, mostly, in case anyone else is having difficulty.

First thing, however – the trackball does NOT work in MAME4ALL, period. I understand some folks have gotten it to work by unplugging the other USB connector first, and then starting MAME4ALL. Remember, the Tankstick uses two USB ports – one for the joysticks, one for the trackball. I haven’t tried this as it’s too much of a pain in my rear and is a work-around at best. Now having said that, the trackball works fine in AdvMAME, so I play all my trackball games using that emulator instead.

How I got the joysticks working properly was to go into the Retropie Setup menu and DISABLE the Xarcade2jstick service. This is weird because I’ve been using that option ENABLED since 3.0 Beta 1 without problems. However, with it enabled, I cannot get any Retroarch emulators to recognize the Tankstick buttons or joystick. Again, this was NOT a problem until I updated to the latest binaries a few days ago.

Anyway, with the Xarcade2jstick service disabled, I then used the Retropie Setup menu to install the joypad configurations (not sure if this is actually needed or not) and then everything works okay. In MAME4ALL and AdvMAME I had to reconfigure the inputs the first time I launched them, and then customize anything per game the first time I played them, but at least it all works again.

Again, it’s kind of a pain and I did not have to do this with prior versions of the 3.0 beta – the Xarcade2jstick service basically took care of it all. But it’s all working now after going through the motions to configure things manually.

[jihalizad]

So with 3.0 finally released instead of just Beta, I wonder if I can fix the problem I was having trying to get it working for 2 players with the base load…I think I’ll try that this weekend and see how things go, if not then I’ll have to come back and try what you’ve wrote by DrVenkman, that Ghostbuster in the previous post!

At the moment I’m on the beta still and:
Player 1 is fine (xarcade tankstick showing up as Keyboard input)
No Player 2

[petrockblog]

player 2 will need to be configured manually in retroarch.cfg (if using it as a keyboard device).

[travis226]

I am still on 3.0 beta, I will try upgrade tonight. But I am having the same issue
player 1 input works flawless in all emulators
player 2 input – nothing, doesn’t even give me the option to input it.

Spent 2 hours a few weeks ago with another forum member manually going through full set up and going into the config. and in the actually editable config there was no option for input_2.

[jihalizad]

Yeah I’ve still got the player 1 and only player 1 issue as well, if anyone has any updates, just reply back to this topic, I’m sure I’m not the only one watching it.

[petrockblog]

player 2 for keyboard based controllers has to be done manually – I have already explained this earlier – is anyone listening? :) [edit] actually I explained it on another thread – but just yesterday.

manually edit configs/all/retroarch.cfg and duplicate the config entries for player 2 but using “player_2” instead.

This has also been brought up multiple times – Here’s one solution https://github.com/scottnath/retropie-with-dual-x-arcades

Even if not using the solution above, you can see from it the config lines for the controllers – adjust as needed.

[petrockblog]

Configure Player 2 with xarcade setup?

[Author]

Posts