Remapping a game or core

First of all, I don’t speak english so, excuse any mistake.

I’m really struggling with remapping controllers for a specific games. I have a home made controller, wich was made using a ps3. It is, now, a controller that have something like madcatz configuration, with 8 buttons, 4 up 4 down and 2 for start-select.

So, I wanna play Neo Geo games like in arcade, using 4 buttons in a row, but if I press F1 being on a game, then going to controller and hitting the buttons for making a specific mapping for that game nothing happens. I can not remmaping for any particular game. I know that in my case the autoconfig archive is PC_PS3_Android on RetroArch\autoconfig\xinput but ¿where should be and be named any particular game and/or core remapping? And more important, how can I unlock that remapping issue on retroarch, so I can make especifics mapping for games/cores?

Thanks for any help.

In the remapping, you don’t hit buttons to remap them, you have to cycle through the available buttons. Sucks, but that’s just how it goes.

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You dont even know how much this made me laugh bout myself.

Thanks a lot hahahahah

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lol no worries. It’s an easy mistake :smiley:

I’m a noob, and also very sleep-deprived right now, but I got hung up trying to figure out how everything works in regards to remapping gamepad buttons. I am writing up directions for myself and a friend. I would have posted a new topic for these questions, but since I am brand new to the forum I don’t seem to have permission yet.

I found this document: https://docs.libretro.com/guides/input-and-controls/

I am able to go to Settings > Input > User 1 Binds and successfully change the functions of buttons.

My first question is, what does “Save Autoconfig” do (e.g. “User 1 Save Autoconfig”)? The document says “If you have several different controller types you may want to use the User 1 Save Autoconfig followed by User 1 Bind Default All options after binding in order to achieve hotplug functionality”. …But I am such a noob that I don’t know what this means. What is hotplug functionality? And what exactly is saved, what happens if you don’t save it, and how do you restore the saved configuration?

As far as I can tell, after selecting “User 1 Save Autoconfig”, if I then select “User 1 Bind Default All”, it will reload the configuration I just saved instead of the original default configuration that existed before I messed with it. Is my interpretation correct?

If so, it would be easier to understand if it just said “Save Configuration” and “Load Saved Configuration” instead of “Save Autoconfig” and “Bind Default All”… unless there is something else I am not understanding, which there probably is, because I am a noob.

I also went over to Main Menu > Quick Menu > Controls (after loading a core). I can see the key bindings listed here which I had applied on the Input page. But I cannot change them here – pressing Enter on an item doesn’t do anything, and I cannot remap buttons here. So my second question is, what is the purpose of this page?

In trying to figure out how to use the Controls page, I selected “Save Core Remap File”. Then I went back to Settings > Input > User 1 Binds , changed the button assignments, went back to Main Menu > Quick Menu > Controls again and selected “Load Remap File”, expecting it to reload the configuration I had saved right before changing the button assignments just now. But it does NOT revert the assignments to what they were when I had selected “Save Core Remap File” – they just stay as they are. So I’m not sure what exactly was saved and what was loaded, since loading it didn’t change the assignments.

It seems I do not understand what exactly a remap file is, why the button configuration doesn’t change when I load it, and how it is different from “Save Autoconfig”. Or maybe something is not working right on my Controls page. Or maybe something is not working right in my brain.

In summary, I am basically trying to figure out what exactly each of these things are and how they differ from each other, and under what circumstances you would do things one way vs. another, and why they don’t function as I expected them to:

  • Save Autoconfig
  • Bind Default All
  • Save Remap File
  • Load Remap File

I also am wondering if I am supposed to actually be able to assign functions to buttons on the “Controls” screen, because if so, I can’t figure out how. I can only do it on the “Input” screen at the moment.

Notes: I am running Windows 10, and I have not yet played any games in RetroArch.

I appreciate any help / pity. Thank you!

The settings > input and quick menu > controls menus have different purposes.

The input menu is for mapping the retropad abstraction to your physical gamepad or keyboard. The autoconfig profiles are just records of those mappings paired with identifying information for the gamepad (that is, the vendor ID and product ID pair, known as the device’s “vid/pid”). Whenever you connect a gamepad, RetroArch will search through all of its autoconfig profiles looking for a vid/pid and/or device name match to automatically map it.

If you see yellow text come up that says “such and such gamepad configured” when you plug in your pad, you probably don’t need to (and indeed probably should not) touch the input menu at all.

So, once you have the retropad abstraction mapped to your physical pad, you can use the controls menu to move the core’s functions around on the retropad. When someone makes a core, they provide a default core-to-retropad map, but if you don’t like that layout for whatever reason, the controls menu will let you move things around.

Due to technical reasons, this menu can’t listen for input, which is why pressing ‘enter’ on an entry doesn’t do anything. Instead, you have to press left/right to cycle through the functions in the right-hand column. The gamepad buttons will appear in the left-hand column. Note: if your gamepad is autoconfigured, this menu will usually show your actual gamepad’s button labels; if not, you will see the retropad’s labels (that is, with the SNES-stye face-button names as opposed to Xbox-style).

When you save a core or game remap file, it will apply your custom reassignment of the core’s functions whenever that core or game is loaded.

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How do I map a specific game?

Controls (change the controls for the currently running content) ->Port 1 Controls

Now what?

There 3 dashes and i can’t change by pressing or cycling through.

If that’s duckstation, it doesn’t support input remapping yet.