I got a couple of USB NES controllers, but only left, right, up, and down register in Retroarch. Tested it on SMB3 and it makes it hard to slide and I know other games will have even greater difficulties. Is there a way to fix it?
I went to the control panel and tested the controller itself, and it’s definitely the 8 axis or whatever, so it’s just the emulator that doesn’t pick that up. Tested other standalone emulators as well with the same issue.
so in the control panel, it says you have 8 directional button? If so, that’s very unusual. Diagonals are usually formed by pressing two cardinal directions at once rather than a distinct, individual button for the diagonals.
If you want your diagonal input buttons to be used for the combinations, you can bind them to both the corresponding RetroPad virtual inputs alongside the cardinal directions already binded. RetroArch does allow binding 1 physical button to an arbitrary number of RetroPad virtual inputs without replacing the other physical inputs binded to the same virtual input, but you have to manually edit the config file with a text editor to do it, as an intuitive binding interface for this sort of thing is kind of tricky to make and hasn’t been made.
We’ll, that may be the case, it’s just the dot inside that box like you test joysticks with.
What commands do I use and where do I put them? I looked in the cfg file, but didn’t see any for diagonal. I’m not 100% sure if it’s 8 separate ones or if it’s the combinations of up+right and what not.
You’ll have to figure out what inputs your controller has first.
Do I just test it by assigning the diagonal to a or something? It may be the combo of buttons that does it. Once I find out, what do I do?
Test it out however you like. Your example would work. Once you find out, bind the physical buttons to the appropriate RetroPad virtual buttons. If you have explicit diagonals, bind each to both of the corresponding cardinal directions (up-left to up and left, up-right to up and right, down-left to down and left, down-right to down and right) in the config file, which may require some research. If not (which is much more likely), bind each cardinal direction to the corresponding RetroPad virtual cardinal directions (up to up, down to down, left to left, right to right). In that case, if you find it difficult to use the diagonals, it’s the fault of either the controller’s construction/attrition/design or the way you’re holding the directions.
I used to have a Logitech controller which had explicit diagonals, by the way, so I know your struggle.
Edit: Tip for testing: I discovered that mine had explicit diagonals in standalone Nestopia, so that might be worth trying.