Disable specific joypad(s)

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

Hello,

First off, thank you for creating and maintaining RetroArch. It is awesome and I have really enjoyed using it so far.

Now my issue. I have Retroarch (1.4.0) running on a Windows 10 PC which I use exclusively for retro games (NES, SNES, etc…). I have two 8bitdo snes30 controllers that I would like to use with RA, however I have other joypads that are interfering. These other joypads are USB adapters for Gamecube controllers (used for emulators other than RA) that are always detected by Windows even if the controller is disconnected from the adapter since the USB connection is still there.

I would like RA to effectively ignore these USB joypads since they aren’t used for any RA cores and they are creating a few issues:

  1. Unluckily for me, Windows assigned the lowest joy ids to the USB controllers, which I have been unable to change. So in order to configure my 8bitdo controllers in RA, I had to expand the max number of joypads to 6 since RA will only allow you to select from the first 2 joy ids if you have your max set to 2. A minor nuisance at first glance, however:
  2. With the setting as described above and with both 8bitdo controllers connected (i.e. playing two player), everything works great. However, the problem occurs when playing single player, and one 8bitdo controller is being used. If I do not use the controller I have configured as player 1 (and its hard to tell since they look the same), then RA detects the typical player 1 joypad is missing and assigns one of the USB controllers. Damn :frowning:

What I’ve tried so far to resolve this issue:

  • updated to RA 1.5.0. Issue still persists.
  • I’ve deleted the autoconfig files related to the USB controllers. This only gives me a message when RA starts telling me these joypads could not be configured, however they are still present.
  • I’ve set the max number of controllers to 2 and then hardcoded player 2 to the joyid of the second 8bitdo controller in the the retroarch.cfg file. This results in player 2’s input being disabled.

Any and all help is very much appreciated.

#2

If you’re not adding/removing controllers such that you need autoconfiguration, you can disable it and then use ‘bind all’ to hard-map the the 8bitdo pads to p1 and p2. With it disabled, it should stop trying to do anything with the gamecube adapters.

#3

Thanks @hunterk, doing this does stops the Gamecube adaptors from interfering, however now since autoconfiguration is disable I do need to know which controller is P1 since RA won’t automatically juggle them for me. This is solved with a few pieces of tape and a sharpie though. Cheers

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