Getting RA to play nice with AutoHotKey? (Or: Button combinations?)

Libretro Cores
#1

I find I need to use AHK in order to set up joypad-based hotkeys (equivalent of “escape” and “f1” specifically) because RA does not appear to offer the option of button combos to achieve this. You can set up a single button for exiting RA, for example, but not a combination of two or more buttons, which would be more sensible in order to avoid accidentally exiting and avoid using up a whole button on the pad. (I have read that RA is supposed to let “start + select” open the menu at least, but this doesn’t work on the PC version.)

AHK simulates the pressing of keys. Unfortunately, there are some games/apps that don’t accept whatever AHK provides as input. It seems that RetroArch is one of those. I’ve already run the troubleshooting gamut, ensuring everything is ran in Administrator mode and even seeing if windowed mode would help. I feel like I’ve run out of options and will have to grab the keyboard and hit “escape” whenever it’s time to exit a game. I certainly hope not.

#2

I don’t know anything about using AutoHotKey, though I seem to recall people using it for things in the past… You might try searching on the forum.

In settings > input > menu toggle gamepad combo, you can cycle through our hardcoded combinations, which include start+select and a handful of others.

Another option is to use the “enable hotkeys” in settings > input > input hotkey binds. Once it is bound, RetroArch will not listen for hotkey inputs anymore unless that button is held. So, if you bind it to ‘select’, you can bind the menu hotkey to ‘start’ and the menu will come up if you hold select and press start but not if you press start on its own.

#3

In settings > input > menu toggle gamepad combo, you can cycle through our hardcoded combinations, which include start+select and a handful of others.

That did it. I might humbly recommend another combo be added for exiting outright. Yes one could argue that exiting is a short step from entering the menu in the first place, but I’d say the real point is convenience and options. You don’t hit three or four things to get a game started, so there’s no need for doing the same to exit.

Off topic, I’ve discovered that xaudio can have inconsistencies in its output in some instances. Both of my old laptops exhibit this. It manifests as occasional (once per second on average, but highly variable) pops in the audio. Doesn’t seem to matter if the CPU is being taxed or not. Dsound does not share this issue, so that’s what I’ve elected to use. Might be useful info if other people mention audio corruption.