MAME not saving input configuration in newer builds

RetroArch General
#1

Using the Windows x64 builds, for future reference.

I quite enjoy the additional features and cores present in the nightly/beta builds of Retroarch minus one annoyance:

For the longest time I’ve been unable to save general or individual game input settings. They will be reset to default every time I exit the game and come back or launch another game in the same core.

For example, I’ll be unable to change the ‘menu’ or ‘coin’ inputs for all games, nor can I save a specific controller setting for any individual game. It’ll always look the same when I come back.

The “read configuration” setting in the core makes no difference.

This wouldn’t be half as bad, except for the fact that the default 360 controller inputs are VERY accidental menu and reset prone and multiplayer increases the chance of this happening.

As far as I can tell no mame.ini or folders are being populated anywhere like in previous versions.

I have a very specific build I use to work around this (2014-08-27) but I figured this information may be of some interest to the dev team since the way the MAME core is working now isn’t really fit for an official public release.

Apologies in advance if this should be in a specific and separate thread or section. I will post it there if someone will direct me.

If I’m merely missing something advice would be helpful as well.

#2

I’m using the 1.0.0.3 beta 64bit build and don’t have any problems with it saving/loading cfg files or nvram. I have read configuration disabled in my core options. I think that just disables reading options from mame.ini; I don’t really need that anymore since all the options I used to use that for are now available as core options. The MAME core was changed at some point to use retroarchsavedirectory/MAME/cfg for the default and per game config files and retroarchsavedirectory/MAME/nvram for nvram (used for saving things like turning on red blood in Metal Slug through the NeoGeo BIOS).

I’ve heard there’s a bug in some builds of the core that make it so it can’t create those folders itself. So you might be able to fix your problem with newer builds by creating a MAME folder in your RetroArch save folder and cfg and nvram folders inside that.

#3

Thanks a lot.

Designating a folder for Content, Savefile, and Savestate, which are blank, [content folder], [content folder] and then placing a ‘mame’ folder inside of that designated folder with the cfg/nvram/etc folders inside of it solved the issue.

Hopefully this will help those who are having similar issues, or this will be handled transparently/automatically before 1.0.0.3 becomes public.

#4

on the nightlies I shipped a default config that does the trick. Also, all the folders are created automatically if the folder has a trailing slash (or the other way around… I forget)