Up-Down not working in the lr-mame2016 menu (tab)

[1500points]

Help please, I'm a couple hours into this and can't figure it out.

Background:
Have rpi3 setup with retropie using lr-mame2016 and mame4all
Using J-pac I had the Up and down controls mapped to the letter C and P on the j-pac.
Mame4all and mame2016 were working fine and I was able to map controls with the tab button to get to the menu.

Change:
I moved the up and down controls to the Up and Down arrow keys on the j-pac.
Remapping keys in retropie worked fine.
I manually checked /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg  using putty
I even added the settings to /opt/retropie/configs/mame-libretro/retroarch.cfg
I was able to map the UI controls for MAME4ALL from the tab button.

Problem:
I am unable to map the controls for lr-mame2016.
When I get into the game and hit tab, nothing I try on keyboard or j-pac triggers the menu to scroll up or down.
Therefore I can't map the new controls.
I do see in the UI controls that up, down, and C and P are mapped.
But nothing works.

How can I get the mame key mapping stuff to work again in lr-mame2016.
Is there a file I can delete somewhere to get it to start over?

Thanks in advance.

[mahuti]

I had some similar issues, and what happened with me was:

1. one time the permissions on my preferences file got corrupted, so I set them to 777
2. one time the preferences file itself somehow got deleted (this is why you try not to hard reset a pi during operation)
3. one time I had ultrastik 360 configured to only use 2-way, so couldn't do any scrolling.
4. I added a joystick and mame saw it as something other than joystick0, so I had to map it again even though it seemed to be the same thing I already had

Sounds like maybe you have issue 4.

To fix issue 1.

Code: [Select]

cd /opt/retropie/configs/YOURMAMEVS
sudo chmod 777 YOURFILE.CFG

To fix issue 2.
If the CFG file is missing, generally just reopen the emulator and it'll create the file for you. If it doesn't, then you might have to get the file from somewhere else and copy it in, or reinstall the emu. Once when a CFG file wouldn't recreate itself, I opened a backup image and got it off of that.

To fix issue 3.
Attach a keyboard, and use it until you've remapped your stuff... or go into a terminal and edit the CFG file itself... manually add your configurations. This isn't necessarily simple to do unless you understand the cfg file, and the mapping values of your buttons (they might be something like joystick0_btn1... or other things.   )

To fix issue 4... same as above. Try remapping using a donor keyboard. If you don't have a donor keyboard, map ANYTHING if possible in the interface. Then you can access the cfg file via SSH and edit it. Once in the CFG file, you can look for the recently mapped key to get an idea for how MAME is seeing your joystick mapping. If you know that it thinks it's joystick0 or joystick1 or whatever, it makes it a lot easier to manually add configurations.

I didn't detail everything possible. So let me know if I can be of further assistance.

[1500points]

I've been all over the retroarch.cfg for mame-libretro.
I even copied in the button mapping from the all/retroarch.cfg.
In mame2016, tab and esc work but the up/down navigation won't.
In game, the game doesn't respond with the button mappings either.
I've been in the files with both keyboard plugged into pi and from putty on pc via wifi.

I uninstalled and reinstalled mame2016 from the experimental packages.
Same behavior as above.
Emulation station and other mame versions navigate just fine.

I even removed the j-pac and installed a cheap NES style controller.
Emulationstation navigates fine, mame2016 won't. but tab and esc work from the keyboard. that's it.

Very frustrating,  what could be controlling mame2016 which is outside the bounds of uninstalling/reinstalling the emulator?
is there a core libretro file somewhere?

mame4all works fine.
Emulation station works fine

UPDATE- uninstalled mame2016 again then kept rebooting using putty until I could confirm the opt/retropie/configs/mame-libretro folder was completely empty.  reinstalling mame2016 again now.....

[mahuti]

Have you checked permissions on the cfg file itself?

Does a keyboard navigate the tab menu?

[1500points]

it is still reinstalling.
what is the command to check the permission?

the keyboard will not navigate the menu. tried every key. tab and esc work on keyboard and some random things like enter to get further into the menu layers.
eventually it blows out to a mame style UI kind of like old wolfmame had. but can't do anything on it beyond tab, esc, enter.

Worst case, I guess I'll just wipe the sd card and start over. uggggh. 
raspberry pi is a black hole of time spent tinkering! 

[1500points]

Whatever the problem is, it isn't the mame-libretro/retroarch.cfg.
There must be some other file which controls the mame menu for libretro, that I can't find in google searching.

I reinstalled mame2016, rebooted pi.  the tab menu will pull up using the keyboard, but can't scroll down the list.  Either j-pac interface or usb keyboard will scroll down.

Dump it and create a new retropie image?

[1500points]

welllll.....this problem is so quirky and obscure that I'm waxing the sd card and doing a new retropie install.
thanks for the ideas! 

[SuperGojira2001]

The newer versions of MAME tend to not work as well as the older MAME 2000 and 2003.

[mahuti]

what is the command to check the permission?

For future reference:

login via terminal, or on the pi, open a console

go to directory:
 

Code: [Select]

cd /opt/retropie/configs/mame-libretro/
 
view permissions:
 

Code: [Select]

sudo ls -l
it will show the user and user group & permissions.

[1500points]

thank you.
I reinstalled the whole enchilada, now mame2016 works properly with being able to scroll down the menu.
time consuming since it involved turning ssh back on in raspi-config, reinstalling the python button script, and setting up single rom load.

I had to use newer mame since it was the only way some of my roms would load.
And with space invaders (invaders.zip) there was no sound with mame4all, but sound was fine in 2016.

last problem-
To get galaga to load, I'm having to use final burn alpha.
I added the key mapping entries to its retroarch.cfg but I can't get fire to work.  left/right/coin/start work.
tab on the keyboard doesn't go into a mame menu so i guess it is back to google! 

update-
even after updating retroarch.cfg and fba2x.cfg, galaga would only fire using the a button keyboard.
didn't like the sound or the way the image fit too large on the screen.
Installed advmame and galaga plays fine.

Looks like this image is fully working as desired now. woot!

[mahuti]

Installed advmame and galaga plays fine.

Each of the versions of Mame requires a different Rom (for the most part). You can find a list of supported romsets here:
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/MAME

I use Advmame mostly with an old set of .94 roms I had, and they work as I expected. There are a few roms that had decent updates that I have configured to use different versions of Mame in the launcher screen... but not many. I'm not that much of a purist.