Controller mapping broken in 5.3 for RetroArch for Dragon rise USB controllers

Hi, I'm coming from Batocera for an arcade cabinet I built for me and my daughter to play.

I installed RetroBat 5.3 configured both of my controllers through emulation station using select as hotkey for both controllers then I went to play some Nintendo DS and Nintendo 64 games and I noticed that hotkey +START won't exit the games and some of the controller mappings were not the same as in Batocera as I configured the buttons exactly as they were before.

I uninstalled and then installed RetroBat 5.2 and everything worked correctly and I could use hotkeys and the button mappings as expected.
I'm running on windows 11 and my controllers are detected as Generic USB controllers (as expected for this dragonrise boards)

How can I fix the mappings for RetroArch? I couldnt test but maybe they are missing for other emulators as well.
I noticed you can override RetroArch config per game or system but in this case I think I need to reconfigure RetroArch mappings globally, how can I do that?

Hi; I have upgraded from Retrobat 5.0 to 5.3 and I have found the same issue. In my case the “south” button end up being mapped as “select” even if I explicitly mapped another button as select. I can remap per core, but it is a lot of effort. Do you have any simpler workarounds?

Hi,

You should recheck your cable, if you have at least two controllers, both must be connected to their PCBs identically and only one must be configured under retrobat.

Hi, there were no hardware changes, I have just upgraded versions from 5.0 to 5.3; is there any new software feature that needs any hardware rearranging?

I don't remember if there are any changes, wait for a member of the staff to return. but you can check it from GitHub. have you tried resetting the controllers with batgui? or a clean install separately from your version?

Maybe there is an SDL change that could have an impact...
To complete Aynshe advise :
https://wiki.retrobat.org/advanced-features/batgui#change-sdl-library-version-and-reset-controller-configuration

I have a similar problem. I am using two USB generic controllers and I can configure Retrobat to use them but as soon as I enter an emulator they stop working and the ones that the emulator assumes by default are terrible. The worst thing is that I can't close the emulator and I have to do it with alt+tab manually. I am using Retrobat on an arcade cabinet and it cannot be used this way. Can anyone explain to me how to configure the controllers for the emulators (retroarch mainly). I have read the FAQ but it seems that they are quite outdated.

As specified in the prerequisites, we do not recommend this type of material, it's really crap (on windows), I have no other words, sorry...

Read this:
https://retrobat.forumgaming.fr/t1554-hardware-which-joysticks-and-arcade-stick-controllers-are-recommended-on-retrobat

You will only have problems with this type of cheap Chinese equipment. You will spend hours and hours configuring...(for a not always good result...) this is clearly not the philosophy of Retrobat, which is designed so that you spend as little time as possible tinkering.
I really encourage you to change your equipment.

Or you can try by using a workaround with X360CE, that could emulate Xinput controler

Lorenzolamas wrote:As specified in the prerequisites, we do not recommend this type of material, it's really crap (on windows), I have no other words, sorry...

Read this:
https://retrobat.forumgaming.fr/t1554-hardware-which-joysticks-and-arcade-stick-controllers-are-recommended-on-retrobat

You will only have problems with this type of cheap Chinese equipment. You will spend hours and hours configuring...(for a not always good result...) this is clearly not the philosophy of Retrobat, which is designed so that you spend as little time as possible tinkering.
I really encourage you to change your equipment.

The joystick are doing their job just fine. Dreamcast works, MAME works, Visual Pinball works. Anything i can configure directly works. Only Retroarch is ignoring the joy config or i dont know how to do it. So if instead of telling me to change my joysticks you told me how to change the controls in Retroarch you would be helping me. Thank you.

reading the wiki could help
https://wiki.retrobat.org/controllers/specific_mapping

@Segador

In your opinion, if I tell you that, it's because I earn money from the controllers that we recommend (nope ) or because I have more than 4 years of experience using Retrobat and it's very complicated , see impossible to have no bugs with controller configuration under Retrobat with this kind of equipment?

Do as you wish, and good luck!...

getupor wrote:reading the wiki could help
https://wiki.retrobat.org/controllers/specific_mapping

Already tried that but the SELECT + South button dont works. I tried loading retroarch and changing there the controls but when i launch the emulator (megadrive32x or Atomixwave PE) the buttons dont work. I maneged to get to that point but when i try to change buttons Retroarch dont let me change anything. Lets say i like to change button West. When i enter button West and try to change it (by default is assigned to joy South) the overall controls of Retroarch dont dissapear to let me choose another button so if i press west in my joystick is like pressing back in Retro, i go back to button selection whitout changing anything. Any other buttons dont work either. Is like i cant input anything.

Yep. You can't do what you want, it's not the RetroBat way (or you don't need Retrobat).
That why we recommand material that can be autoconfigured correctly.

https://retrobat.forumgaming.fr/t135-faq-retrobat-wip#2754

Hi. I can add some more details about my problem, and the way I solved it.

Basically the button I programmed as "Start" was taken by retroarch as "South" (and viceversa, the "South" button was taken as "Start"). The button number in retroarch was consistent with the button number in retrobat, so there was not much I could do. In the end I started experimenting with other versions of the SDL DLL. Changing from SDL 2.24.0 to 2.24.2 solved the issue.

Thanks!

Thanks @fmilano for this feedback.
@Segador maybe something you can try (as i've wrote few post earlier)

My problem was with Retroarch and unfortunately, before reading fmilano's post, I limited myself to removing Retroarch from all systems and using other emulators. Much more time consuming than fmilano's solution. If I encounter the same problem again I will try to do what he has done. Thank you everyone for the help.