Mapping Controllers (1 of 3): For EmulationStation

When you start up EmulationStation for the first time it prompts you to setup your input devices such as gamepads and keyboards. Currently I have two types of SNES controllers (I only set up one for right now.), two different PlayStation 2 controller adapters, and a keyboard. Even if you don’t plan on using it, it is a good idea to set up a keyboard just in case a controller isn’t working for some reason.

The controllers / adapters I have are:

• SNES Retro USB Super Nintendo Controller
• Buffalo Classic USB Gamepad for PC
• Playstation to USB Adapter from Radio Shack (No longer avaliable.)
• PS2 to PS3 Playstation Controller Adapter USB Converter

I will label them as:

• SNES_1
• SNES_2
• PS2_1
• PS2_2

respectively.

To start, I plugged in all the controllers and keyboard and then loaded up EmulationStation by typing the following two lines in the terminal (Note: if you are not running a vncserver then ignore the first line.):

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ vncserver -kill :0 pi@raspberrypi ~ $ emulationstation

With EmulationStation 2.0+ it tells you how many inputs are detected. Follow the on screen setup for each controller until they are all set up.

I created a table so that I can keep track of what I assigned to each button:

Command	Player 1	Player 2	Player 3	Player 4
	SNES_1	PS2_1	Keyboard	PS2_2
Up	Up	Up	Up	Up
Down	Down	Down	Down	Down
Left	Left	Left	Left	Left
Right	Right	Right	Right	Right
A	A	Circle	Enter	Circle
B	B	X	Backspace	X
Start	Start	Start	Space	Start
Select	Select	Select	Tab	Select
Page Up	Left	Left	Page Up	Left
Page Down	Right	Right	Page Down	Right

The first time I ran this it didn’t find all the controllers. After I rebooted  and mapped the controllers to a file for a later use I noticed that they were found when I tried again. This only sets up the controllers for EmulationStation. In a future post I will go over how to set the controllers in RetroArch which is the main configuration file for the emulators.

If you ever want to re-do the initial controller set up run this command:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ rm /home/pi/.emulationstation/es_input.cfg

That will remove the EmulationStation input configuration file. You can also do it from within EmulationStation but I like to remove the file to start fresh.

 

---

 

 

Check out these other helpful links:
Mapping Controllers (1 of 3): For EmulationStation
Mapping Controllers (2 of 3): Mapping Controllers to a File
Mapping Controllers (3 of 3): Setting up Controllers in RetroArch
Auto detecting controllers in EmulationStation 2.0+
RetroPie: Adding game roms, BIOS files, and enabling save states
Setting up GameBoy Advance for RetroPie
Adding a XBMC tab in EmulationStation
Adding an Apps tab in EmulationStation
Setting up Playstation for RetroPie
Creating power logs for EmulationStation (1 of 2)
Creating power logs for EmulationStation (2 of 2)