Oddities with second (bluetooth) controller

[gabuzom]

First of all thanks for the amazing work! ArkOS truly shines and makes the experience on the RG353M a wonderfully polished one!

Describe the Issue (If applicable)

A few issues are making the experience with a 2nd controller (8bit do micro, bluetooth) painful to me if not plainly unusable on RG353M.

1/ I ran into #765

2/ If i leave the controller ON and launch a game, the external controller will grab player1 control, but be mapped wrong (no matter what i did in the "configure input" menu) -> workaround: to launch the game with controller OFF, from the RG, then turn controller ON while the game has booted. but doing that every time is a bit cumbersome...

3/ No matter how i configure the controller in "configure input", or manually do the input config in retroarch, accross several games, it is systematic that button B (south) will inevitably act like button B and like "DOWN", making the controller pretty much unusable in most configurations. moving the function of the B button to another button (X, Y) does work, but we lose in ergonomics and make it akward in many games. It is very hard to trace where this comes from.

What device are you using? (Only the Gameforce Chi, RK2020, OGA 1.0, OGA 1.1, RG351MP, RG351V, RGB10, R35s, RG353V/VS, RG353M, RG503, RGB30, and RK2023 units are officially supported)

RG353M

What version of ArkOS are you on?

09292024

[christianhaitian]

External controller support needs work in the OS. I'm just not sure when I'll be motivated to further work on that at the moment.

[gabuzom]

I wish you find the satisfaction, recognition and motivation that you and your project deserve! ArkOS is great!

Do you have an idea of why the "B" button would also send "DOWN" on default configurations? where to look to try to manually fiddle things and see whatup? does it sound more to you like an OS thing, or a retroarch thing? an emulationstation thing?

Would gladly help if i can with finding causes and fixes.

[gabuzom]

was fiddling a bit, around the quirks (and managed to still have the best time ever, with a friend,m and my favourite handheld OS1 ;)) ), and I understand the following, which lead to a suggestion:

• i mostly avoided the emulation station input menu, and focused on retroarch.
• i assumed that when plugging a bluetooth controller it would be for a 2nd player. that's what i had in mind, and what i could do, as i would keep the delicate console (and its delicate mini-hdmi connector!) as my responsibility...
• yet by default, BT controller ended up being a "player one", but with modified shortcuts, handheld as "player 2" wouldnt have its default shortcuts, etc.
• made me realize what was maybe the intention (or use case) of default settings in ArkOS: somebody, alone, plugs in a BT controller, and controls their handheld this way, period (without taking any risk with the mini-HDMI connector, as the handheld can sit on the table!). brilliant! never thought of it to be frank. I see myself using the handheld+controller this way.
• but in that case i had a guest.. so ideally 2 BT controllers would enable the two players to play on some equal footing, and that would be great.

So my suggestion is the following: upon inserting a new controller, OR once and for all in some menu where the preference could be changed, maybe have a choice between the following "profiles":

• 1 controller used as player one (and handheld as player 2, just in case?)
• 1 controller used as player two (and handheld as player 1)
• 2 controllers used as player one and two
• 2 controllers used as player two and three (and handheld as player 1)
  etc.?

What do you think?

[gabuzom]

After experimenting around a bit, I came up with this idea that would greatly simplify the process.

As the only way to get HDMI working is to boot up with HDMI plugged in, we could assume that this could be seen as the way to "consolize" the device. So how about adding to that:

• if external controller is present upon boot then assume it is a player1 control. the console is "consolized"
• if external controller is plugged after boot then assume it is a player2 control.

What do you think?