Fooling with RetroPie #2: Configuring the Xbox 360 controller

So I've had a relatively successful night tinkering around with retropie. While I have a lot on my agenda, I've made a bit of progress tonight, at least in understanding how you get from a bare joypad to having input on all of your different emulators. Here I'll briefly explain the architecture of controller inputs for the Nintendo family of emulators (as I understand it) with a small chart.

(This is the first draft of the image... may not be 100% correct)

As you can see here, when you call on a ROM, it calls back to the emulator's config file. If there's nothing there, it falls back on the general config file. Lastly, if there are no notes here, then it calls back to the config file for the controller.

Due to the high amount of incoming enthusiasts combined with their low amount of know-how, I'll be going back and creating individual entries for 'fixes' to common RetroPie problems, such as downloading the 360 drivers, configuring the various emulators, and adding features like hotkeys and the like. You can look forward to those soon. 

Tomorrow I'll be getting to the bottom of this controller hierarchy thing. When I stopped I finally had figured out a hotkey menu that was being pulled from the controller's config file. I hope to overwrite these controls with particular interfaces for each ROM. Then I want to look into MAME emulation-- hopefully in time for my birthday party. I look forward to some four player Trog. : )