RetroArch not loading from HS after re-install of RA

[andromeda650]

I've been having some difficulty with RA recently and am wondering if anyone can give me some ideas on how to proceed. 

 

I have about a dozen wheels all setup and running perfectly. The one nagging issue I had was that on the systems that I used RA (Lynx, Game Gear & 32X), I could not bind a key from my joypad to the "exit retroarch" command. The reason why is because when you set this key when launching RA from android, the settings will not carry over to RA launched from HS. They look for cfg files in 2 different places, depending on where you launch RA from. So, the only way to config my exit key would be to do it from RA launched via HS. The problem is that the only way to access the RA menu in this case is to use the shield remote back button, which disables the gamepad. Now in the settings, the gamepad cannot be used for anything, so I cannot find a way to set the exit RA key and get it to stick when loading RA via HS.

 

My plan was to make all my setting changes while loading RA from Android, then to copy over the cfg from /sd card/android/data/com.retroarch/files/ to wherever RA pulls the cfg when launched via HS. This location is listed as /data/data/com.retroarch/files/ however, I cannot find this location anywhere. It may be in /mnt/, but I don't want to root my shield.

 

So, I uninstalled RA, made no changes to my Hyperspin directory and reinstalled RA via the market. I started RA, loaded the cores I need (Handy, pico drive and GX), made my config changes (via android launch) and launched games from RA. Everything works well. However, now when I go into HS, I can navigate to any of those 3 wheels, select a game and the screen goes blank for a second and immediately goes back to the game wheel. No error, no missing ROM, the settings and everything worked in HS before I reinstalled RA, but now all 3 RA wheels have this behavior.

 

It seems like HS cant load RA or the cores for some reason. I verified my databases, settings and media. I also verified the install path of RA and the settings file "exe=" and "param=" lines, which were all good.

 

Is there something I need to do HS to get it to recognize RA after a reinstall? Additionally, does anyone know how I could set the exit key binding and have it stick in RA when launched from HS?

 

System particulars:

• Nvidia Shield TV (16Gb) (using a 128 Gb SD card for "SD card" and 128 Gb USB for ROMs)
• Android 6.0
• Hyperspin 0.1.6 (from market)
• RetroArch 1.3.2 (from market)

 

 

[andromeda650]

I just discovered something that may be relevant.

 

My Hyperspin directory is on the root of the sd. I also have an identical HS directory on my USB drive. When I want to make changes, I remove the USB, make changes on my PC, then reinsert into the shield, then copy the relevant files to the sd via ES File Explorer.

 

I made a change to the main menu db to remove the offending wheels. I put that altered main menu db file in the root of my USB, then copied it over to the Hyperspin/Databases/Main Menu/main menu.db file. When I started HS, the offending wheels were still there! 

 

After some digging around, I found that HS was actually using the Hyperspin folder on my USB drive! opps. I renamed that to Hyperspin.FileXfer and now it looks like HS is using the Hyperspin folder on the sd card root.

 

 

RetroArch still won't launch games via HS, but I wanted to mention this as I think this could have crossed some wires somewhere.

[andromeda650]

So, I have a theory, but I'm not sure if it's correct, or how to test it.

 

I'm looking through my RA settings and I notice that all of the RA assets are stored in /mnt/expand/532989cew8cew09e92/user/0/cpm.retroarch/     <-notice the folder in /expand/ with all the gibberish

 

I think that this is the location that RA pulls the cfg file from when you load via HS. When loading RA via Android, it pulls from /sd card/android/data/com.retroarch/files/

 

So, I think that my initial install of RA was in a folder in the expand dir that had different gibberish vales and that HS is telling RA to pull a cfg file from there, but it doesn't exist, because my new install of RA has a different path. So when selecting a game from a wheel that uses RA, RA tries to load, but cannot because it has no cfg, so it gets kicked back into the game wheel almost immediately.

 

 

Is this possible? if so, how could I set the correct path in HS?

[andromeda650]

I think I figured out what is going on.

 

I installed RetroArch before I installed a sd card. After I installed the sd card, I adopted it and Android move the data directory to it. Then when I uninstalled and reinstalled RA, it actually installed directly to the sd card and some of the paths were different.

 

To future people with this problem: I didn't figure out how to fix it, so I just nuked the shield back to factory and started from scratch. Used my original Hyperspin directory, updated the rompaths (because the USB drive has a diferent path now) and everything is running tickity-boo!