Keyboard and Mouse Input For Games

This is an advanced topic.

Some games or systems have mouse and/or keyboard support. To learn how to enable that kind of input for games in EmuVR, read Core Options.

You need to use your actual real life keyboard and mouse for this.

Some cores will also need you to change specific settings in Retroarch.

Mouse Input

When mouse input is enabled, if you're controlling a game, you will move the ingame mouse cursor. In desktop mode, your mouse won't move the camera when controlling games with mouse input.

When you focus input to a mouse-enabled game, EmuVR will automatically lock your cursor as if pressing the Lock Mouse key.

Keyboard Input

Retroarch has a lot of hotkeys for your keyboard, like pressing P to pause a game, F1 to show the menu, Esc to exit the game, numpad + or - to change the volume, etc. If you're trying to use your keyboard to play games or write code in your Commodore 64, for example, those hotkeys will get in the way.

That's why Retroarch has a mode called "Game Focus", where it simply will disable all hotkeys, so you can use your keyboard at will.

When enabling keyboard input mode for a system in the Game Scanner, your games will run in Retroarch with Game Focus enabled automatically from start.

That means that if you do want to use a hotkey temporarily, for example to show Retroarch's menu or to change the volume, you'll need to toggle "Game Focus" mode by pressing Scroll Lock. Press it again to disable all hotkeys back after you're done, or you might be pressing random hotkeys accidentally.

TL;DR:

• All keyboard hotkeys are disabled in keyboard mode, so that you can type.
• Press Scroll Lock to toggle them back if you need them.
• Don't forget to toggle them again before you play.

Gamepad input is unaffected by this, it will always work. Some systems can receive input from both a keyboard and a gamepad at the same time.

EmuVR Window Focus

When you focus input to a mouse or keyboard enabled game, EmuVR will automatically activate and bring its window to the foreground.

If you alt-tab from EmuVR or other window/program receive focus, it will automatically unfocus you from the game. It is designed like this to prevent you from accidentally clicking or pressing keys randomly on other windows in your desktop unknowingly, in case another program steals focus for some reason and you didn't realize it because you're using an HMD.

Retroarch Settings / Core Options (Extra Advanced)

Some systems/cores will need extra steps to enable keyboard or mouse input in Retroarch.

For example, to play Mario Paint on the SNES, you'll need to change your User 1 Device Type from Retropad to Mouse.

To play The Typing of the Dead on Dreamcast, you'll need to change your User 1 Device Type from Retropad to Keyboard.

Some other cores might need more exotic settings to learn.

And you'll need to save your settings, usually as a game override, because you won't want all your SNES games to use the mouse, which disables gamepad input (for SNES), and that's what would happen if you save that in your global Retroarch settings. This complication might be improved upon in the future.

To learn how Retroarch overriders work, read this: https://docs.libretro.com/guides/overrides/ To learn about specific core options, check the Libretro docs for your core. Example: https://docs.libretro.com/library/snes9x_2010/#user-1-device-types

For most systems that usually come bundled with a keyboard and/or mouse, you probably won't need to change any special settings for them to work. Example: DOS and Commodore 64 will just work with your mouse/keyboard with default settings.