SteamLauncher VS RetroPie-joystick-selection

I use the SteamLauncher plugin for Launchbox, because Steam is excellent for controller configs, and Retroarch sucks at it.

You could look at using steam api interface IClientShortcuts instead of editing the shortcut file so steam doesnt need to be restarted. You can add/remove nonsteam games instantly etc. For example SteamLauncher plugin (c#) (https://github.com/lahma0/SteamLauncher) for LaunchBox does this. (Do note it does things a bit differently and uses one hidden shortcut for all games but you could create one for each game of course)

However, there is the excellent Big Box plugin SteamLauncher that you may be into. All the benefits of Steam's controller customization and social stuff while using Launchbox's... uh, launcher.

In Retropie I downloaded a controller script that allows you to pick which controller is player 1-4 for each system from all the controllers connected. So for example my arcade games use 1-4(joysticks), N64 uses port 5 and 6(N64 controllers) as player 1 and 2, SNES and NES used 7 and 8(SNES controllers) for player 1 and 2. That works flawlessly for all my systems. The issue though is I can select 9 and 10 as my player 1 and 2 for my sega games but the controllers don’t work at all, not even in the Retroarch menu but they do in ES. If I swap the physical order of the sega controllers and SNES controllers, the sega controllers will work and the SNES ones won’t. So it seems like 8 is the cutoff for me right now.

You might be able to do this with meleu's Joystick Selection script, available either standalone or as part of RetroPie-Extra. I would try, set the gamepads to always use players 1 and 2, then let the arcade controls remain default/unset. So when the gamepads are connected they'll take priority, and then when they aren't, I think the arcade controls should still work in place.

Try this optional package. It lets you assign controllers to specific ports: https://github.com/meleu/RetroPie-joystick-selection

I've never done a conversion like yours but I think there's a joystick function that tells the controllers to always be in a specified order. Perhaps that would help you? https://github.com/meleu/RetroPie-joystick-selection

Check in the rpie setup there should be a joystick script that can set the order etc. Its created by dev Meleu If not get and apply from here https://github.com/meleu/RetroPie-joystick-selection

Over in the retro-pi world there was a utility called Joystick Select that would let you define per-emulator controllers. For example, when launching NES if you have your NES controller plugged in, it would default P1 to that, otherwise it would use the default usb-encoder

Have you tried this ? :https://github.com/meleu/RetroPie-joystick-selection