Mapping Gamepad, adding not conventional gamepads to Defold

[diegomartnlpez]

Hello everyone,

While developing a StepMania like game (but with the defold engine) I've found a problem I have not been able to solve. The engine appears not to recognize my dancepad "RedOctane USB Pad", nor my "USB Joystick" gamepad. However, it perfectly recognizes my keyboard.

I've searched through this forum and found out there's support for Xbox controllers, so I started digging into the builtins of the engine until I found the default.gamepads GAMEPAD file.
I've been playing with it for a while trying to make any of my controllers work, but, even though windows recognizes them and I can use them to play other games, my defold game doesn't seem to take any signal from them.

Any idea on the issue? I thought that just configuring the default.gamepads file was going to be enough, but it appears it's not.

Thanks in advance!

[sven]

Wow, love the usage of non-conventional input!

It should be possible to just add a new gamepad entry, as you said.

Copy the default.gamepads from builtins to your own project, then change the gamepads entry in your game.project to point to your new file:

But since the controller identifies as something not available in the current default.gamepads file, you will need to add an entry for it yourself. Thankfully we have a little tool for this, hold on and I'll upload it here, what platform are you running on?

[diegomartnlpez]

Hi sven! Thankyou very much for your quick answer.
I'm on a windows laptop.

I've already modified the default.gamepads file, and right now it looks like this:

driver
{
device: "RedOctane USB Pad"
platform: "windows"
dead_zone: 0.200
map { input: GAMEPAD_LPAD_LEFT type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 1 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_LPAD_RIGHT type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 4 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_LPAD_DOWN type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 2 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_LPAD_UP type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 3 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_RPAD_LEFT type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 5 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_RPAD_RIGHT type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 8 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_RPAD_DOWN type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 6 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_RPAD_UP type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 7 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_START type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 9 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_BACK type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 10 }
}
driver
{
device: "USB Joystick"
platform: "windows"
dead_zone: 0.200
map { input: GAMEPAD_LSTICK_CLICK type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 11 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_LSHOULDER type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 5 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_RSTICK_CLICK type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 12 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_RSHOULDER type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 6 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_RPAD_LEFT type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 4 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_RPAD_RIGHT type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 2 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_RPAD_DOWN type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 3 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_RPAD_UP type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 1 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_START type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 10 }
map { input: GAMEPAD_BACK type: GAMEPAD_TYPE_BUTTON index: 9 }
}

I'm not quite sure if the modifications I've made are on the right path actually.

[sven]

You are on the right track! But we have a tiny tool that can be run to generate the .gamepads file;

gdc.zip (782.8 KB)

Includes binaries for OSX, Windows and Linux. You should just run it from a terminal, like;

./gdc

And it will ask you to press different buttons on your connected controller, the output will be a new gamepads file with correct mappings.

Hope this helps!

[britzl]

I agree with Sven. I love that you're using non-conventional input in your game! I also think we should post something about the gdc tool to the Defoldmine section on the forum and encourage users to share their gamepad mappings.

[diegomartnlpez]

I really appreciate the help!

I'm sure I'm not using correctly the gdc program, because I get the following result:

but my gamepad is already usb plugged. I have also checked that windows recognises my device, so I'm probably not using the correct command line to call the program.

Hopefully this will be the last doubt!

[sven]

No that should be enough, looks like it's not able to find the gamepad/joystick, strange. Could you try using a third part tool to verify it's found and identifiable as a joystick? Try Joystick Tester from here: http://www.mcrenox.com.ar/downloads/

[diegomartnlpez]

When I first tried the joystick tester it didn't recognise the gamepad, but I activated an option at the Printers and Devices pannel of windows and the joystick tester started to work:

However, and unfortunately, the gdc program still refuses to detect the joystick.