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Looking for a way to remap joystick axis to POV hats in any game.

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First post, by marzsyndrome

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One of the main problems with trying to use today's controllers with older Windows titles - mainly from the 90's and early 00's - is that they weren't programmed to understand the difference and co-existence of traditional joystick axis and the POV hats which make up today's d-pads.

Old-school gaming isn't as great as it could be when you're restricted to using the left analog stick for all movement duties in a game that wasn't designed for analogue in the first place.

I've tried looking around for various solutions to this, and during my travels have come across x360ce, Universal Joystick Remapper, Xpadder, Pinnacle Game Profiler........ the list goes on.

However, it seems none of these do the one simple thing I'm after - the ability to remap the axis to the d-pad and have all games - whether they use DInput, DInput8, or XInput - acknowledge the POV as axis so remapping becomes easier. And I mean proper controller recognition - I'm not interested in a lazy keyboard-to-gamepad solution like Joy2Key. Why would I want to change every config to use a keyboard instead? Not to mention there's bound to be some titles out there with little to no keyboard support. Oh, and running Joy2Key in the background means potentially doing stuff accidentally within the Windows OS itself just by randomly pressing buttons - I'd rather they didn't have to share such a world.

At least someone had the right idea recently: over at the GOG forums, one fellow came up with a DLL wrapper for the 1996 platformer Gex to make it remap axis to d-pad while the game was running - it can be found here for those interested. Only problem is that he programmed it specifically with that game in mind, and said game does its joystick support through WinMM, which is what he patches. Having checked a few other Windows titles from the era, plus the more recent Raiden III (another GOG title), this is not a common way of handling controllers, so the patch would be no good for them.

So anyway. Is it easy and/or possible to program some kind of generic axis-to-POV patcher/wrapper for most if not all games?

Reply 1 of 9, by Davros

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very difficult because dpads are buttons not axis
what pad do you have
you may be better off buying something like
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Classic-USB-Joypad- … =item1e89a68f5c

Guardian of the Sacred Five Terabyte's of Gaming Goodness

Reply 4 of 9, by marzsyndrome

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Well I have several controllers at my disposal (I'm a controller nut, to summarize)....

Xbox 360 Wired Controller
Xbox 360 Wireless Controller
Xbox One Controller
DualShock 3
DualShock 4
Wii U Pro Controller
Wii Classic Controller
Wii Classic Controller Pro
Gamecube Controller
Logitech F510 Controller

...and so on.

Occasionally a solution may materialize for a very specific controller (e.g. DualShock 4 with DS4Windows), but certain other controllers will still be left out of the loop. I tend to switch between my controllers every now and then for a change. If absolutely necessary then I may have to fit one or two retro-style 'digital-only' controllers into my roster.

So POV Hats are technically buttons to the system then?

Reply 6 of 9, by marzsyndrome

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Yes it does, but from my memory it makes no difference in regards to the left-analog-stick/d-pad issue.

Again, I must mention that Gex patch I linked to - that's a very good example of what I'm after and which seems to work irrespective of the actual controller involved. If it turns out that's only possible because of the game's unique(?) links to WinMM then that would be a real shame.

Reply 7 of 9, by Tarvis

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GlovePIE and PPJoy will let you make a virtual joystick which you can map your real joystick to however you'd like. So you could make an identical joystick except with the POV and X/Y axes swapped, just make sure to set it to your default joystick before you play the game, since old Windows games only recognize one joystick at a time. Theoretically it should work for any controller with the same profile.

Also, the Logitech F510 should have a Mode button, that swaps the D-Pad and left analog stick's function. It's better you used that instead of suffering the Xbox 360 d-pads.

Reply 8 of 9, by marzsyndrome

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Tarvis wrote:

GlovePIE and PPJoy will let you make a virtual joystick which you can map your real joystick to however you'd like. So you could make an identical joystick except with the POV and X/Y axes swapped, just make sure to set it to your default joystick before you play the game, since old Windows games only recognize one joystick at a time. Theoretically it should work for any controller with the same profile.

Okay, I'll give PPJoy a shot, but I thought VJoy was more or less meant to replace it? (Not that I'm aware if VJoy is even useful on its own or if it can only be used with specific wrappers.)

Also, the Logitech F510 should have a Mode button, that swaps the D-Pad and left analog stick's function. It's better you used that instead of suffering the Xbox 360 d-pads.

Ah, I do recall the Mode button, thanks. And I recently acquired an official Chrome Series 360 controller with the transforming d-pad - haven't got round to using it yet so I'm not sure if it's supposed to improve the d-pad at all. Failing that, I do have all my other controllers to choose from.

Reply 9 of 9, by BuckoA51

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I had some luck doing something like this using VJoy and UJR, it's a hassle though, and the virtual joystick sticks around and interferes with stuff unless you disable it in device manager.

play-old-pc-games.com

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