hifihedgehog
commented
3 years ago Here is some research I did.
Joystick Gremlin offers the functionality I speak of, but it only supports it for DirectInput. Joystick Gremelin allows any detected joystick, gamepad or keyboard's input (button or axe) to be mapped to the output (button or axe) of a virtual DirectInput controller.
Each button on a detected input device can be mapped to just a single output on the virtual controller, but there is no specified limit on the number of inputs from the input devices that can be mapped to each output on each virtual controller. Because of this many-to-one design philosophy for the controller mappings, there is no limit on the number of inputs that can be mapped to a button or axis on the output virtual controller. In an ideal world, a many-to-many design philosophy would be the ideal for the ultimate in customization, and one-to-many is already supported in XOutput, so I would love to see many-to-one customization in XOutput in the future.
For the time being, I will be running an input chain where (1) I first merge all my controllers in Joystick Gremlin to two DirectInput controllers, and (2) I second pass that DirectInput controller to XOutput which then converts those two DirectInput controllers into two XInput controllers. It is a bit messier than I would prefer and this multiplies the number of software failure points by two. That is why, for both simplicity and stability's sake, I would like to see the option to assign multiple inputs to each output in XOutput.
See above. We use XOutput a lot in the arcade cabinet scene. With XOutput, I can easily merge the two Ultimarc Ultrastik 360 joysticks and the pushbuttons from my USB button encoder on my arcade cabinet into two virtual Xinput controllers. It is so simple and it just works. I am finding that I would like many-to-one mapping since I sometime need to use an actual physical Xbox-style gamepad from time to time with some games I emulate like Breath of the Wild where a camera stick and the d-pad are necessary. Having to break out a keyboard and mouse to change the controller settings instead of staying within the flow and immersion of the arcade front-end interface (the current go-to is LaunchBox's BigBox, which I use) is the current drawback. But if I could have multiple possible inputs assigned to the outputs (one set of inputs from the arcade cabinet and the other set from the gamepads) so I could already have physical game controllers premapped or passed through to the virtual ones, I would not have to break that flow or immersion.