Gamepad Emulator why not? « on: August 15, 2003, 05:56:39 PM »

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I mentioned this in the Sports games with IPac  http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=10652 thread, but I'm afraid it won't get seen as well there. 
I've written some VB programs before, but nothing complicated.  Is there a program (or would it be hard to write one?) that will create some "virtual" gamepads?  Like, When you go into the Windows Control Panel, the joystick section would show X number of controllers.  You could configure these "virtual" controllers to be keys on the keyboard. That would mean you COULD use all your 4 player CPs to play stuff like EA sports games and my (age old) virtua Tennis question. 

Wouldn't it?
It doesn't seem like it should be too hard to write it.  If it doesn't exist. 
Has anyone seen anything like this?

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Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #2 on: August 15, 2003, 10:43:42 PM »

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well, seeing as how you're anti-4-Player CP, there wouldn't be MUCH point for you. 

The point for people like me who have a 4 Player CP, would be to be able to play Doubles in Virtua Tennis (on the PC version, without having to build another cab or CP with the Dreamcast in it) where the game only allows 1 player to be controlled by Keyboard.  The rest have to be joysticks.  Same goes for EA Sports games...didn't I put that in the orignal post?  Or are you just looking for another oportunity to rip us who have 4 player CPs? 

I know this makes sense to those of us who have 4 player CPs and although we don't regret our decision to go 4P, we're always looking to add games we can play with our friends.

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Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #4 on: August 16, 2003, 12:43:44 AM »

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Many current windows games, especially sports games and games already ported to/from consoles, assign player inputs by device, with the keyboard one device.  Each gamepad, joystick, ect, OTOH is it's own device.  These games let control panels with ipac, keywhiz, hagstom,  MK64 (such as xarcade, hotrodse, and slikstik) only able to control one player.  (more info in the thread linked by allroy1975)

Howard, allroy1975 is asking if a key2joy prog could get around this limit by making virtual joysticks from keyboard inputs, or is he stuck with either hacking gamepads or only playing one player from a 2 player CP.


Allroy1975, I agree with howard that it would be very hard, especially with the keyboard inputs.  The keyboard and mouse are pretty much "protected" in windows so that they "always" ( ) work.  Getting at the keyboard inputs and converting to joysticks' inputs will be hampered, to say the least.

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Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #6 on: August 16, 2003, 01:26:00 AM »

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Too bad you're not trying to get a joystick to emulate a keyboard...way easier! I know I'm no help... 

Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #8 on: August 18, 2003, 12:54:19 PM »

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Off the top of my head, I don't think this would be too hard.  I've never tried to futz with input from the USB stream, but taking data from the serial or gameport is simple.  It would also be fairly trivial to translate keyboard input into the joypad buffer(s).

If USB is even remotely similar, it wouldn't be hard to write a program to do what you want it to do.  What WOULD be a potential stumbling block is if the program bypasses the Windows API's for the joypad buffers and reads them directly... then any hook/translator you have in the stream would be bypassed as well.  It may work on a game by game basis.

Basically, in short, you'd have to write a joypad driver (simple) that takes input from the keyboard and shoves it into the USB joypad stream. 

Alternately, you could write an IPAC specific driver and have all it' inputs mapped to the joypad stream instead of the keyboard stream.  I wish I was more familiar with USB programming.  Hmm, might be something to look into over the next few months.

Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #10 on: August 18, 2003, 01:05:42 PM »

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I'd be super interested, mainly for 2 player Virtua Tennis (and I don't even have a 4 player panel).  I'd just like to play two player on the control panel rather than having one person on the panel and one standing there with a gamepad.

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Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #12 on: August 18, 2003, 01:13:18 PM »

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Right, that's why I suggested a seperate executable.  That way you could load it, THEN load the PC game...ie Virtua Tennis and close it when you go back into MAME.

I'm in love with this idea, and if it's possible I REALLY want to do it! 

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Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #14 on: August 18, 2003, 06:42:56 PM »

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why not just hack a few USB gamepads, and do what I did with my CP and its standard molex connectors?  i.e. Molex connector pin 7 is "up" for any joystick plugged into it.

Unplug the molex from the ipac, plug it into the gamepad.  Or just leave it in the gamepad, if that still works for mame.

At least, it's probably less effort than writing the program. 

Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #16 on: August 18, 2003, 08:00:01 PM »

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and that's a lot of extra time and $$.  I know the joypad hack could be done, but it'd save a lot of people a lot of time and money if something like my imaginary porogram existed.  I'm thinking about trying to write it, but I'm really not a programmer.  we need to find someone who works for a software development company! 
but I think I'm gonna try it because I'm fairly certain such a program does not exist and I think it should. 

if anyone else wants to do it, or has something like it, or wants to help...let me know.

Matt

« Last Edit: August 18, 2003, 09:12:31 PM by allroy1975 »

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Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #18 on: August 20, 2003, 09:24:12 PM »

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I'm a C / C++ developer but haven't done any low level Windows keyboard coding.  Have thought about doing some to manipulate keystrokes before they get to Mame but eventually shelled out the bucks for a hardware solution instead.

With proper documentation, preferably some example code that shows how to intercept the keystrokes, etc., I could do some coding.

I'll see if I can look around in the many libraries that are available for Dev-C++ (freeware from Bloodshed Software) and see if I notice anything that would help.

Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #20 on: August 27, 2003, 02:24:39 AM »

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Well, I have been messing around with ppjoy (I don't really know why, I have no interest right now as my arcade is not done, but I guess i just liked the challenge ) Anyway, A simple program already exists to take keyboard input and send it to ppjoy (it is on the ppjoy page). It took a while to figure out how to configure, but i got it to work, sort of. The problem is that the app does not intercept key commands. You have to be on the application, press the key, then switch to the game and the key is registered. Switch back to the app, press another key.. etc... I am hoping this is just an issue with how winxp handles dos programs. I am going to try some more native environments. Will report back.
-Cobelli

Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #22 on: August 27, 2003, 01:33:41 PM »

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almost as frustrating is when you type up a reply to a post and it gets lost. 
I think it went something like this:
I've tried it on my 2k PC at work and I got the same thing you're getting.  I tried it on my 98SE Laptop at home and it worked fine. 

I think we just need a program (not necessarily that dos based sample) that keeps track of all the keystrokes.  i know it's possible because that's what those password stealing programs do that log all your keystrokes.  They're obviously not the program with the focus.

Of course I have no idea how to do that....but..I think that's what needs to happen.

Anyone real good at C++?

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Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #24 on: August 27, 2003, 09:44:05 PM »

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People, trust me, that's not the problem.  Getting keystrokes is one thing, passing them back to the program running is another.  It doesn't always work, especially if it's a 3d accelerated app (nearly all emulators are). Getting keys is a high level process, but sending them in a way that would work is a very low level one.   

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Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #26 on: August 27, 2003, 11:03:42 PM »

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JODY - first off, no nned to compile, the exe is included. Also, you are getting that error because you do not have the ppjoy software installed and running.

Howard_castro - You are correct that it is difficult, but the hard part has already been done for us. PPjoy is a program originally intended for controller hacks. Natively, it accepts input over the lpt port and sends it out through directx. SO to windows, it looks EXACTLY like a joystick. You can configure it in control panel, it has drivers to run it, etc.. Tested with a few 3d apps and they all recognize it fine. The problem with the software is that we aren't taking input over the lpt port, but rather the keyboard port. However, this can be solved. PPjoy has a virtual mode in which it accepts ioctl calls. Now all we need is a program that captures keystrokes and sends the output to ppjoy. As previously stated, an example of such a program is available from ppjoy. Problem is that it doesn't capture keys while in the background. It has to be the active program in order to perform its task. Not good for gaming.

The solution: I have contacted the amazing author of ppjoy, and he is going to whip up the necessary prog for us! YAY! However, I didn't want to push the envelope by asking for it to be easy, so we may still need to do some work afterwards to make it user configurable.

Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #28 on: August 28, 2003, 04:11:57 AM »

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Deon (the author of ppjoy) came through! He is amazing! Wrote us a nice app that uses the DIrectinput API to capture the keyboard strokes and pass them on to PPJoy. It's fully configurable (not so easily, though, as you need the decimal value of the key) and in my testing, works great. The one problem, though, is each instance of the prog only supports 1 joystick. A workaround is to just launch the app 4 times, but I emailed Deon about it and hopefully he can add multiple joystick functionality to the program. UPDATE: In the zip is a batch file that will run PPjoyKEY 4 times, each time specifying a different INI file. Multi-joy support is too much more to ask from Deon. Hopefully, though, he will figure out how to minimize the programs to the system tray, so there will be a little less clutter. Thanks again, Deon, very cool. It took me a little figuring to get it working, so I zipped up all the necessary files and included instructions Enjoy! AND THANKS DEON!!!

---------------------------------------
Keyboard to Joystick emulation

First off, this would not be possible without the amazing work of  Deon van der Westhuysen. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

This procedure relies on two programs, both written by Deon. The first is PPjoy. This application takes input over the lpt port and outputs it as a windows joystick. It can, however, also be run in virtual mode in which it instead accepts input through ioctl calls. Therefore, the second program is PPjoyKEY which takes keystrokes as input and outputs to ppjoy through the aforementioned ioctl process.

Instructions:
1. Run the setup program in the PPjoy folder
2. Launch the PPjoy configurator
3. Click "add"
4. Select "virtual port" from the "parralel port" dropdown
5. Select the controller number from the controller number dropdown.
6. Click "add"
Repeat for each controller.
7. Run "key2joy.bat" from the main folder.

This is a little batch file I wrote that simply launches PPjoyKEY 4 times, each time specifying a different INI file. I created the INI files to ease the installation procedure. The keys are mapped as follows:

              UP    DOWN      LEFT    RIGHT    B1    B2    B3    B4    B5    B6    B7    B8
Joy1        1            2            3          4          5      6      7      8      9    0        -      =
Joy2        q            w          e          r          t        y      u      i      o    p        [      ]
Joy3        a            s            d          f            g      h      j        k    l      ;        '
Joy4        z            x          c          v          b      n      m      ,    .      /       

You can however specify your own configuration by using the decimal equivalent of the key (ESC is 1 and the increase accross row).

Have fun!
- Mike Cobelli
-------------------------------------------------------------------------


Since it won't fit on the forum, You can get all the files from my website http://hostfreedom.com/key2joy.zip

Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #30 on: August 28, 2003, 11:35:01 AM »

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Excellent work!

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Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #32 on: August 28, 2003, 11:54:52 AM »

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I read my last post and I'll try not to say "anyway" as much in this one....

I can't even tell you how excited I am to go home tonight and try to play Virtua tennis on my MAME machine.  i'm giddy!

here's what a good guy Deon is, here's part of what he wrote back to me when I offered him money:
With regards money - I'll be posting this app for free and would
not be right of me to take your money then. But if you like you
can make a donation to a charity - possibly http://www.amybiehl.org/
as they do lots of good work for disadvantaged communities in
South Africa.

I can't even tell you how impressed I am with this guy.  Smart, friendly and a good human being on top of that!

he added this as a PS:
p.s. I see you and cobelli have been ganging up on me! :-)

apparently we were, but it was unintentional.

GIDDY!  I can't wait!  *cough* *cough*  I don't feel well, I think I need to go home now!

Matt

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Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #34 on: August 29, 2003, 01:03:11 PM »

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I swear....if it's not one thing it's another....

The program obviously works, but Virtua Tennis doesn't see those joysticks!  AHHH!
I installed the NT Drivers for DirectPadPro and even though I don't have any joysticks plugged into my PC at all, it sees those ones. 
There must be a difference between the drivers or something.  Both show up in DXDiag
I don't get it.
If there are any other fans of the game you can get the demo here before you buy it.

ftp://216.25.72.25/PatchesNDemos/eidemo/virtuaTennis/virtuaTennis.zip

Let me know if anyone else has success with ppjoy and VirtuaTennis
Maybe it's something I've got configured wrong. 

Matt

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Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #36 on: Yesterday at 12:49:43am »

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well, it worked like a champ!
my brother in law came over tonight and we played some vs Virtua Tennis and some Doubles.
Worked Great.  Remapping the keys didn't work too well, so I used the Win I Pac Programmer to set up a profile for VT.
This may sound like a lot of work for 1 game, but it's soooo worth it.
2 Player Virtua Tennis....Next stop....EA SPorts!
Thanks again to everyone who helped make this happen!
especially howard for being so supportive 

Matt

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Re:Gamepad Emulator why not? « Reply #38 on: Yesterday at 01:39:34pm »

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The software is quite brilliant, I'll gladly admit.  The problem is it isn't very useful at all.  You needed it for a game that would only see a joystick and not allow for keyboard input.  That type of problem is super rare (as a matter of fact it's the first time I've ever ehard of it.) 

Quite frankly, that almost never happens.  Most problem games are games in which the game only accepts keyboard input but the layout is hardcoded, and badly at that.  Or the game only accepts mouse clicks to go through the menu, ect.  99% of the games with input issues don't even support the joystick.


Again, brilliant software, too bad it solves a virtually non-existant problem. 

I hate to be negative like this, but since you called me by name. 

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