[Ohrrpgce] OHR Game Pad Buttons as Strings

[Matt Edson]

Any amount of information we can collect is helpful. For those that want to
inform but not necessarily create graphics, knowing the buttons is kind of
a big deal since game pad I think is becoming a bigger and bigger deal. I
don't have an immediate need for this, it was just something I felt was
important long-term to further make the OHR stronger for PC. Which... I was
telling Charbile the other day, the OHR can basically do just about
everything besides online multiplayer for most games on steam since they
made it where cloud saving is part of the store listing. Online multiplayer
is an entirely other ball of wax too.

Thanks for replying and taking my suggestion to heart.

On Thu, May 19, 2022 at 10:37 AM Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
wrote:

> There really isn't anything we can do on backends other than gfx_sdl2 and
> possible gfx_directx (which uses DirectInput which might sometimes provide
> useful button metadata, but probably not) but I would not spend any time on
> DirectInput.
>
> On Fri, 20 May 2022 at 02:31, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:
>
>> I like this idea.
>>
>> I think we could reasonably use SDL's detected controller names to
>> provide real button names whenever possible, and then fall back to some
>> reasonable best-effort default for SDL_CONTROLLER_TYPE_UNKNOWN and for
>> other backends that don't support this. I don't think we should stress out
>> too much about button swapping and custom configs. Users who do that know
>> what they've done
>>
>> It won't be perfect, but it will probably be good enough to be useful
>>
>> On Thu, May 19, 2022 at 10:22 AM Ralph Versteegen <teeemcee at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> There is currently no way to get the actual label of a button on the
>>> player's controller. The "get scancode name" command can be used for
>>> joystick buttons but returns a fixed name. There's also a separate system
>>> in Custom for defining OS-specific button names which can be embedded in
>>> strings with ${B#} codes but that won't help either, as it's intended for
>>> smoothing over PC/Android/Ouya/etc differences.
>>>
>>> I spoke about wanting to implement something to make a best guess as to
>>> the button names, which would then be returned by "get scancode name" and
>>> used by ${B#} codes.
>>> SDL has a function to get the type of a controller, as one of the
>>> following:
>>>     SDL_CONTROLLER_TYPE_UNKNOWN,  (everything else)
>>>     SDL_CONTROLLER_TYPE_XBOX360,
>>>     SDL_CONTROLLER_TYPE_XBOXONE,
>>>     SDL_CONTROLLER_TYPE_PS3,
>>>     SDL_CONTROLLER_TYPE_PS4,
>>>     SDL_CONTROLLER_TYPE_NINTENDO_SWITCH_PRO,
>>>     SDL_CONTROLLER_TYPE_PS5,
>>>     SDL_CONTROLLER_TYPE_AMAZON_LUNA,
>>>     SDL_CONTROLLER_TYPE_GOOGLE_STADIA
>>> So I can use that to at least easily handle PS3+ button names correctly
>>> (and I can go add that)... but not my PS1 controller. It also can tell the
>>> name of a controller, which we could use to try to detect PS controllers or
>>> ones such as NES, SNES or Gamecube where the actual button labels may not
>>> match what SDL/OHRRPGCE calls them... however I don't know whether the
>>> buttons are actually swapped around on these, because SDL has a config
>>> setting for whether to swap the buttons, and special cases for whether to
>>> respect the config setting (e.g.
>>> https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL/issues/3497) and so many other
>>> special cases that it simply requires testing to figure out how it actually
>>> behaves.
>>>
>>> Someone also started on a library to provide controller button names for
>>> SDL (https://github.com/cxong/SDL_JoystickButtonNames) but
>>> unfortunately its database only has 4 controllers, and it doesn't even have
>>> defaults according to the SDL_CONTROLLER_TYPEs above. I was thinking of
>>> extending it with the defaults/guesses I described above, and we can extend
>>> its DB if anyone wants to report their controller. Or maybe it's just
>>> simpler to skip it.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, 19 May 2022 at 13:47, Matt Edson <colesloth at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hey guys,
>>>>
>>>> This is mostly for Ralph as I think he's done something before but in
>>>> the event James has information first...
>>>>
>>>> I'm at the very very end of Mr. Triangle's Maze. Game pad support! I
>>>> need to be able to convey to the player what the buttons are when it's not
>>>> keyboard related, but the problem I have is there's a lot of different
>>>> kinds of game pads. The average player probably uses an X-Box equivalent
>>>> but that's assuming.
>>>>
>>>> I thought about just calling them left face button, right face button,
>>>> etc. but then I remembered I saw a file TMC made where it showed different
>>>> values for game pads. Ideally I'd like to use the correct button verbiage
>>>> to not confuse players. Is there also a way to tell if the player is
>>>> actively using a game pad or a keyboard beyond checking for individual
>>>> keypresses?
>>>>
>>>> Am I mis-remembering this?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks fellahs!
>>>>
>>>
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