Xbox360 Controller Emulator

[Stu1983]

I just stumbled across this nifty wee piece of software Xbox360CE

It makes your PC thinks your joypad is actually an Xbox 360 joypad for those odd PC games that only support Xbox 360 joypads e.g. Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing

Stu

[twotone8]

is that the one from TOCA edit? i've used this program for months with various video games. it's fantastic.

for some odd reason many current pc games have removed support for generic joypads. this program is absolutely essential for getting games like Bioshock 1 and Braid to run with a controller. works like a charm once you dig around the config files for a few minutes to get the thing set up. the forum community is quite helpful as well.

it's also handy if you just don't feel like going through the hassle of configuring your controller. you just drag and drop the emulator into the root directory of whichever game you're trying to use, and everything's configured for you.

[Stu1983]

yeah its from the TOCA edit, he's just moved it to google code, definitely seems like it could be handy as games developers get ever more lazy

Stu

[Geronimo]

The difference is that "old" games are using Dinput, and modern games are using Xinput. Both API's are part of DirectX, but they are not 100% compatible.

It's anyone's guess why MS decided to switch to Xinput. My theory is that they wanted to push the 360 controller (which is Xinput exclusively unless you're using XBCD) as the standard controller for Windows gaming. I love the 360 controller but this move is a bit harsh IMO (they could have provided more compatibility at least).

A bit off-topic but perhaps interesting: a 360 controller will give you the best of both worlds. The XBCD driver is Dinput-based, thus providing stuff like force feedback for most emulators and old-ish games. With XBCD you can basically configure each and every aspect of the controller, like button/axis mappings or deadzones. In Vista and Win 7 you can change easily from XBCD to the standard MS driver (Xinput) for newer games, without having to reboot. XBCD is an unsigned driver, meaning it can't be installed on x64 OS's without setting the OS to "test mode". I did this on Vista x64 and Win 7 x64 and it worked great.