Project64 cmd-line game specific controls?

[naborneo]

I tried to post this question up on pj64 forum, but there reg. site is down so I couldn't create a user, so I thought I'd try here.

I was wondering if anyone knew if it was possible to give different controller layouts to a specific game when GameEX launches a game?

For example, I use the xbox360 controllers for my MAME and emulators, which is not always the best for n64 games because of how that controller was laid out. For Starfox64 I have a certain layout but then for GoldenEye I mapped the keys to be closer to what modern FPS's are. Is there a way to change these setting when a game is loaded rather then having to exit to the menu every time? I'd like to completely remove the mouse & keyboard from my build as much as possible.

[nullPointer]

I’d recommend using some sort of key mapping software to achieve this. Xpadder is my favorite, so I have the most experience using that, but it’s certainly not the only option. I would create a number of game specific profiles in which the name of the profile matches the name of the ROM.

That way you can leverage the [ROMNAME] parameter in GameEx to launch the controller profile specific to the game being launched.

Using this method may create an interesting dilemma in that once you started naming controller mapping profiles you may have to name all your profiles. One way around this would be to use the emulator group feature in GameEx. Create one emulator entry for those games that rely on a common controller layout, and create another entry for all games requiring a custom controller layout. Then simply use the emulator group feature to bring those two emulator entries into one list.

[naborneo]

I’d recommend using some sort of key mapping software to achieve this. Xpadder is my favorite, so I have the most experience using that, but it’s certainly not the only option. I would create a number of game specific profiles in which the name of the profile matches the name of the ROM.

That way you can leverage the [ROMNAME] parameter in GameEx to launch the controller profile specific to the game being launched.

Using this method may create an interesting dilemma in that once you started naming controller mapping profiles you may have to name all your profiles. One way around this would be to use the emulator group feature in GameEx. Create one emulator entry for those games that rely on a common controller layout, and create another entry for all games requiring a custom controller layout. Then simply use the emulator group feature to bring those two emulator entries into one list.

yea I'm not big on having a GoldenEye emulator and a N64 emulator...

I use Xpadder for some of my PC games which I love, but the issue of Xpadder mapping the control's to buttons, GameEX currently used the X360 controller just fine to navigate the menu systems, if I mapped the buttons to something else during games with xpadder, wouldn't that then void out the controls in GameEX when returning from a game?

[nullPointer]

yea I'm not big on having a GoldenEye emulator and a N64 emulator...

Note that this wouldn’t require a separate physical emulator, but rather two emulator slots pointing at the same emulator … but yeah stuf like this is hard to address in an ideal fashion. I wasn’t sure if you were running multiple games requiring custom input, or only Goldeneye.

Have you tried simply altering the in-game control layout? Goldeneye isn’t super sophisticated in this capacity, but it does offer a number of pre-defined layouts (I think my preference is the one called Honey, but it’s been a while since I’ve played Goldeneye). If you have Project64 configured to use a battery save pack, you can save your game (i.e. not a save state), and the game will load up your control settings as part of that game save, at least for the campaign mode (not too sure about multi-player). At any rate making the modification in game is not nearly as jarring as resorting to the emulator settings.

I use Xpadder for some of my PC games which I love, but the issue of Xpadder mapping the control's to buttons, GameEX currently used the X360 controller just fine to navigate the menu systems, if I mapped the buttons to something else during games with xpadder, wouldn't that then void out the controls in GameEX when returning from a game?

This can be addressed in two separate ways. For my part I simply exit out of Xpadder in the Launch After command and that works great for me.

I know some users have reported problems with exiting out of Xpadder in this fashion, so rather than close Xpadder they simply load an empty profile as part of the Launch After command (i.e. Xpadder will let button presses pass through unmodified), thus allowing keystrokes to pass to GameEx normally upon return.