Best Gamepad Mapper

[WhereEaglesDare]

What is the best free gamepad mapping program out there?  I have a gamepad that I want to map some windows keys to for some gaming.  Any helps?

[headkaze]

JoyToKey? I would normally say XPAdder but that's not free anymore.

[Goz]

I'd also put my vote in the xpadder court

[nickynooch]

JoyToKey? I would normally say XPAdder but that's not free anymore.

Wow didn't know xpadder isn't free anymore.  Glad I got it back when it was free! Xpadder > joytokey... when both are free.

[ptinolv]

I prefer Xpadder mainly because i can load profiles with command lines. You can still find the old free version of it that works very well.

[WhereEaglesDare]

Got a link?  Didnt know XMapper was ever free.

Found it
http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/Xpadder-Download-45445.html

[WhereEaglesDare]

opps, double post

[EVEGames]

I prefer Xpadder mainly because i can load profiles with command lines. You can still find the old free version of it that works very well.

You can load profiles from the command line in JoyToKey also.

I'm a big fan of JoyToKey, but then again, I have never tried XPAdder (never needed a feature JoyToKey didn't support).

[TheMonk]

I second xpadder, had to use it for a kiosk interface I developed once for work. Very robust with plenty of features. Even as pay software it's worth it imo.

[ptinolv]

You can load profiles from the command line in JoyToKey also.

I may be wrong, but i don't think you could load/change a profile from a launched joy2key instance. In Xpadder the profile just changes so i don't have to close it and open it again for another profile.

[BadMouth]

Probably not what you are looking for, but if it happens to be a Logitech pad,
Logitech Profiler rocks!

It will automatically change the mapping when an exe is launched.
No scripts, no command lines to bother with.

At first, I thought the exe had to be launched through profiler, but it doesn't.
I'm launching emulators & pc games through Mala and profiler automatically
changes the controller mapping.  It's been a godsend on my driving cab.

[EVEGames]

You can load profiles from the command line in JoyToKey also.

I may be wrong, but i don't think you could load/change a profile from a launched joy2key instance. In Xpadder the profile just changes so i don't have to close it and open it again for another profile.

I sometimes use N64 controllers on my MAME cab, hooked up through N64-to-USB adapters.  I use JoyToKey for the button mapping, but I don't launch it until I want to use the N64 controllers.  So I set up two main menu items in 3DArcade, one I called 'Enable Controllers', and one I called 'Player 3 & 4'.  'Enable Controllers' is obvious enough, it launches JoyToKey with the standard MAME Player 1 and 2 button mappings for two N64 controllers.  But with the second one I got slick - 'Player 3 & 4' launches JoyToKey with the standard MAME Player 3 and 4 button mappings for the N64 controllers, and this allows four player simultaneous play on my 2 player cab - 2 on the control panel, and 1 on each side using N64 controllers.  Anyway, the point here is, I can run my 'Enable Controllers' and 'Player 3 & 4' menu items in any order, as many times as I want, and the mappings of the N64 controllers always switch as expected.

Now to your point, ptinolv, it may very well be that a new instance of JoyToKey is getting launched every time.  And I say this because, at the end of one of these sessions, after logging out of the front end, I see multiple JoyToKey icons in the lower right corner of the Start menu toolbar.  However, just by floating the mouse pointer over these icons, all but one of them will disappear.  What this says to me is, JoyToKey has built-in functionality to kill any older instance of itself when a new one starts up. 

-EVEGames