Author Topic: Gamepad Emulator why not? (Read 54197 times)

allroy1975 · « **Reply #40 on:** September 04, 2003, 02:12:51 am »

in my very first post I made reference to a thread that asked this:

Quote

How do you guys do to play recent games like NHL, Madden etc. with a I-pac? I mean is pretty rare we can use the 2P since they don't let us remap it and I dont want to use a regular joypad on my cabinet.

Can we hack a USB joypad only on the 2P and let the I-pac plug too? Do you think any conflict will happen between those two or the joypad will work only with the game who need it?

I had obviously had the same problem with Virtua Tennis and figured it happend (and will continue to happen) in any EA Sports Game. Since I'm a HUGE fan of the NHL series and it was a big part of the reason I made a 4 Player CP, I could see it being a problem when I went to set up that game as well.

I'm guessing that most modern games (EA and such) will use the Keyboard as input for 1 player and expect the other 3 to have joysticks/keypads. Because PPJoy seemed to be on the verge of solving the problem and because I could see other people were interested (and I could see it becoming even MORE of an issue later on as more games go to this format) I pushed the Issue.

Basicly what it boils down to is this: I didn't build a 4 Player CP and put a 2200XP chip with a GeForce 4 in the machine just to play Donkey Kong.

I'm gonna make 1 more post (as Dion just e-mailed me again, with the Source code and an updated version of his program) and then I'm ready to let this thread fade away.

allroy1975 · « **Reply #41 on:** September 04, 2003, 02:21:48 am »

From Dion:
Hi guys,

Here is the final version of PPJoyKey. The changes are:
- Allows you to select the keys to use from a dropdown list
- Option to scan for keys to use
- Status display - whether it successfully opened the PPJoy
virtual joystick device
- Fixed the DrWatson (access violation) that would occasionally
occur in the original.

I include the source for the curious...

From Allroy:
I put these up on a web site if you want them:
http://allroy.bigdrillcar.com/mame/zips/PPJoyKey.zip <-- The program
http://allroy.bigdrillcar.com/mame/zips/PPJoyKey_source.zip <-- The Source

You may need to right click on these and do a save, but they should work.

Thanks again to everyone.
Mission accomplished.

Okay, this is lame..but I just thought since it's also fixing a problem with EA Sports games...maybe we could say that now....
"If it's in the Game, It's in the MAME"
uhh...okay, good night everyone!

cobelli · « **Reply #42 on:** September 04, 2003, 01:54:50 pm »

Well, you beat me to the punch. I was gonna upload the new stuff

Anyway, Thanks again Deon and allroy and I am glad we got the problem fixed (even though I don't even have virtua tennis

)

- Cobelli

Justin · « **Reply #43 on:** September 07, 2003, 04:04:01 am »

What a coincidence... I've been trying to figure out how to get Virtuatennis to run on my 2 player cab, and decided to search the BYOAC for a solution. What do you know! This thread had the solution, and it is incredibly recent too...

Thanks to everyone for your efforts. This is awesome!

JODY · « **Reply #44 on:** September 08, 2003, 11:18:27 pm »

I've got the source and will make improvements and post a reply back on where to download. Don't hold your breath because it isn't top priority...yet.

Zzap · « **Reply #45 on:** September 09, 2003, 01:50:43 am »

This has to be one of the most usefull pieces of software for so many people with keyboard based cabs! Thanks guys for chasing this up, and of course to the author Dion!

Looking forward to some EA Sports games now, and also Virtua Tennis by the sounds of it!

Popcorrin · « **Reply #46 on:** October 22, 2003, 06:29:57 pm »

I think this software is awesome. I use mamewah as a frontend for my pc games and I was wondering if anyone knew if it was possible to fire up ppjoykey when certain games were started. Maybe by utilizing a command line option in mamewah or possibly setting up a bat file to start both the game and ppjoykey when that game was chosen?

TalkingOctopus · « **Reply #47 on:** October 22, 2003, 07:59:23 pm »

Quote from: Popcorrin on October 22, 2003, 06:29:57 pm

I think this software is awesome. I use mamewah as a frontend for my pc games and I was wondering if anyone knew if it was possible to fire up ppjoykey when certain games were started. Maybe by utilizing a command line option in mamewah or possibly setting up a bat file to start both the game and ppjoykey when that game was chosen?

A bat file is the way to go. To get it to work in mamewah, you may need to make a shortcut to the bat file and have mamewah use the shortcut.

Popcorrin · « **Reply #48 on:** October 23, 2003, 06:32:02 pm »

Thanks for the advice.

Bill_S · « **Reply #49 on:** October 30, 2003, 06:57:49 am »

I just found this thread in a search last night.
Does the method described here work for any PC game, or just Virtua Tennis?
I have Virtua Tennis and am looking forward to trying it on that game but would also like to be able to make it work on the EA Sports games (NHL 2K2 escpecially).

allroy1975 · « **Reply #50 on:** October 30, 2003, 09:55:48 am »

will work for any game that uses joystick input.

Bill_S · « **Reply #51 on:** October 30, 2003, 08:30:53 pm »

OK,
I set it up and it works great for NHL 2k2!
I can't seem to get it to work with Virtua Tennis, though.
When I launch the virtua tennis configuration utility, I think it only sees my keyboard.
It only lets me pick 1 player and the arrows under the picture of the keyboard don't seem to do anything.
Did you have to do anything special to make this work with virtua tennis?

One thing to note - I downloaded all the files from the key2joy web site. The version was newer than what you guys have posted here in the forum (dated 10/7 I think).
Does anyone have this working in virtua tennis with the latest version?

One more thing - I'm running Win XP if that matters.

allroy1975 · « **Reply #52 on:** October 31, 2003, 09:49:27 am »

OH YEAH!
I can't beleive I didn't tell anyone this....I must have..

I DID!
it was in a Quote from Deon
here it is:

Quote

It looks like Virtua Tennis ignores any joystick with more than
4 (I think) axes - what this can't be no friggin' joystick!
The PPJoy virtual joysticks by default has 8 axes... See the
problem? [Virtua Tennis also ignores joysticks with less than
4(?) buttons it seems]. Very temperamental little piece of
software!

PPJoy makes provision for changing the number of axes a joystick
reports - but I haven't yet figured out all the snags. Mainly it
makes the Game Controllers control panel applet DrWatson :-( but
everything else seems fine.

I attach a special version of PPortJoy.cpl that has this extra
functionality
enabled. Copy it over the existing one in the System32 directory.

Then:
- Open the PPJoy control panel applet. Select one of the Virtual
joysticks.
- Click on Mapping
- Select "Modify the interface mapping for the IOCTL..." (bottom)
option
and click on Next.
- Click on Next (Create or Modify the mapping)
- Change the number of Axes to 4 (from the drop-down) and click Next
- Click Next (leave the number of buttons unchanged)
- Click Next (leave Axes mapping unchanged)
- Click Next (leave Button mapping unchanged)
- Click on Finish

I have no idea why someone would have their setup program look at how many axes a joystick has and ignore certain ones...but your MAME controller won't have more than 4 so you shouldn't need to re-configure it every time you go back and forth between NHL and VT.

hope that helps
let us know.
I bet it will though.

Allroy

Bill_S · « **Reply #53 on:** October 31, 2003, 04:57:22 pm »

I tried doing this, but the options on that screen are grayed out.
It won't let me change the number of axes.
I must be having an idiot attack again.
Any idea on why the screen is grayed out and won't let me make changes?

Update:
I tried to get the modified cpl file you linked to on page 1, but the linkappears to be dead?

allroy1975 · « **Reply #54 on:** October 31, 2003, 07:36:34 pm »

Sorry about that. I fixed the link it should point to
http://allroy.bigdrillcar.com/mame/zips/PPortJoyfix.zip

Okay...so...now let us know.

Allroy

Bill_S · « **Reply #55 on:** October 31, 2003, 09:09:34 pm »

That worked!
Thanks for the help.
I now have NHL 2k2 and Virtua Tennis running with virtual controllers.
Thanks again!!

Justin · « **Reply #56 on:** April 25, 2004, 05:52:36 pm »

Well, I finally got VirtuaTennis for PC, and installed it in my cab.

I can confirm that with the latest incarnation of PPjoy

PoGGiE · « **Reply #57 on:** January 05, 2005, 05:54:23 pm »

Wow guys, this looks just like what I was looking for. I used to play a lot of sensible soccer and always wanted to play it multi. Now, a very good chap has created his own 'version' of sensi with player-manager, roleplaying, and many other extensions of the original classic we know and love!! Only problem: unless you want to play with cursors and CTRL key, you have to play with a gamepad.

SHOCK!!

HORROR!!

I hate gamepads of all descriptions and want to play sensi with my old keys. However, apparently this would be too much work and will only be in the next version of his game which will be a completely new, 3D extravaganza.

So I'm very hopeful that this PPJOY will solve my problems!!!

I'll let you know.

By the way, the game is shareware (but its full functionality free I think).

Its downloadable on

http://soccer.a-osswald.de/

Thanks Guys!!!!

PoGGiE

allroy1975 · « **Reply #58 on:** January 05, 2005, 07:36:39 pm »

I'm still subscribed to this thread and I LOVE it when this program helps people out...even though I had nothing to do with it...besides pestering the author to make it....

Good luck!

Allroy

DreamWeb · « **Reply #59 on:** April 10, 2005, 01:32:50 am »

This is a great help!

I've now got Virtua Tennis running with two players.

My only question is... If I understand correctly, I have to have ppjoykey.exe running in the background with my .ini loaded , correct? Is there a way I can add this to a mamewah command line.. so I can launch Vtennis from Mamewah (and have ppjoykey and my ini load at the same time?) Ppjoykey.exe doesn't seem to want to load the ini I have made via command line.

I know I could just load it up when I start windows each time.. but, this would make things a bit more clean. Any ideas?

d.

cyro · « **Reply #60 on:** April 21, 2005, 02:58:14 pm »

Check www.groovygamegear.com They have gamepad emulators. The GPWiz RULES!!! joystick plus 28 buttons you can't go wrong.

cyro · « **Reply #61 on:** April 21, 2005, 03:00:31 pm »

Ah...it's done. www.groovygamegear.com Plus, hardly ANY PC games support keyboards properly. Most don't allow you to configure the right keys and NONE allow you to play 2 players.

This would be super hard. Input is one of the lowest levels of programming and bypassing it is a real pain. Not to mention the fact that every pc game known to man supports keyboard keys, but not all support joysticks.

So what exactly would be the point?

daveg2000 · « **Reply #62 on:** April 28, 2005, 02:55:39 pm »

Quote from: allroy1975 on October 31, 2003, 09:49:27 am

It looks like Virtua Tennis ignores any joystick with more than
4 (I think) axes - what this can't be no friggin' joystick!
The PPJoy virtual joysticks by default has 8 axes... See the
problem? [Virtua Tennis also ignores joysticks with less than
4(?) buttons it seems]. Very temperamental little piece of
software!

PPJoy makes provision for changing the number of axes a joystick
reports - but I haven't yet figured out all the snags. Mainly it
makes the Game Controllers control panel applet DrWatson :-( but
everything else seems fine.

I attach a special version of PPortJoy.cpl that has this extra
functionality
enabled. Copy it over the existing one in the System32 directory.

Then:
- Open the PPJoy control panel applet. Select one of the Virtual
joysticks.
- Click on Mapping
- Select "Modify the interface mapping for the IOCTL..." (bottom)
option

daveg2000 · « **Reply #63 on:** April 29, 2005, 01:11:20 pm »

Anyone that can help me with this?

I got the software installed now (further than my last post)

I have 2 'virutal' joysticks installed and recognized by windows
but when I go to the button configuration,

I can enter the info for the first button... and it works fine.

When I go and enter in which keys to use for the 2nd joystick,
I see the setttings that I used for Joy1.

Then if I overwrite those settings for Joy2, Joy2 works just
fine in games (and now Joy1 doesnt work)

If I go back into configure the buttons, and look at Joy1's
settings, it has the settings from Joy2....

I just seem to be going in a loop here, where only
one set of commands are allowed for both sticks.

any ideas?

Glaine · « **Reply #64 on:** December 28, 2006, 05:18:55 pm »

Sorry to post on a 2 year old topic, but I wanted to:

1) Thank you guys for all this good info, I recently had this problem and found this post searching yahoo.

2) Mention that you have to have 2 instances of the joystick emulator running if you want to have 2 fake joysticks. I save my settings for each stick in its own file and load each seperate window up with its config file when I need 2 emulated joysticks. It is a pain but at least there is a solution.

3) I need help - if I have any emulated joysticks running, it gives Mamewah lots of trouble, I just uninstalled all emulated joysticks and it is running great again now. Mainly, whenever I exited Mamewah, I was getting a "Windows couldn't shut this down right, make a report?" pop-up, along with other crashes while the program was running. Any ideas on how I can prevent this? I'm sure it's an input recognition problem, but I don't know how to disable Mamewah from reading for joysticks (didn't see a setting for this in the ini files). I wasn't actively running the joystick emulation program, but the joys were still setup in the control panel to be used.

Thanks.

allroy1975 · « **Reply #65 on:** December 29, 2006, 01:57:43 am »

hmm..never used it on my mamewah cab. I haven't even played VT or NHL or anything on that cab in a LOOONG time....sorry dude.

blues11 · « **Reply #66 on:** July 21, 2007, 10:11:55 am »

Hi,
Firstly, I must say it's a great idea to design a software that allows playing multyplayer games on a keyboard.
But it didn't work for me. I installed it successfully, add the "Virtual Joystick", opened the latest PPJoyKey you posted up here (it says "Successfully opened PPJoy Virtual Joystick" (on the bottom)), set the keys and minimize it. But the game doesn't recognize it. I don't know what to do... The game requests a gamepad, so maybe this could be the problem since it's a virtual JOYSTICK?

Any help?

Moose13 · « **Reply #67 on:** July 24, 2007, 01:00:31 am »

Hope someone can help:
I tried following all the directions given. When I open ppjoycom.exe I select the .ini (which I made in ppjoykey.exe) and it says waiting for stream init.
I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Do you need to run ppjoydll.exe as well (I tried that too) Seems that I'm running in circles.

Looks like I may need a bat file, but I think that only would start the ppjoycom.exe with the correct ini file, which I pick the ini file manually.

Thanks

Moose13 · « **Reply #68 on:** July 27, 2007, 06:34:22 pm »

Bump for some help.......

Haggar · « **Reply #69 on:** December 18, 2008, 04:51:21 am »

I've tried this solution ad works also with virtua tennis 3.

Anyone knows how to run ppjoy minimized and close it with a command line?

gonzo90017 · « **Reply #70 on:** December 18, 2008, 12:28:16 pm »

Are you running it through AtomicFE? If so, it has an option to launch a program before and after you launch a game.

Haggar · « **Reply #71 on:** December 19, 2008, 04:51:00 am »

Yes I'm using atomic FE.
I've used that option, but when i exit from the game I've launched, the system hangs on the ppjoy window and I have to hit the CLOSE button and confirm with YES. So I have to use mouse/keyboard to do that on the cab

gonzo90017 · « **Reply #72 on:** December 19, 2008, 02:44:18 pm »

You could make an Autoit script to close ppjoy when you exit the game.

Haggar · « **Reply #73 on:** December 22, 2008, 10:47:14 am »

Great suggestion.
I've tried on a normal PC and it works. Now I have to try this stuff on the cab.

This tool is very very nice.

Thank you

tekopaa · « **Reply #74 on:** January 11, 2009, 02:53:01 pm »

Can anyone solve EA SPORTS NHL 2007-2009 problems with PPJOY virtual joystic. When i start the game joystick moves byself when in game it works but not in menus?

... problem stop if disable virtualjoystick from device manager.. Ihave tested with other games no problem there??


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