Universal Control Remapper (UCR) - v0.1.22 28th Oct 2018

[Gilligan]

Dear EvilC,

I bought a Windows 10 machine plus two Xbox One wireless controllers, assuming that I could play games with them, almost in a plug and play way. Sometimes, I hate being so naïf!

I installed from Windows Store the Minion Rush game and it works as expected with the controller. I also installed Sonic Dash game from the same source, almost the same game than Minion Rush but it only works with mouse or keyboard input. No Xbox One controller recognition at all.

Using Gopher I managed to map the keyboard input but only at the D-Pad level, and I’d like to use the controller stick, like with Minion Rush.

1) Is that possible (I mean mapping the controller stick to the keyboard inputs) to be done through UCR?

I also play some Android games at emulated Android machines at the PC.

2) Can I use UCR so as to map keyboard input in the emulated Android machine?

Last but not least. I hate playing PC racing games with the Xbox One Controller. I have a couple of original Wiimote Controllers (plus their Nunchuks as well as their motion plus). Connecting the Wiimotes with the notebook is not at an issue at all (they pair OK through bluetooth) and they are being recognized at Dolphin emulator.

3) Can I use UCR so as to connect the Wiimotes and play non-Wii games at the notebook? If so, any hint of how to do it? Specifically I’d not only need the recognition of some bottoms but also the movement of the Wiimote simulating a wheel.

Probably off-topic, I connect the Wiimotes to Dolphin through the Dolphin auto-connect option (I can’t remember the exact name), that allows me not to reconnect them every time that I enter Dolphin.

4) Do you have any idea if connecting the Wiimotes through UCR may break the auto-connect option with Dolphin?

Thank you for your hard work.

[evilC]

Hi,

1) Yes, use the AxisToButton plugin to remap a joystick axis to keyboard keys.

2) In theory, yes. You may need to run UCR as admin to get some apps to accept keyboard / mouse input from UCR though.

3) UCR can only take input from joysticks that appear in the Game Controllers dialog in windows. If you have some custom driver or something that makes windows think it is a normal stick, then yes, otherwise not yet - maybe at some point.
I think you can read input from a wiimote using glovepie?

4) I have no idea how dolphin wiimote support works, so no idea.

[Gilligan]

Thanks for your prompt response.

Taking a look at games controller, the Wiimote bluetooth paired is listed as Nintendo RVL-CNT-01.

However, when I go to properties, the usual joystick GUI does not appear.

I also noticed that while pairing the Wiimote, the W10 bluetooth GUI treats it as an input device and shows an icon with a mouse and keyboard. I don't know if this makes any difference.

So, when you mentioned "appear in the Game Controllers dialog in windows" did you mean listed at the Game Controllers settings (as my Wiimote does) or did you mean having access to the joystick GUI under the properties tab?

I'm afraid that your answer would be the joystick GUI one and my Wiimote would not work with UCR.

Because I'd like to use UCR for my Xbox One controller, I'd need to have Vjoy installed (please correct me if I were wrong).

As far as I remember (I've been reading a lot and may be I'm confused) GloviePie is not compatible with Vjoy. So I'd rather go with FreePie instead, that is also based on Vjoy (I believe)

So, my setup would be Vjoy + UCR for the Xbox One Controller and Vjoy + FreePie for the Wiimote.

Do you see any problem with this setup? (btw I'm fully aware of that you're not a fortune teller and that every piece of hardware is a different story).

Just in case, I'm assuming that if it does not work with UCR it won't work with UJR, am I right?

[evilC]

MAJOR UPDATE

Loads of goodies in this one, here's the changelog:

Code: Select all

Key:
! : Warning
* : Comment
= : Change / Fix
+ : Added feature

0.0.14 - 19th June 2016
! INI (Settings) file format changed to 0.0.5. UCR will attempt to upgrade for you.
  YOU ARE ADVISED TO BACK UP YOUR UCR.INI BEFORE RUNNING THIS VERSION.
+ Adds new "Profile Inherits Plugins from parent" option to profiles.
  There is a new checkbox in the Profile Toolbox to turn this on or off for the current profile.
  If this option is on for a given profile, then when the profile is active...
  ... the profile's parent profile (if it has one) will also be active.
  This is useful when doing "Shift States", as it removes the need to duplicate plugins...
  ...in the "normal" and "shifted" profiles for things that don't change when shift is held.
= The Profile Switcher plugin now allows you to pick a profile for press and release.
  This was needed because two plugins in the same profile cannot be bound to the same button...
  ... so two profile pickers (one for press, one for release) bound tot he same button didn't work.
= Bindings to Mouse Wheel now properly simulate the up (release) event.
  Without this, if you remap mouse wheel to a key, that key is never released
= You can now control multiple vJoy sticks properly.
  Previously, UCR would only control one stick at a time, resulting in weird behaviour.
+ All pop-up windows / dialogs now appear in the center of the GUI.
= Numpad Enter is now bindable

OK, so the headline new feature is the "Profile Inherits Plugins from parent" option.
Here is an example of how this might work:
So you have a joypad, and you want to remap it to keyboard.
You want a normal remapping for most of the buttons on the joypad (for simplicity lets say button 1 to the 1 key, button 2 to 2 etc)
For the d-pad, you want to it to normally map to arrow keys, but when you hold the right shoulder button (button 6) the d-pad becomes WSAD.

Previously, you could do this, but you would have to make two profiles with all the remappings on, meaning that the things which did not change (eg the mapping for button 1->1, 2->2 etc) had to be added to both profiles (the "normal" and "shifted" profiles), making things cumbersome.

Now, we have a new solution.
Here is the main profile for the game "SomeGame"

The first plugin is a Profile Switcher, which is set up so that it switches to the child profile "shifted" on press of the shoulder button, and swaps back to the child profile "default" profile on release.
The other plugins are the remappings that you wish to be always active, regardless of the state of the shift button.

The SomeGame>>Default profile is the profile looks like this:

This profile holds remappings that are only active when shift mode is off. It remaps the hat to the arrow keys.
Note the "Profile Inherits..." checkbox (In the Profile Toolbox to the right) is checked. This means that when this profile is active, the parent profile (SomeGame) is also active - so the remappings that do not change still keep working while this profile is active. This is indicated by the fact the the SomeGame profile has a light green background in the Profile Picker.
Also note that the "Shifted" profile is orange. This indicates that the thread is active (but disabled) and ready to accept input at a moment's notice.

Now the final profile, SomeGame>>Shifted:

This remaps the d-pad to the WSAD keys instead. Like SomeGame>>Default, it also has the "Inherits" option enabled, so the remappings in SomeGame continue to work in this profile also.

With proper shift state support finally in, I will likely shift my focus from adding new functionality to bug fixes and optimizations.

[isamu]

Excellent work EvilC! Love the shifted feature! Once again you continue to re-invent the wheel with this awesome UCR app.

[isamu]

Hi EvilC I have a request. Maybe there's a way to do this already but I can't find out how. Can you please add the ability to copy and paste profiles, particularly within the UCR GUI? It's nice that we're allowed to have multiple profiles, but if we want to make a slight change and have two of the same only with that slight change between the two, we have to re-do the whole profile over again almost the same way. For example I just want to make a small change and change a couple axis to y instead of z. The rest I want to remain the exact same. But if I want to do that I need to make an entirely new profile from scratch and configure everything from the start again. A bit cumbersome. The ability to copy and paste profiles would be a God send! As a matter of fact, even better would be the ability to copy individual mappings and paste them into whatever profiles we want. THAT WOULD ROCK BIG TIME!!!!

Anyway please consider implementing this into the next version.

[evilC]

Duplicating profiles and plugins is something that I have always intended to support, and now that both profiles and plugins are indexed by GUID and not by name, this should be relatively simple.
Profiles would be pretty easy to work into the GUI, just add an extra "Copy" button in the Profile Toolbox.
Duplicating plugins (without duplicating the profile they are part of) will require a little more work.

I had planned on allowing you to move plugins also (Both between profiles and re-ordering within a profile), and my current plan was to add a "Show Plugins" option for the Profile Toolbox, to make plugins appear in the profile tree as child nodes of each profile. That way, I should be able to re-use the drag+drop code that handles moving of profiles.

So yes, everything that you asked for is planned, it's just gonna take some time.

[isamu]

Ahh, good to know they're coming! Excellent thank you sir and keep up the great work!

[john mad doe]

thank you very much for your work

UCR is very useful for me to merge all my control devices into one.

I have 6 différents devices but my game only accepts 3 or 4 ? . (flight simulation)

My config;
8 axes
111 buttons
2 Hat

it's a bit difficult for the user interface all these lines !

John

[evilC]

Yeah, I plan at some point in making "compound" controls (eg a number of button to button mappers in one plugin) but I am not really sure that much space can be saved by doing so.

[neohusky]

Hey evilC

I'm one of those unfortunate people that have a "mame cabinet" and have decided that I want to play some of the more recent Steam titles.
I've just stumbled upon your software and I'm wondering whether it wold suit my needs.

My current setup is a pair of player controls which consist of 2 joysticks https://www.ultimarc.com/ultrastik_info.html and buttons wired through a keyboard encoder https://www.ultimarc.com/ipac.html. It looks as though UCR would fit my needs in needing to get all the inputs and combine/merge them as a virtual device. Is this a fair assumption?

Finally, most Steam games (or at least the ones I've got) seem to prefer xinput (xbox 360) controllers. I've noticed that there has been some work with vJoy and xinput. Is there anything like that planned to be incorporated in UCR? Or would something like x360ce be sufficient?

Thanks heaps!!

[evilC]

So all the input is digital?
Either way, it shouldn't matter - yes, UCR will let you take all these inputs and map them to vJoy axes / buttons.

The vJoy XInput support should work out-of-the-box with UCR, as the vJoy API commands to manipulate a virtual xbox controller are the same as for normal vJoy. You must use the vJoy configuration tool to decide which of your vJoy sticks are XBox controllers, so it should be fairly transparent to UCR whether the vJoy stick you are controlling is a normal DirectInput stick or an XInput stick.

[neohusky]

Thanks for the quick reply. That awesome news that it'll hopefully solve my prob. I was worried I'd have to come up with a hardware solution to my prob which I wasn't really keen on.

I'll give it a go and see how I go. I got vJoy setup yesterday and read about the xbox360 work so I'll see if it's just as easy to setup.

Cheers

[neohusky]

Hi evilC

I'm trying out v.0.0.14 and I've added several button to button mappings which seems ok. I've just tried to add an AxisToAxis and the drop down for Input Axis doesn't display anything. I have 2 physical joystics connected to my win10 machine and 2 vJoysticks. When clicking on the dropdown control its as shows a slight change of state as if its displaying data below but is may be obscured.

Can you confirm its working with this version or have I done something wrong and UCR doesn't see my sticks?

[evilC]

I have heard of it failing to get the names of the joysticks, but in that instance, if you had two sticks (including vJoy) you would see:

Code: Select all

1:
2:

(ie numbers but no names)
Is that what you are seeing, or is there absolutely nothing?

[john mad doe]

Hi EvilC

In my game (IL2) the physical Joysticks are still Recognized instead of the virtual one.

Have I missed something ?

[evilC]

Hi EvilC

In my game (IL2) the physical Joysticks are still Recognized instead of the virtual one.

Have I missed something ?

When you say "Instead of", you mean when in the game's bind routine?

Or do you really mean that if the game is bound to the vjoy stick, it actually takes input from the physical stick?

[john mad doe]

Yes , in the game's bind routine, the game detects different joysticks. I think he should see only one, the vJoy device , no ?

[evilC]

At the moment, UCR has no way of "hiding" physical joysticks from a game. Unlike with keyboard and mouse, AHK provides no way of hiding the input of a joystick.
However, we are currently looking into some leads that would allow us to do this.

The workaround for the moment is the "GameBind Toggler" plugin. What this does is allow you to introduce a delay into all your joystick bindings.
So you enable it, then move the joystick, release the joystick, then click bind, then wait. GameBind will then move the virtual joystick after a short delay and the game will only see the virtual joystick move, so will bind to that.

[Guest]

thank you for your quick answer.
I'm will try that.

Cheers