Joystick Support (was Re: Ren'Py 6.15 Pre-Releases)

[AxemRed]

(I've tried using joy2key before, and it was nothing but a massive hassle. Maybe it's got better, it was years ago, but it's not something I'd expect everyone to bother with.)

I've been using it for a couple of years now (since '09). No install, only takes about a minute or two (one time) to set up the proper key bindings.

FWIW Binding of Isaac doesn't have gamepad support and instead just tells you to download joytokey.

[Jake]

only takes about a minute or two (one time) to set up the proper key bindings

One time per game, mind. It's pretty unlikely that two separate games have exactly the same set of keys you want to map to exactly the same set of joypad inputs.

More likely if they're all Ren'Py games, sure, but let's not assume that that's all anybody ever plays. :P

[AxemRed]

Of course you need to set it up per game, but we were talking about Ren'Py.

[VNCreator]

Any idea when we can possibly get customizable screens to remap either keys or joystick inputs? For accessibility reasons, such a thing would be great.

I don't have plans to do either of these. If anything, I may take out joystick support - I don't think people use it very often.

...
Basically, joystick support is actually useful. Even I want to use it.

I have to agree with this. Built in joystick support is very useful. Even though it's not used often, I think it's a critical feature for some people. I might guess that the reason people don't use it very often is due to their own experiences. I'm in the software industry myself, and accessibility is something we're always careful to include.

I know that technically installing another utility will get the job done, and it's something we can do ourselves with little problem, it's not a very good solution for beginners.

[SundownKid]

The thing is, joysticks work with Renpy by default, so will that conflict with Joy2Key? I really think the player should be allowed to rebind ANY of their keys, that's standard in most games and probably visual novels.

[drvoke]

I'm really sorry to bump such an old topic, but I would really like confirmation on whether the plan to deprecate joystick support is still going forward? Native support for joystick navigation of the UI is one of the top reasons I picked Ren'Py for my project, beyond simply having a simple GUI framework that is easy to animate. It would be nice to know if joystick support intends to be dropped so I can re-tool my project sooner rather than later.

If joystick support will be dropped eventually, can anyone recommend an alternative GUI framework for Python that supports joystick events, or might have some insight on how complex it might be to add handlers for pygame joystick events to an existing UI framework like PySide or wxPython? I'm early enough in the project that I'm also able (but not happy) to switch to another OO language like Java if there are better recommendations.

[PyTom]

I don't have any plans to drop it, although I also don't have concrete plans to improve it.

The SDL2 code has support for joysticks, so I suspect it will be around for a long time.

[drvoke]

I am greatly relieved. Thanks, Tom!

[qirien]

Sorry to bump an old post, just wanted to add my support for this. I would like to release my game for OUYA, whose main input is a joystick, and couldn't get the current "Joystick..." screen to allow me to assign keys. If it was customizable, it would be easier to play around with it and see why it's not working.

[PyTom]

The OUYA support doesn't use a joystick at all - it maps the controller to to a keyboard.

[qirien]

Really? The joystick button is active and I can try to assign buttons... but it doesn't accept the buttons' input (maybe because it sees the button presses as a keyboard presses?). I was hoping to assign Y and U to "menu" and "skip"...