Built-in Wii Remote Support?

RetroArch General
#1

I realise there are ways to connect a Wii remote to a PC (Glovepie etc). However, I was wondering if it would be possible to add built-in support to RA.

I travel a lot and spend a lot of time playing emulators through RA on a Toshiba netbook. Sometimes I can hook it up to a telly, sometimes not…

The Wii remote is a handy (and portable) Bluetooth controller and can easily double as a light gun for games that require it. Genesis Plus GX on the Wii is perfect for such things.

It’s just a pity that such a potentially useful peripheral has no real support built into any PC emulator or front end (for want of a better term).

So, is this something that could possibly be added? :slight_smile:

#2

That’ll be a ‘no’ then… :stuck_out_tongue:

#3

I don’t know much about the subject, but I am interested in using a wii remote as a lightgun in the future myself.

Are you saying that wiimotes don’t work at all with RetroArch right now, or that they don’t work well?

I’m finding google results that look relevant ( https://www.google.com/search?q=retroarch+wiimote&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 ) but since I don’t have this controller I’m not able to determine whether there are any leads.

#4

To be honest, I’ve never tried to set up Glovepie or the like to see how well it would work. Having built-in RA support was just a thought after playing around with the Dolphin emulator. Having native emulation support is just so nice. Also, like I mentioned, Genesis Plus GX on the Wii is brilliant for that too. It’s just so nice to be able to play, say, Alex Kidd in Shinobi World using the Wiimote as a normal controller, then loading up Rescue Mission and instantly be able to point and use the Wiimote as a light gun. No configuration, no fuss, no extra layers of software. Just simple, nice and flexible for the end user. :slight_smile:

Like you, I don’t know much about it either. Perhaps it’s one of those things that seems ‘easy’ to an ignoramous like myself but is actually really convoluted to code in… Would’ve been nice though. It would just be ‘another string on RA’s bow’, to coin a phrase. :slight_smile:

#5

Adding native support for controllers is a bit of a bear to do cross-platform, and it typically requires running listening daemons with elevated privileges, which we’re not keen to do. The first person to document the gamecube-to-usb adapters was a RetroArch dev at the time and we chose not to integrate his findings for exactly these reasons.

That said, I personally have a dolphinbar and it allows you to connect wiimotes to it and then present them as generic gamepads that work just fine via RetroArch. It also has a mouse mode that works just dandy as a lightgun on Linux but jumps all over the place on Windows, making it unusable there.

#6

The Dolphinbar is exactly what I am looking at. I’m encouraged to hear it works in Linux so hopefully my prospects are good for use with Lakka (once I get around to it).

Honestly if it only takes one ‘extra’ $20 accessory like a Dolphinbar and then the wiimote works well, I think that could fairly be described as RA ‘supporting’ wii controllers.

#7

I can’t stand the Wii-mote personally, but I do intend to use them as lightguns for my own build.

It’s just super far down the list because the only game I REALLY care about using with a light-gun is Extreme Ghostbusters on PSX.

#8

Well, thanks for replying anyway. :slight_smile:

Off topic but does everyone just use the mouse to play lightgun games on PC then?

#9

[QUOTE=Hot Violet;43665]does everyone just use the mouse to play lightgun games on PC then?[/QUOTE]Yeah, pretty much. There are some USB light guns you can buy, but they’re basically just shitty wiimotes that act like mice :stuck_out_tongue: