So I found this app, called ‘Controller Companion’. It works with Xbox 360 controllers, and PS3 controllers if you’re using the SCP driver (it’s the one you want). I’ve tried various keymappers and they all have their flaws. PGP (and now Padstarr) is great for a 1 player setup and clearly has the most options, but sucks (hard) at a multiplayer setup. Xpadder is more reliable with a multiplayer setup, but has annoying quirks that you have to be become aware of and then work around. Plus, you can’t map anything to the Xbox/PS button.
But controller companion, with the one glaring omission of not being able to custom bind commands to the analog sticks, is reliable, intuitive, and has great functionality. It has this spiral virtual keyboard that appears when you click the left analog. Typing with a controller using that actually isn’t too terrible.
Controller companion only works with Xbox controllers (or controllers that your PC thinks is an xbox controller).
The one caveat, that is both a con and a pro, you can’t customize profiles for each gamepad. It’s a con for obvious reasons, but it’s a pro, because if there are situations where you need all 3 gamepads to have certain mappings/commands, this is a quick and easy solution.
I use Controller Companion in combination with Xpadder.
One nice thing in particular, is being able to map custom commands, like open a file. This lets you do a ton of cool stuff if you’re creative.
Like, for example, he has ‘switch monitor’ built into the app, so you can switch to your TV from the gamepad. I do this by pressing PS button+DPad UP. When I switch back, I wrote a batch file that switches the display back, and then opens ‘Desktop OK’ to automatically resort the icons, since windows likes to rearrange everything every time the resolution changes.
Another batch file I wrote shuts down any instance of Xpadder, reopens another Xpadder.exe (I have 3 of them in 3 different locations with their own cfg files) based on whatever controller I’m getting ready to use, then moves my NEStopia.rmp file to a temp folder, so that the DualShock 3 controllers get Square and X as B and A, and the Arcade sticks get the standard horizontal layout.
Soooo, the one I’m currently working on, and hopefully one of you brilliant individuals can help me sort this out, is 3 different batch files, that will toggle to make one of the following, RetroArch1.cfg, RetroArch2.cfg, and RetroArch3.cfg, into RetroArch.cfg. Only, one of the three will always be named RetroArch.cfg. I need three things, 1. None of the files gets overwritten, 2. If the same batch file accidentally gets execuated twice, it knows not to overwite anything, 3. It accounts for all possible scenarios.
I have it working with two files so far. But trying to figure out how to get 3 files working is a little beyond my n00b sklls. This is what I have so far:
Arcade Sticks.bat
if exist RetroArch1.cfg ( rem file already exists ) else ( rename RetroArch.cfg RetroArch1.cfg rename RetroArch2.cfg RetroArch.cfg )
…and the 2nd one,
DualShock 3.bat
if exist RetroArch2.cfg ( rem file already exists ) else ( rename RetroArch.cfg RetroArch2.cfg rename RetroArch1.cfg RetroArch.cfg )
So, any ideas on how I can make this work? Or, just general comments on keymapper software are welcome.