Intellivision, twin stick approach with x360 controller

[Mu0n]

System: Pi 3
Retropie version: 4.2
Emulator: jzintv

I just got my first Pi this week and was immediately attracted to being able to play Night Stalker properly. While waiting for the Pi to arrive in the mail, I did seek out the PC port of jzintv and got myself acquainted with the keyboard hack file and tested a few different mappings. I've since moved on my efforts to the Pi as of yesterday.

One thing I'm wondering is if it would make sense to keep my wired x360 left analog stick as mapped to the intv disc controller (ie the default way of doing things) but map the right analog stick to the numeric keypad of the intv. controller. I know that the default approach is to keep the dpad on the left of the controller for that purposes but it's kind of awkward to use both hands on the left side of the controller so close together in a fast paced action game like Night Stalker.

Goal: map only 4 directions from the x360's right analog stick to the numkeypad (2, 6, 8, 4 for shooting upward, right, downward, left), properly manage the push and rels launch parameter for that stick in emulators.cfg so that it doesn't detect it too easily, use 4dir for that stick while still allowing 16 or 8dir for the left stick (for disc purposes).

My understanding is that anything in the keyboard hack file that starts with JS1 is for a physical second controller. So far, I only have the one wired x360 controller so I have to restrict myself to using JS0. However, I'd like to be able to use and map both analog sticks. Is it possible to use js0 axis 2 and 3 (what I'm guessing are respectively the horizontal axis and vertical axis of the right analog stick) and map them to num keypad intv. buttons? My impression is that you can't after many attempts. I'm under the impression that you can't define two xaxis and two yaxis on the same js0="" parameter in emulators.cfg.

Maybe it's just not possible, or not accurate/responsive enough and I should just use the 4 buttons on the right of the x360 for the 4 directions of shooting for Night Stalker? Would love to hear what you've done specifically for that game.

[dudleydes]

@Mu0n I am playing Intellivision games such as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Tron Deadly Discs and sports titles that require directional passing or shooting as twin stick shooters, mapping the number keys to the right analog stick. I achieved this using xboxdrv which will maps my PS3 controller to a virtual XBox360 controller and swapping the D-pad (hat axis) for the right analog stick.

You can find my xboxdrv config file, intellivision.xboxdrv and the keyboard hackfile hackfile.kbd at my Gist page. To run games with this mapping, I added a new entry jzintv-xboxdrvin the emulators.cfgfile found in /opt/retropie/configs/intellivision. Then when I launched a game, I used the runcommand menu to select jzintv-zboxdrv.

More info on configuring xboxdrv can be found here. I'm not sure if you'd get conflicts with the Xpad driver. Hopefully somebody could advise.

For Night Stalker, I created a specific keyboard hack file, Night Stalker (1982) (Mattel).int.kbd , mapping the keys 2,4, 6 and 8 to the four face buttons. I have a few other games for which I created a specific keyboard hack file so to get these working, I created a script, jzintv.shthat will launch titles with a keyboard hack file named the same as the rom plus a .kbd extension. I then added the jzintv-specific entry to emulators.cfg and used the runcommand menu as before.

You can find all my Intellivision configs files at the Gist page.

[Mu0n]

@dudleydes I'm almost done revamping my config files. One thing that took a lot of work is that your .kbd mappings are totally different than mine since I use a 360 wired controller. I think I've seen your post elsewhere on the web, but it was clear from the get go that you were using a ps3 controller, so I didn't push far with it then.

Also, following the steps in installing xboxdrv, the event labels associated with my controller are totally different from yours, and you seem to skip the rc.locale thing altogether if I'm not mistaken. There are some annoyances from xboxdrv: it can detect the L2 and R2 triggers as ABS stuff, but jzintv refuses to detect it, since it'd want a button behavior there instead. This severely reduces the amount of maps I can do.

I'll post more about my goals later, and how they've adjusted to something realistic thanks to your help.

[Mu0n]

Goal before I read your post:
Use the left thumb stick for disc (16dir)
Use the right thumb stick for shooting (4dir)
Note: this isn't possible as per the keyboardhack documentation

What you're doing for night stalker:
Use the left thumb stick for disc (16dir)
Use the triangle, square, etc for shooting

What you're doing for Tron and some sports games:
Use the left dpad for disc (4 or 8dir)
Use the right thumb stick for shooting (numpad 1 to 9 except 5)

What I want to do for Night Stalker :
Use the left dpad for disc (4dir)
Use the right thumb stick for shooting (1 to 9 except 5)

I feel my goal gives me the best of both worlds. The dpad is more accurate for movement and does away with deadzones and push and rels tweaking. The right thumb stick for shooting will do nicely since it doesn't have to discriminate for diagonal directions.

[mediamogul]

@Mu0n

There are some annoyances from xboxdrv: it can detect the L2 and R2 triggers as ABS stuff, but jzintv refuses to detect it, since it'd want a button behavior there instead. This severely reduces the amount of maps I can do.

You can convert your controller's analog trigger input to digital by adding:

--trigger-as-button

to your xboxdrv command. It's detailed more thouroughly in the guide here.