Eduke32 controller issue - right-analog x-axis not responding at all

sleve_mcdichael

RPi 4, official power supply
RetroPie v4.7.12, built from official image download
Eduke32 installed from binary (built: Tue 24 Feb 2021 12:02:22 AM UTC)
"You are running the latest binary."
duke.rts and duke3d.grp from: Atomic Edition CD-ROM.

Controller: Vilros PS2-style controller (link)
Device name: "Microntek USB Joystick "
(14 spaces between "Microntek" and "USB"; ten spaces after "Joystick": Microntek\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ USB\ Joystick\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ .cfg)

Problem: R-Analog X/Y axes are swapped (I can fix), and X axis completely unresponsive (I am stumped).

Left/right on the right stick does nothing. Up/down turns me left and right. So I swapped the functions of the axes under gamepad setup (in-game): "right stick x-axis" becomes "looking" (up and down) and "right stick y-axis" becomes "turning". Now up/down on the stick looks up and down correctly, but left/right still do nothing.

I tried applying the settings from this topic to my eduke32.cfg file (adjusting for my swapped axes, and all my settings said ControllerAnalogAxes# instead of JoystickAnalogAxes#), and all it did was break my "strafing" axis (I presume it's the "saturate = 1000000" on that one that did it, but I'm not sure).

So I put the settings back to standard, and then tried applying both very large (999,999) and very small (1) values to scale, dead, and saturate for the "analog_turning" axis. Nothing.

As a last resort, I tried mapping every function in the file to "Fire" with:

sed 's/".*"/"Fire"/g' eduke32.cfg -i

I fixed the (now) SelectedGRP = "Fire" line back to say "duke3d.grp" and fired up my launch script. Started a game. Every button (except start, but including L3/R3), and every axis on the sticks, fired the gun, except Right Stick X-Axis. I also tried "analog_turning" and "Turn_left" in every slot. Results were similar, except the digital buttons did nothing with "analog_turning", as one would expect, except, oddly, the L2/R2 buttons (which on my controller are digital buttons, not analog axes, confirmed by jstest) still turned me (but both buttons turned me left -- this was with analog_turning set, not Turn_left.)

It seems as if that axis isn't being recognized at all. Any ideas what else I can try?

I don't think the controller is the problem; the sticks work just fine in retroarch emulators lr-tyrquake (with "Gamepad Modern" device type selected, and once I invert the Y-axis under the "options" menu, but that's not the axis that's giving me problems in eduke) and in lr-pcsx-rearmed.

sleve_mcdichael

I found a couple of threads relating to controller issues in eduke32; they both seemed to imply the issues had been fixed in later versions. So I went to check what version I have to see if it was the latest and, it seems RetroPie is using an older version of eduke32. Both the binary, and installing from source, give me a commit version dated 2019-09-08. I presume this is for good reason? Or is it just more of an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach, and using a "known good" (mostly) version?

This thread seems to detail the same problem (right-stick turning axis not recognized) and was then fixed, around April 2020. Is there a way for me to get the latest version, or does the script install one from two years ago specifically because it's the last one that works?

I've also borrowed a wired Xbox 360 controller to try in case it was something unique to my generic gamepad, but it was no different.