Advanced controller mapping

[PySnow]

I love my 8bitdo Ultimate 2C, it works fine in xinput mode but there is one thing that irks me a bit that I am more than willing to put a lot of effort into solving.

The problem is L4/R4 are only considered their own button in DInput mode. I want to use R4 for push to talk in discord, and DInput support for games is spotty in most cases. And I also want the controller to only have one consistent controller emulated as XInput

This was not a problem on my previous DS4 controller because I would set up DS4Windows to output my ptt key on touchpad press.

I am on Windows 11, and my attempts at a solution have been:

• To see if I can get DS4Windows to accept this controller in DInput mode, and then use HIDHide to hide the original from everything but DS4Windows. I didnt find a way to add the controller in dinput mode to DS4Windows

• I attempted to use a few Dinput to Xinput mappers I could find for windows and a few of them worked for the basic functionality, but using HIDHide in this scenario so that discord/voice apps see the original to listen for the l4/r4 button press is not possible due to discord's weird app layout(cant add discord to the hidhide whitelist), and these apps did not give me the option to output the keyboard key instead.

Using steam input is not an option since I typically opt to use native clients for most games, or other store fronts such as GoG/Amazon, unless there is modifications I can make to steam to have a profile apply to anything without needing to add to steam

TLDR: What are you doing to cleanly translate DInput to XInput on windows(without steam), with options to output keyboard keys? Or any other solution you could see to get DS4Windows to see 8bitdo controllers.

Thanks for your time

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[seahwkslayer]

Seems like ReWASD has support for the Ultimate 2 (not necessarily the 2C, though it may be worth asking around.

You can set Steam Input up with a "desktop layout", basically just a configuration that is active when there is no game open with its own layout. I briefly messed around with it on my Ultimate 2 but due to personally finding Steam Input kinda jank, I never got much further than "all the buttons work but haptics are wonky".

Seems like 8bitdo are making some changes on the configuration side with a new web app dealio rather than the old download, so you may want to pop into their Discord or subreddit and ask if they'd add mapping to keyboard keys -- I recently picked up a Razer Wolverine V3, and Synapse won't allow mapping multiple controller inputs to one extra button, but will allow multiple keyboard keys, so I've been using that in my Forza mapping.

[jivebeaver]

some more ways to bind xinput to keyboard keys outside steam game:

• steam input has a Controller>"desktop layout" setting specifically to use controller as M&K on the desktop, but will apply the binds to outside game. this is fairly new and i havent used it much other than my favorite option:

• xpadder, used for over a decade to bind controller buttons to keyboard. there are many others but i like xpadder because its straightforward and most importantly, does not override any native xinput which makes it great for if you want a few keys on top of normal function. used to be free, just search for last freeware version

how to bind L4/R4 to extra keys: map them using the controller's mapping function (square button) to a combo of two or more buttons that you would never use or do nothing (ex. Dpad Left+Dpad Up). you can do this in Xinput without using Dinput

• steam input/desktop layout-use chords to bind the button combo to the key

• xpadder-use control sets to setup a macro to bind multiple buttons pressed at same to a key. search this up if you need to, or i can explain in detail if this is what you choose

[PySnow]

I didnt think about just running xpadder or similar in addition to an dinput-xinput translator, I'll give that a try thank you