Multiple controllers with multiple profiles

[jwilson56]

I have to say after pulling my hair out for days now I really think the whole profile function for Xpadder sucks.

In JoytoKey you can have one profile that includes all controllers and the key binds assigned to them. So when you call up for instance IL-2 1946 it will load in all the key binds for the stick, throttle, pedals and whatever other controllers you have. Make any changes to the binds for any of these controllers and save the profile and it will save the entire setup for all your controllers.

Now it seems that Xpadder profiles do not work that way at all. Each tab sits a controller and each of those controllers can have multiple profiles. In fact that is all they can have... individual profiles. So if you want to play IL-2 1946 then you need to load in each controllers profile for that game and in the right order as the profile have no idea as to what controller is was saved for. So when you want to use Autoprofile you are forced to have it load each profile separately and in the right order. In fact if you are going to play a game that doesn't use a particular controller your forced into having a blank profile or the order gets screwed up and things go wacko.

There should be a Master profile for each game you are playing that includes all the controller settings in one file. This is just plain common sense. Maybe there are not many people using Xpadder with 7 controllers and using it for 5 different simulators. As the program functions now it is a pain to use profiles (and that is after spending days trying to understand how it stores and loads profiles).

I would seriously ditch Xpadder in a minute if it were not for a couple key functions that it has that JoytoKey doesn't have. One is the ability to take a toggle switch from my throttle and turn it into a momentary press of a key. I see no way to do that with JoytoKey.

So you have a great app here and most likely many are using it with success for Xbox controllers type situations but for using it with multiple controllers and for multiple games it really needs some fixing.

If per chance I have failed to see how it might be possible to save a set of controller configurations to a single profile so that you can later load that back in and have all the controls setup properly then please explain. If not then please fix this.

[Primal Fear]

I cannot give you a real solution and it's not my turn to possibly add such a feature, but I understand your problem from my own experience. Although with only up to three controllers but partially only using the third one for specific games (or only using the first one but having at least to create a second AutoProfile entry that Xpadder doesn't load the profile for the currently selected controller).

I think it should work good to create the list manually in a spreadsheet. Basically you can always start (a saved spreadsheet) with a column that lists the empty profile for every controller and an empty column for the program. Maybe another column in front that gives you the controller names in the correct order that you will not copy in the end would be useful too.
Then you manually replace the path for the profile of the controllers that you want to use with the path to the respective profile. Then you take the name of the window or the path of the program and add it into one line of the program column and copy it to the other ones. Now you make sure that Xpadder is not running (otherwise Xpadder would overwrite everything when you close it) and copy&paste these 2 columns into the Autoprofile list in the Xpadder.ini. The alphabetic order doesn't matter so you can simply put your list on the end, Xpadder will fix the order automatically (i know that for sure).
I will test this soon and perhaps make a more detailed tutorial. If you want to try that yourself, don't forget to make a copy of your Xpader.ini before.

[Oke_Doke]

I cannot give you a real solution and it's not my turn to possibly add such a feature, but I understand your problem from my own experience. Although with only up to three controllers but partially only using the third one for specific games (or only using the first one but having at least to create a second AutoProfile entry that Xpadder doesn't load the profile for the currently selected controller).

I think it should work good to create the list manually in a spreadsheet. Basically you can always start (a saved spreadsheet) with a column that lists the empty profile for every controller and an empty column for the program. Maybe another column in front that gives you the controller names in the correct order that you will not copy in the end would be useful too.
Then you manually replace the path for the profile of the controllers that you want to use with the path to the respective profile. Then you take the name of the window or the path of the program and add it into one line of the program column and copy it to the other ones. Now you make sure that Xpadder is not running (otherwise Xpadder would overwrite everything when you close it) and copy&paste these 2 columns into the Autoprofile list in the Xpadder.ini. The alphabetic order doesn't matter so you can simply put your list on the end, Xpadder will fix the order automatically (i know that for sure).
I will test this soon and perhaps make a more detailed tutorial. If you want to try that yourself, don't forget to make a copy of your Xpader.ini before.

That sounds promising, Looking forward to the tutorial.

[Primal Fear]

The Spreadsheet is ready. It became a little bit more complicate, but still the spreadsheet is as easy to use as possible.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... sp=sharing
You can test it directly in the spreadsheet, the functional parts that don't need and don't should be changed should be locked for everyone except me. If you want to use the spreadsheet in future you should download it via File->Download as->.xslx or .ods (according if you use Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Calc) or you save a copy in your Google+ account.

The grey cells are the ones that await your input. The current position of the empty profile is from the Xpadder.exe under Profiles/empty. If you use a different file structure or a different name for the empty profile you need to change this. But if you have a local copy, it will anyways stay saved for the next use. After you have defined the watch and the profiles for the specific controllers you can simply copy the data in column B.
If you shouldn't for example use controller 6,7 and 8 (or don't even have so many) for the respective game you can omit these entries for the last three ones, but then Xpadder will not load the empty profile for them. So if you want to use them, but not with Xpadder, you still need these entries with the empty profiles to make sure there is not still a profile loaded from a game before.

Paste the copied data simply at the end of the AutoProfile list in the Xpadder.ini. As already mentioned, make sure that Xpadder is not running before you do that. When you now start Xpadder, it will integrate the numbers of the new AutoProfile entries in the current list and correctly saves that when you close Xpadder the next time.

And btw, I've found out an unpleasant detail of the AutoProfile feature. It is limited to 255 entries (my spreadsheet always puts the new ones at the end), so with 8 controllers you are technically limited to 31 entries if you always have one for every controller.

I suppose that should be enough information for you two to test it.

[Ryu]

I hope this is the fix for my situation. I am glad to have found this and will test this out and get back to you guys. I am trying to have different controllers assigned to the same profile. I need to get a classic gamecube controller and Xbox360 controller using the same profile.

I have a frontend setup with batch files. I don't want to have to rewrite the batch files. And if I rewrite the batch files it still wont change the fact that Xpadder will not allow multiple controllers to be set to one profile. Which is what I need it to do to work with my setup.

A little bit of background for you guys. I am using Steam as a frontend. I have written batch files that allow me to launch a game from big picture mode. I have one profile named "Steam" the other profile named that of the console/emulator for this example "Nintendo Gamecube". From big picture mode I launch the game, play, close game, and go back into the steam big picture mode all from the controller.

My .bat files follow this order. They launch Xpadder, load a profile, then launch the emulator, then insert the game, on exit of the game and emulator, the "Steam" xpadder profile is loaded. This works perfect as long as I use the same controller. I am using an Xbox360 wireless.

I recently got adapters for my classic controllers. I want to be able to use either a xbox360 controller or a gamecube controller, interchangeably. The buttons on the 360 and the gamecube controller don't line up one for one. For example the "Start" button according to the control panel for Xbox360 is "Button 8" the "Start" button on the gamecube controller according to the control panel is "Button 1".

With my one profile approach, when I switch between controllers for that game, it gets kind of screwed up. I have tried several things and cant figure out how to get Xpadder to accomplish one profile with two different types of controllers. I have spent hours mapping to several sets. Basically putting the xbox360 controller on set 1 of the profile and gamecube controller mappings on set 3 for example. But this gets convoluted and messed up. I still end up hitting button combos while playing that get me switching sets when I don't want to.

I will give this auto profile approach a try and see what happens! Thanks for the spreadsheet!

[Primal Fear]

You can actually load the same profile to different controllers, but because of the different layout of the (Wii, I suppose) Classic controller the button will be mixed up.
I think what you need is just the AutoProfile feature and one profile for each controller. Also both controllers always need to be connected.

[Ryu]

Thanks for the quick response!

I tried that route and it's not quite enough to get what I need done and work well within my system.

It's difficult for me to explain. Cause I have batch files that take care of some steps for me. I don't think there is an easy way to share 1 profile with a classic gamecube controller and a xbox360 controller. I am really close though. I tried the autoprofile spreadsheet and tried to have Xpadder load profiles for me it did work and the autoprofile did find the right one for the right game etc. Great tool there. However, my setup and how I use it this approach is not going to work for me.

I still need to figure out how to get 2 controllers to coexist in one profile.

I think I might need to assign one set to one controller and one set to another controller. Can this be done from within the same profile? The two controllers are different enough in button layout that they don't overlap to much. There is just one right trigger button on the gamecube controller that is screwing this up for me. Here is the button layout to help explain what I mean.

Xbox Controller Buttons
Button 1 = A
Button 2 = B
Button 3 = X
Button 4 = Y
Button 5 = L Shoulder
Button 6 = R Shoulder
Button 7 = Back
Button 8 = Start
Button 9 = Left Stick
Button 10 = Right Stick

Gamecube Controller Buttons
Button 1 = Start
Button 2 = Y
Button 3 = X
Button 4 = B
Button 5 = A
Button 6 = Left Trigger
Button 7 = Right Trigger
Button 8 = Z
Button 9 = DPad Up
Button 10 = Dpad Down
Button 11 = Dpad Right
Button 12 = Dpad Left

Button 7 in the same layout is a problem for me. By having both controllers on one profile when I hit button 7 it gets kind of mixed up cause of the way I have my buttons mapped. When an xbox controller is plugged in everything works great, it was built on the 360 controller, when I plug in a gamecube controller when I hit the right trigger it does what the back button does on the xbox 360 controller.

I think the simplest solution for me would be to force a set within the profile to always be xbox360 controller and another set to always be gamecube controller. Is it possible to force 2 sets in the profile to be solely Xbox360 and 2 sets to be solely gamecube within the same profile? Can you point me in the right direction for that or am I totally out of bounds?

[Primal Fear]

If you would force to load the profile for a specific set if a different controller is connected that would be the same if you would want to load a different profile. But as the AutoProfile doesn't differentiate what controller currently is connected, this won't work no matter if with a different set or with a different profile.

You have three possibilities:
1. As already explained, you always leave both controllers connected. The AutoProfile feature can load a different profiles to different controllers according to the order of the controller, so you just need a second profile that is made for the gamcube controller.
2. You use a set selector to manually change the set when you use the gamecube controller.
3. The possibly perfect solution would be to use X360CE with Xpadder to make the gamecube controller work like a Xbox360pad for Xpadder. I know that that principally works, but I didn't test this enough to assure that definitely works without any problems with Xpadder.

[Ryu]

Thank you Primal! Ok so I didn't get very far with the X360ce program. One problem is that the Dolphin Emulator doesn't have a controller config setup like most PC games. So that won't work for me this go around.

I agree with you. I need to create 2 profiles and have them load in sequence. The only thing that is kind of an annoyance is that I will have to keep both controllers plugged in and on so that the correct profile loads with the correct controller.

I am going to try the autoprofile approach again. I am a bit confused as to how the spreadsheet works. Do I need to put a profile in the xpadder directory called "empty" for this to work? In the auto profile window do I need to keep everything active? Or should I deactivate some?

[Primal Fear]

X360CE has a graphical interface to configure it for any controller, simply make sure to download the full app (that automatically creates the necessary files) and not just the most recent file of the input hook.
Also, no dolphins

And sorry for the late reply, I had technical problems with my netbook that occupied my gaming PC followed by health problems lately.