Game Controller

Table of Contents

• Example
• Available tags
• Controller address
• Peripheral location
• List item info
• See also
  • Development:

Used to display a game controller, with optional effects.

The game controller control is used for displaying a game controller, such as joysticks, keyboards, mice, lightguns, etc.

In v21 Omega, the control was expanded to give skinners more control over how it behaves, including manually specifying a controller to show, allowing for a fallback image, and applying a highlighting diffuse effect when the underlying controller is active.

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Example

<control type="gamecontroller">
      <description>My first game controller</description>
      <posx>80</posx>
      <posy>60</posy>
      <width>250</width>
      <height>200</height>
      <controllerid>game.controller.snes</controllerid>
</control>

---

Available tags

The default control tags are applicable to this control. Note that each tag is lower case only. This is important, as xml tags are case-sensitive.

In v21 and above, the control derives from an Image Control to allow for a fallback texture. All tags and attributes for images can be used, and any game-specific tags will cause the texture to be overridden.

The game-specific tags added in v21 are:

Tag	Description
controllerid	The add-on ID of the controller profile to render, e.g. game.controller.snes.
controllerdiffuse	A diffuse color used to highlight the controller when activity is detected on the in-game port or on the underlying peripheral held by the user.
controlleraddress	The in-game "address" of the controller, e.g. /1/game.controller.snes for a SNES controller connected to console port 1. Used to highlight the controller on port activity. Overrides <controllerid> and <portaddress>.
portaddress	The in-game "address" of the port the controller is connected to, e.g. /1 for port 1 of a SNES emulator. Used to highlight the controller on port activity.
peripherallocation	The location of the underlying peripheral providing input, e.g. /joystick/0 for the first physical controller held by the user. Used to highlight the controller on peripheral activity.

v21 Skinning engine changes:

The control has been greatly expanded to allow for more use cases in the new Player Viewer (GameAgents) dialog.

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Controller address

The controller address is connected to the in-game input. It's formed by the emulated console's port, followed by the controller ID.

For example, on SNES controllers, the address of the first port is /1. The address of a SNES controller connected to that port is /1/game.controller.snes.

Old consoles used multitaps (controller hubs) to allow for more players than console ports. A multitap connected to port /2 would have the address /2/game.controller.snes.multitap.

A SNES controller connected to port 1 on a multitap would then have the address /2/game.controller.snes.multitap/1/game.controller.snes.

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Peripheral location

Peripherals are located by a peripherals:// URI containing their peripheral bus as a hostname and a path to the peripheral. For example, keyboards have the location peripherals://application/keyboard.dev.

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List item info

List item info can be used for all tag values. For example, if the control definition looks like:

<itemlayout width="96" height="96">
      <control type="gamecontroller">
            <texture>$INFO[ListItem.Icon]</texture>
            <controllerid>$INFO[ListItem.Property(controllerid)]</controllerid>
      </control>
</itemlayout>

Static list items can be provided and each control will inherit the properties:

<content>
      <item>
            <icon>DefaultAddonNone.png</icon>
      </item>
      <item>
            <property name="controllerid">game.controller.snes</property>
      </item>
</content>

The in-game dialogs that highlight game controllers on button presses (GamePorts and GameAgents) use a similar strategy with list items populated by core.

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See also

Development:

• Add-on development
• Skinning