5 replies to this topic

[neotokeo2001]

Just got a crystal blue USB Joystick made by Legacy Engineer. How do I get it to work with Stella? I am sure that I am overlooking something obvious.

[neotokeo2001]

Nevermind. I got it...

[stephena]

I know you say you got it, but it might be useful to state what you did (so that others won't have similar questions). In my experience, there's a few things that may need to be done for Stella to use your joysticks:

• Install drivers for the device, so that the operating system (and hence Stella) can 'see' it
  
• Make sure to plug it in before starting Stella (joysticks plugged in while Stella is running won't be detected until the next program launch)
  
• Check the event mapping, to map events on the joystick to appropriate actions in Stella (not always necessary, since the defaults usually work fine)

The next release of Stella (due very soon) will improve this last part in particular, since the mappings will be saved per-device, so that even if you unplug it and later plug it in again, Stella will remember its settings.

EDIT: I just wanted to add that if you're using a Stelladaptor or 2600-daptor, then steps 1 and 3 don't even apply. It's truly plug-and-play for those devices.

[bomberpunk]

hmm, how hard would it be to add a "search for device" click-button on Stella's interface? it could just reopen the program without the user having to manually do it. or would that be a waste of coding?

Edited by bomberpunk, Tue Dec 20, 2011 6:49 PM.

[neotokeo2001]

I had Stella opened when I plugged the joystick in. When I closed and reopened Stella it was working.

[stephena]

bomberpunk, on Tue Dec 20, 2011 6:49 PM, said:

hmm, how hard would it be to add a "search for device" click-button on Stella's interface? it could just reopen the program without the user having to manually do it. or would that be a waste of coding?

I don't suppose it would be very hard, since the joystick setup code is simply one function in the program that's called when Stella starts. So adding a button to call it manually would be pretty easy. The program wouldn't have to restart at all, just the specific function. But I don't know how useful it would be, to be honest. Currently, if you change certain video or audio options you have to restart Stella. So doing the same for a newly inserted joystick isn't that much trouble for the user.

The ideal solution is if Stella somehow recognized that the joystick was plugged in and automatically set it up. Unfortunately, the library that Stella uses (SDL) doesn't support this; it leaves the setup to the application. And barring the possibility of having Stella routinely 'asking' if there is a new device available, I'm not sure it can be done efficiently.