David Ludwig
I have created a new driver for SDL's Joystick and Game-Controller subsystem: a Virtual driver. This driver allows one to create a software-based joystick, which to SDL applications will look and react like a real joystick, but whose state can be set programmatically. A primary use case for this is to help enable developers to add touch-screen joysticks to their apps.
The driver comes with a set of new, public APIs, with functions to attach and detach joysticks, set virtual-joystick state, and to determine if a joystick is a virtual-one.
Use of virtual joysticks goes as such:
1. Attach one or more virtual joysticks by calling SDL_JoystickAttachVirtual. If successful, this returns the virtual-device's joystick-index.
2. Open the virtual joysticks (using indicies returned by SDL_JoystickAttachVirtual).
3. Call any of the SDL_JoystickSetVirtual* functions when joystick-state changes. Please note that virtual-joystick state will only get applied on the next call to SDL_JoystickUpdate, or when pumping or polling for SDL events (via SDL_PumpEvents or SDL_PollEvent).
Here is a listing of the new, public APIs, at present and subject to change:
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/**
* Attaches a new virtual joystick.
* Returns the joystick's device index, or -1 if an error occurred.
*/
extern DECLSPEC int SDLCALL SDL_JoystickAttachVirtual(SDL_JoystickType type, int naxes, int nballs, int nbuttons, int nhats);
/**
* Detaches a virtual joystick
* Returns 0 on success, or -1 if an error occurred.
*/
extern DECLSPEC int SDLCALL SDL_JoystickDetachVirtual(int device_index);
/**
* Indicates whether or not a virtual-joystick is at a given device index.
*/
extern DECLSPEC SDL_bool SDLCALL SDL_JoystickIsVirtual(int device_index);
/**
* Set values on an opened, virtual-joystick's controls.
* Returns 0 on success, -1 on error.
*/
extern DECLSPEC int SDLCALL SDL_JoystickSetVirtualAxis(SDL_Joystick * joystick, int axis, Sint16 value);
extern DECLSPEC int SDLCALL SDL_JoystickSetVirtualBall(SDL_Joystick * joystick, int ball, Sint16 xrel, Sint16 yrel);
extern DECLSPEC int SDLCALL SDL_JoystickSetVirtualButton(SDL_Joystick * joystick, int button, Uint8 value);
extern DECLSPEC int SDLCALL SDL_JoystickSetVirtualHat(SDL_Joystick * joystick, int hat, Uint8 value);
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Miscellaneous notes on the initial patch, which are also subject to change:
1. no test code is present in SDL, yet. This should, perhaps, change. Initial development was done with an ImGui-based app, which potentially is too thick for use in SDL-official. If tests are to be added, what kind of tests? Automated? Graphical?
2. virtual game controllers can be created by calling SDL_JoystickAttachVirtual with a joystick-type of SDL_JOYSTICK_TYPE_GAME_CONTROLLER, with naxes (num axes) set to SDL_CONTROLLER_AXIS_MAX, and with nbuttons (num buttons) set to SDL_CONTROLLER_BUTTON_MAX. When updating their state, values of type SDL_GameControllerAxis or SDL_GameControllerButton can be casted to an int and used for the control-index (in calls to SDL_JoystickSetVirtual* functions).
3. virtual joysticks' guids are mostly all-zeros with the exception of the last two bytes, the first of which is a 'v', to indicate that the guid is a virtual one, and the second of which is a SDL_JoystickType that has been converted into a Uint8.
4. virtual joysticks are ONLY turned into virtual game-controllers if and when their joystick-type is set to SDL_JOYSTICK_TYPE_GAMECONTROLLER. This is controlled by having SDL's default list of game-controllers have a single entry for a virtual game controller (of guid, "00000000000000000000000000007601", which is subject to the guid-encoding described above).
5. regarding having to call SDL_JoystickUpdate, either directly or indirectly via SDL_PumpEvents or SDL_PollEvents, before new virtual-joystick state becomes active (as specified via SDL_JoystickSetVirtual* function-calls), this was done to match behavior found in SDL's other joystick drivers, almost all of which will only update SDL-state during SDL_JoystickUpdate.
6. the initial patch is based off of SDL 2.0.12
7. the virtual joystick subsystem is disabled by default. It should be possible to enable it by building with SDL_JOYSTICK_VIRTUAL=1
Questions, comments, suggestions, or bug reports very welcome!
Added the functions SDL_JoystickFromPlayerIndex(), SDL_JoystickSetPlayerIndex(), SDL_GameControllerFromPlayerIndex(), and SDL_GameControllerSetPlayerIndex()
It causes the HIDAPI devices to always be opened on enumeration, which causes crashes in the Windows drivers when multiple applications are reading and writing at the same time. We can revisit this after 2.0.10 release.
Note that a single USB device is responsible for all 4 joysticks, so a large
rewrite of the DeviceDriver functions was necessary to allow a single device to
produce multiple joysticks.
The code is now reliant on SDL_PrivateJoystickAdded() and SDL_PrivateJoystickRemoved() being called correctly when devices are added or removed on Windows
Fixed a case where partial trigger pull could be bound to another button
There is a fundamental problem not resolved by this commit:
Some controllers have axes (triggers, pedals, etc.) that don't start at zero, but we're guaranteed that if we get a value that it's correct. For these controllers, the current code works, where we take the first value we get and use that as the zero point and generate axis motion starting from that point on.
Other controllers have digital axes (D-pad) that assume a zero starting point, and the first value we get is the min or max axis value when the D-pad is moved. For these controllers, the current code thinks that the zero point is the axis value after the D-pad motion and this doesn't work.
My hypothesis is that the first class of devices is more common and that we should solve for that, and add an exception to SDL_JoystickAxesCenteredAtZero() as needed for the second class of devices.
The internal function SDL_EGL_LoadLibrary() did not delete and remove a mostly
uninitialized data structure if loading the library first failed. A later try to
use EGL then skipped initialization and assumed it was previously successful
because the data structure now already existed. This led to at least one crash
in the internal function SDL_EGL_ChooseConfig() because a NULL pointer was
dereferenced to make a call to eglBindAPI().
Sam Lantinga
Ethan Lee
Ryan C. Gordon
Philipp Wiesemann