2 controller support

[M3th0s]

Hi guys
Got this game and been playing it however I've tried plugging in a second controller to play with my daughter and for some reason both of us controler player 1 as opposed to being able to play cooperatively.
Any idea how I can fix this?
Thanks in advance!

[MuKen]

I've been using joy2key and mapping controllers to keyboard keys; RCGirls input configuration is really lacking.

https://joytokey.net/en/

[MoArtis]

Many of us can use two controllers just fine. You have a controller that's recognized two times apparently. It might be caused by how the devs configured Rewired.
Try using my mod and set the "forceXInput" parameter to True.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1049320/discussions/0/1633040337762777417/

Please let me know if it works or not. 😀

[M3th0s]

Thanks both, will try both approaches:)

[Eigua]

A controller being recognized two times isn't a bug in Rewired. It can come from many things, one of which could be due to Steam's "controller configuration support" system which creates virtual XInput and Direct Input devices for every controller designated in the Steam settings. Steam will create an XInput and a Direct Input controller for each device, but the original controller may also be visible/usable depending on what input API(s) are used for reading joysticks. (Rewired gives the option to use Raw Input, Direct Input, XInput, a combination of Raw/Direct + XInput, SDL2, or Unity input). Steam disables/hides the original device to Raw Input and Direct Input, plus Steam is supposed to expose all the vendor ids and product ids of controllers it is "configuring" through an environment variable so these can be filtered out of the controller list on other platforms where they can't hide them (OSX, Linux). Rewired checks this environment variable and filters them out. If something's failing here, it's likely on Steam's end, failing to hide the original device when it creates the virtual. Enabling Steam's "Generic Gamepad Configuration Support" is my best guess as to the cause of this issue.

Edit: I just did some testing and see that this definitely happens if the underlying input source is chosen to be Unity's input system. This is not the default setting in Rewired, but it is an option. Unity's input system reads HID devices directly by opening the device (not Raw Input, not Direct Input) and therefore Steam's measures to automatically disable/hide the Raw Input / Direct Input device to prevent the application from seeing it when Steam creates a virtual XInput device fail on Unity's input system. I can see two controllers visible in Unity's input system when I hook up a Logitech F310 in D mode and enable "Generic Gamepad Configuration Support" in Steam -- the F310 and the virtual Xbox 360 Controller Steam makes. Since Unity's input system gives no information about the device other than a string name, the joysticks cannot be filtered out using Steam's exposed environment variables. I do not know what settings the developers of this game chose to use, but that is definitely a vector for this issue to occur

[Eigua]

Another common cause of this is 3rd party input tools that create virtual XInput devices for non-XInput HID controllers (VJoy, DS4Win, etc). These tools will not disable the Raw Input / Direct Input device, but will create an additional XInput device. There is no way for Rewired to know when an XInput device was created for a HID device and there is no way to associate the new XInput device to the HID device in order to filter out the HID device. HID devices are normally filtered out by checking the path id of the device to determine if it's XInput compatible. These tools do not change the path id of the device, so as far as software can know with the information provided by the operating system, there is a HID device attached and also an XInput device attached. Rewired has an optional XInput-only mode (does not combine Raw Input / Direct Input devices with XInput) that would solve these problems, but most developers do not expose settings to allow the user to switch between input API sources.

These tools can also create "phantom" XInput entries which do not function but appear to software as connected XInput devices.

[MoArtis]

Why bumping an old thread and writing something that probably nobody will read for that problem? 😂 Genuinely curious here.

At the end of the day, changing a setting in Rewired fixed the issue (Force Xinput). Definitely a problematic interaction (bug?) between Rewired, Xinput and these people setup. Nobody is blaming anyone or anything but these complex system and setup is frequently leading to frustrating issues. 😉

The most frustrating is that people insists that their setup works perfectly on other games but not that specific game. My guess is that most game doesn't try to be compatible with every controller in the world while RCG might have configured Rewired in a way that make the game "too compatible" for its own good.

[Eigua]

First, this thread is not that old. Less than 2 months.

Second, I don't want to leave unaddressed information out there that states these issues are caused by bugs in Rewired, which implies that they could be fixed in Rewired. I've explained the most likely causes for the issue and you can see it's about limitations of the input APIs, interactions with Steam's virtual device creation, and/or 3rd party input tools' virtual devices. These factors are outside of my control and can't be fixed. The same thing would happen to any game that supports both HID and XInput devices under the same circumstances. It's not a Rewired issue -- it's an issue with the input APIs and virtual device creation.

There is no setting that will make things "too compatible." You either support HID devices + XInput devices or you just support one or the other. That's it. The only "bad" choice the developer could have made would be to have set it to use the Unity input system instead of Raw/Direct Input as this exhibits the double joystick issue in all cases. Using Unity as the input source is not about increased compatibility with devices. There's literally no reason to use it.

Having to force XInput-only support is a bad thing to have to do in my opinion, but in this specific case, there's no other solution. The Rewired Best Practices guidelines state that the developer should provide the user a means of manually assigning controllers to players. This would solve all of these issues. Even if a double device were present, the user could easily go into the menu and assign the correct device to the second player.

[MoArtis]

Oh you are the creator of rewired, big respect! I was suspecting that myself considering the length and the precision of the posts. 😁
But you misinterpreted my messages. I was not complaining. It’s surprising to me to go bump a 2 months old thread to explain technical details. In the vast majority, people on Steam forums are players complaining about their problems without really trying to understand the cause. They just want a quick fix or get refunded. Ahah!
But it was very interesting to me, so I guess it’s not too wasteful. 😊

And I might have failed to communicate that clearly but I try to always not jump on conclusion when trying to explain the possible cause of a problem (from an outsider’s perspective). My first post here is not great: “might be a bug with xinput and rewired” but the intention, as also seen on other threads, was really to not point the finger at anyone.

The developers thought they could grab your pretty famous asset and call it a day while we really needed some configuration options on PC. It’s understandable on their part and it’s frustrating on yours. But at the end of the day, the problem remains for many people with “exotic” setups on PC. 🤷‍♂‍

I edited the first message, so it less likely to throw the blame on your asset if someone read that in the future. 😉

[Eigua]

Thanks! I wasn't interpreting your message as complaining, I just wanted to clear up any misconception that this was a bug in Rewired that could be fixed, that's all. Long-winded, overly detailed explanations are a bad habit of mine, but I like for people to understand why I say what I do and not just ask them to take my word for it. I do it all the time with customer support emails.

Thanks for updating the original post to clarify it!