2 Controllers on a single USB

[StefBlokeDawson]

Hi. Played this game at the Bradford Media Museum a few weeks ago and loved it. I have it installed on my MacBook right now and have the Wi-Fi controller on my phone, which connects perfectly. Due to a general lack of physical controllers and other phones in the house, I bought this input device for connecting two old PS2 controllers to a single USB port: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/312003683983

If I run some software called Enjoyable I can press buttons and move the sticks around on both controllers and they fire different actions for all buttons. Like, the 'X' button on Controller 1 fires a "Button 3" event, while the same 'X' button on Controller 2 fires a "Button 16" event. So they both act as independent controllers on one USB interface and can therefore co-exist and, more importantly, be mapped to two different sets of actions.

In Steam, and when I go to Manage Game in Chalo Chalo, it sees a "Game controller" which is presumably the interface itself. I therefore only appear to be able to set up inputs for a single controller, even though there are two attached to it. Is this a Steam limitation do you think? I'm a complete noob to Steam so is there anything I'm missing? Is there any way I can configure this USB interface to use both PS2 controllers in Chalo Chalo to control two players?

When I go to my mate's house, he has a PS4 so I'm hoping (fingers crossed) I can pair those via Bluetooth and it'll work natively with his controllers, but I really would like to get both of these PS2 controllers going as well so we can have 4 players on physical controllers + phones on Wi-Fi for an 8-player mash!

Thanks in advance for any clues on how to solve this.

[Richard]

Hey,

Glad to hear you liked it so much. I must say that in the case you describe there are a lot of unknowns for me too.

I believe that in your current setup the controllers are not recognised as two individual ones. If Enjoyable shows there X buttons as Button 3 and 16 it maybe sees it as one controller.

I don't think it is Steam that is causing the problem here, I think the difficulty is making your Mac recognise them as individual controllers.

In Chalo Chalo, can you already get any interaction with the controllers?

~
Richard

PS I'd love to hear about how things go with the PS4 controllers.

[StefBlokeDawson]

Thanks for the reply. Would have replied sooner but I've been playing Chalo Chalo ;-)

Interestingly, I tried the same USB interface on the PC too. In the Manage Game settings, it sees two independent controllers listed. I can highlight one of them, set up the movements for it and click Save.

When I highlight the second controller, and click to set up the movements for it, as soon as I try to set the first button on the 2nd controller - by pressing the 'X' on it - the PC exits the setup screen and returns to the previous panel. It sees the 2nd controller as having the same button presses as the first, so it seems to be using the 'X' button on the second controller as the "OK" signal I already set up on the first, and assuming I've finished setting up the controller.

So even though the process differs on the PC compared to the Mac - at least in the number of physical controllers the interface presents to Steam - the result is largely the same: I can only configure one controller.

Again, in a separate piece of diagnostics software on the PC, I can operate the controllers independently and they both pass different button and movement signals to the computer. "Axis 1" when I move the stick up on Controller 1 and "Axis 5" when I move the same stick up on Controller 2, for example. So the physical inputs are processed independently, it's just that when they reach Steam they seem to be treated as if there's only one controller attached.

Frustrating, but for the time being at least we're working around the issue with one physical PS2 controller and 2 phones running the Wi-Fi controller. Had a few crashes / freeze-ups so far (and it offered to mail the crash reports to Apple, but I declined - I wonder, if it happens again, if I can copy them out of the crash window and send the report to you guys if it helps?) but on the whole, it all works well. Much fun has been had so far, thanks!

I'm off to my mate's house in a couple of weeks so I'll report back on the PS4 controllers after that.