8 Player not working

[FreakE3man]

Hi, I have 8 xbox one controllers connected via xbox wireless adapter but only 4 seem to register when on the character selection screen, is there a way to get all 8 connnected?

[Denuvo Knoeibestendigheid]

Does it work in other games?

[FreakE3man]

In Chalo Chalo, Obliteracers and Gang Beasts because they support directinput in controller settings
Have the same problem here as I do with Regular Human Basketball, Brawlhalla, Sausage Sports Club, only 4 pads work even though 8 are connected

[Kak0]

When I tried it a couple months ago with 8 wired XBox 360 controllers and it didn't work either.

On a side note, I played Regular Human Basketball two days ago and it worked fine with 8 wired controllers (4 XBox 360 and 4 XBox One controllers). I don't think we had to tweak any setting. Maybe there has been an update in the past few days?

[Denuvo Knoeibestendigheid]

Have you tried connecting them wired, through a USB hub?

[FreakE3man]

Tried using one wired and 4 wireless just to see, no luck, kind of annoying since the game says up to 8 connected pads should work

[Sir Sid]

Hey, Xbox controllers use Xinput. This input has a controller limit of 4 controllers. Use an xinput to dinput converter, or get controllers that use dinput. Like some wired usb SNES controllers or something.

[Denuvo Knoeibestendigheid]

Originally posted by Sir Sid:

Hey, Xbox controllers use Xinput. This input has a controller limit of 4 controllers. Use an xinput to dinput converter, or get controllers that use dinput. Like some wired usb SNES controllers or something.

The Xbox One does allow 8 players, so Microsoft apperantly made a new input system for UWP then...

[FreakE3man]

Just seems stupid for these games to be advertised as 8 local players but not actually utilise things like the xbox wireless adapter which make the most sense and are generally the most convenient, even though I realise im probably in a minority of people who play 'more than 4 local player' games

[Denuvo Knoeibestendigheid]

Originally posted by FreakE3man:

Just seems stupid for these games to be advertised as 8 local players but not actually utilise things like the xbox wireless adapter which make the most sense and are generally the most convenient, even though I realise im probably in a minority of people who play 'more than 4 local player' games

It's a problem with Windows, not with the game.

[sem qq]

lol, bomberman with 8 local players and a lot of weed seems like so much fun xxxxD

[supersmo]

Checked the game now. It uses the Steam Input API which has a limit of 4 XBox360 or XBoxOne controllers. The steam API uses XInput API under the hood which has a limit of 4 controllers. The rest of the controllers are gotten from either RAW Input or Direct Input. (Guessing Raw Input)

To see exactly what controllers the game will see when using the Steam API you can go to Steam -> Settings -> Controller -> General Controller settings -> Detected controllers.

XBox 360 and XBoxOne controllers can be accessed via Raw Input and DirectInput but since there is no easy way to reliably know which of the 4 controllers are accessed via XInput, frameworks that support both XInput and RawInput/DirectInput filter out ALL of the XBox controllers on the Raw/DirectInput side so the controllers don't register twice. Some frameworks have an option to disable XInput and access all controllers via Raw/Direct Input instead. When doing this you can get practically any number of controllers to work.

Someone mentioned UWP earlier in this thread. UWP actually has an API for accessing 8 at least 9 and probably any number of controllers but most games don't use it since it doesn't work with Windows 7 or Windows 8. Not sure if the game needs to be "windows store appified" as well in order to use it.

So... either we convince Steam to add support for disabling XInput in order to access all controllers through Raw/DirectInput devices... Steam may be reluctant to do so because of a possible number of increasing support cases and that people generally don't know that when an XBox360 controller is accessed using Raw/DirectInput the triggers are on the same axis so left and right trigger can't be used at the same time and also Rumble does not work. (You can thank Microsoft’s intentionally flawed XBox360 driver for those limitations.)
If there were a way to use the API in UWP without having Steam as a windows store app that would remove the max 4 XBox limitation and not have the issues mentioned above.

Or... the only right thing for the devs to do in this situation:
Devs! You've released a game that claims to support 8 players but the most standard controllers for Windows can't be used to reach 8 players. I suggest you use a framework that allows you to toggle XInput on and off. Since you're using Unity you can use Unity's input system, Re-Wired or InControl with specific settings to allow this and you don't even have to ditch all of your SteamInput stuff to acheive this.

Another game I know of "Pixel Fishies" uses SteamInput unless the "Steam Input Per-Game setting is set to "Forced off" in which case it uses Unity's Input system. I have verified that it works with 8 XBox360 controllers in this mode.

If you do this you would even fix another issue witht the game. As it is now, if a user selects Controller: "Forced Off" in the per game settings in Steam then Bomberman doesn't doesn't detect any gamepad at all.

Edit: Found out that the UWP API supports more than 8 XBox controllers for Win 10 and that it can access the rest via the RawGameController class. Also, you don't need to create a Windows Store App to use the API.

[supersmo]

I came up with a solution!

It's a bit hackish but it works!
It turns out that Steam Input uses SDL2 under the hood which actually supports accessing the XInput controllers via DirectInput instead. Since SDL2 is open source I compliled it with XInput switched off and started Steam in a way that made it use my SDL2.dll.
Now all attached XBox360 controllers show up!

Since this solution works for more than just Super Bomberman R I posted the solution in a new thread over at our curator group for more than 4 local multiplayer games.
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/morethan4localmultiplayer/discussions/0/1744483505479935659/

I guess the alternative solution to this is to map the filtered out XBox controllers to virtual DirectInput controllers but I haven't tested this yet.

Note that I still think it's Konami's responisibility to fix this on their end so we don't need to use these workarounds.

EDIT: New solution in place! Look 3 posts down.

[Denuvo Knoeibestendigheid]

Originally posted by supersmo:

I came up with a solution!
It's a bit hackish but it works!
It turns out that Steam Input uses SDL2 under the hood which actually supports accessing the XInput controllers via DirectInput instead. Since SDL2 is open source I compliled it with XInput switched off and started Steam in a way that made it use my SDL2.dll.
Now all attached XBox360 controllers show up!

Since this solution works for more than just Super Bomberman R I posted the solution in a new thread over at our curator group for more than 4 local multiplayer games.
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/morethan4localmultiplayer/discussions/0/1744483505479935659/

I guess the alternative solution to this is to map the filtered out XBox controllers to virtual DirectInput controllers but I haven't tested this yet.

Note that I still think it's Konami's responisibility to fix this on their end so we don't need to use these workarounds.

You're a wizard.

I think Valve and Microsoft are to blame more than the game developers because consoles don't tend to suffer from this kind of stuff.

[FlameVeil]

Try using 8 Steam exclusive controllers.

[supersmo]

Solution is now MUCH simpler and you don't have to use a custom SDL2.dll. You just have to set an environment variable.
I've created a bat file that Restarts/starts Steam with XInput switched off.
Simply download the file run it and then start SuperBomberman R.

Instructions and bat file can be found here:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/morethan4localmultiplayer/discussions/0/1744483505479935659/

Enjoy!

EDIT: the solution works for XBox 360 controllers but not for XBox One controllers. Bug report is sent to Steam.