Locking multiple controller 'positions'

Unity Engine
1

Hey everyone,

We’re currently developing a simple interactive experience which uses 4 joystick inputs. Everything is working great with the new input system and players can join the interactive by pulling the trigger on the joystick.

However, one thing we’re hoping to accomplish is mapping the joystick to a specific player. For example, if only one person is playing, but they chose the third controller, they would show up as player 3 in the game.

Would anyone have any suggestions how to handle this, or if its even possibly logically?

Thanks!

2

Cheap Way

You can exploit the fact that the system tags numbers onto names to make them unique. For example, you can take a binding to “trigger” on “MyJoystick” (replace that with whatever the layout you are using is), toggle it into text mode (the little “T” button) and edit it to read

<MyJoystick>*1/trigger

to only bind to the second (first one is 0 which is not actually tagged onto the name) MyJoystick.

However, you will be dependent on the order in which devices are added.

Better Way

You can bind to devices by “role”. These are just string tags and each device can have however many you want/need.

So, you can go and tag the devices at runtime like so

InputSystem.AddDeviceUsage(joystickForPlayer1, "Player1");
InputSystem.AddDeviceUsage(joystickForPlayer2, "Player2");
InputSystem.AddDeviceUsage(joystickForPlayer3, "Player3");
InputSystem.AddDeviceUsage(joystickForPlayer4, "Player4");

And in bindings you can drop into text mode (like above) and edit paths like so

<Joystick>{Player1}/trigger

If the joystick happens to be a layout you have added, you can also set the “commonUsages” property on the layout. This way, the usages show up in the control picker and you don’t have to do the manual text editing dance.

[InputControlLayout(commonUsages = new[] { "Player1", "Player2", "Player3", "Player4" })]
public class MyJoystick : Joystick
{
//...

////EDIT: Just to add that, there’s a “CommonDeviceUsages” sample that comes with the input system which demonstrates this feature and pretty much does what the second option here outlines.

3

Thank you Rene, super helpful (as always). :smile: