[Bug 52408] New: Number of gamepads limited and multiple gamepads broken

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52408

Bug ID: 52408
           Summary: Number of gamepads limited and multiple gamepads
                    broken
           Product: Wine
           Version: 7.0-rc6
          Hardware: x86-64
                OS: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: xinput
          Assignee: [e-mail]
          Reporter: [e-mail]
      Distribution: ---

I first discussed this here: https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36088
but eventually came to a conclusion this is a bug. It has two sides:

1) Wine will only register 4 gamepads even if more are connected.

2) When multiple gamepads are connected, Wine loses atleast some of their
input.

Ad 1). I used Gamepad Tool from https://generalarcade.com/gamepadtool/ to check
how many gamepads are connected. I used (unknowingly) kbct:
https://github.com/samvel1024/kbct to create 4 virtual gamepads in addition to
my real one. I am sure there are other ways to add more gamepads, either just
connecting them physically or somehow fakeing them. With KBCT, one just needs
to add an appropriate number of devices to grab. Kbct will produce a fake
gamepad for each grabbed device, as it will list each device as being able to
emit basically all keys linux knows, including gamepad keys.
So a minimal config.yaml would be on my system like this:

- keyboards: ["Logitech K800", "AT Translated Set 2 keyboard", "Logitech MX
Vertical", "ThinkPad Extra Buttons"]

- one just needs to list some devices available when running evtest.

This bug is not about kbct - that is just a way to trigger this bug, which I
believe is presetn in Wine. Linux otherwise does not have any problem detecting
moredevices.

2) When I reduced the number of faked devices to two (and one real one), my
game (Worms WMD) would register just the left axis of the gamepad and not other
controls. Curiously, when I tried GamePad tool, it would register the presses.
No idea how Windows would behave, but I do not see a reason why the game would
not be able to use multiple gamepads.

[Bug 52408] Number of gamepads limited and multiple gamepads broken

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52408

[e-mail] changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |[e-mail],
                   |                            |[e-mail]

[Bug 52408] Number of gamepads limited and multiple gamepads broken

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52408

--- Comment #1 from Rémi Bernon  ---
Gamepads are usually exposed to Windows applications as XInput-compatible
devices, and the Windows XInput API only supports up to 4 gamepads. This is not
a Wine specific limitation but a limitation of the API itself.

Wine control panel now has an override button to force the joystick devices not
to be recognized as XInput-compatible, and although some games actually only
support XInput for input, it will remove the device number limitation in
others.

I'm working on implementing Windows.Gaming.Input API which supports
XInput-compatible gamepads, and doesn't suffer from the limitation, but there
again only games which implement support for this API (ie: using some recent
version of SDL) will benefit from it.

[Bug 52408] Number of gamepads limited and multiple gamepads broken

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52408

--- Comment #2 from Rémi Bernon  ---
Regarding the missing input, it could be a genuine bug though I haven't seen
any other report about it so far.