This project requires Java JDK 7+ and automatically includes JInput 2.0.6 and native library dependencies as part of its execution
(specifically in GameControllerManager initalization)
First go to Releases and download the latest EV3-Control-Gamepad.jar file. This is contains all of the code and dependencies (JInput + native). Just import it or run it using java -jar EV3-Control-Gamepad.jar and it will open up a window, displaying all connected controllers, and eight player slots for assigning the controllers to.
The first thing you do in every situation is get the GameControllerManager instance:
GameControllerManager manager = GameControllerManager.getInstance();
This is used to access gamepad controllers and update them too.
It's also a singleton so it's always the same manager instance wherever you call this method.
Next thing is to grab some controllers, either the "physical" ones or the "assignable" ones.
// Gets all the connected controllers, in an unknown order determined by the machine
List<PhysicalGameController> allConnectedControllers = manager.getPhysicalControllers();
// Gets the player controller, or creates one if not there already, based on a button combination on the gamepad
AssignableGameController player1 = manager.getAssignableController(new BaseGamepadKeyMapper(), "start", "a_button");
// BaseGamepadKeyMapper changes gamepad button names into whatever you want. Subclass KeyMapper for your own custom naming.
// The "start" button is actually named "7", and "a_button" is "0" so this command does the same thing:
player1 = manager.getAssignableController("7","0"); // Gets the exact same player controller as above ^
Now that we have a controller, let's say player1 using the BaseGamepadKeyMapper, we use the controller by doing two things, (1) Updating manager and (2) Getting the gamepad values.
// Updates all gamepad values of controllers, and updates assignments of player controllers
manager.update();
// this will get you a float value, from either 0 to 1 for buttons, and -1 to 1 for axes
// all gamepad data are floats
player1.getValue("left_stick_x");
// turns the float value into a boolean, false for 0, true for anything else.
// any value can be put here to get a boolean out
player1.getBoolean("y_button");
// special method that turns the dpad float into directions (ex. UP, DOWN, UP_RIGHT, DOWN_LEFT, ...)
// dpad values come out as 0 for no press, 0.25 for UP, 0.5 for RIGHT (and so on) and 0.375 for UP_RIGHT
player1.getDirectional("dpad"); // NOTE: doesn't work for axes/sticks, only dpad really
Don't call .update() directly on on the controllers, always call manager.update(). The manager is also a Runnable, so it can be used with a thread:
// Starts a simple while loop that calls update, and sleeps for 20ms by default
Thread t = new Thread(manager);
t.start();
// manager.setUpdateIntervalMilliseconds(20L) // sets the update interval time in ms
You can manually update using manager.update() however you like, in whatever loops or threads you want to.
In some IDEs, such as Eclipse, running JInput is a bit problematic because gamepads might not be "captured" and whenever you do manager.update() the values don't actually update because the program can't access the gamepads. To bypass this, we can create a Java Swing GUI window to "capture" gamepad focus. There's a provided helper class to make this simpler:
GameControllerDisplay display = new GameControllerDisplay();
display.init(); // opens it up for usage
Also, you can add controllers to the display, to see their status:
display.addController(player1);
display.addController(manager.getPhysicalController(0));
display.update(); // update the display with gamepad data