The problem#

The Xbox 360 controller has become the defacto standard controller in PC gaming in recent years, likely due to both the popularity of the Xbox and the fact that the controller can easily be used with a computer. One downside of this is that some games assume you have one. If the game supports it and is running through Steam, then Steam's controller settings will let you use any controller, but that doesn't work for all games, and you might not be using Steam. The game that prompted this blog post actually does have Steam controller support promised in the future, but it's in early access and they are busy developing other parts of the game.¹

xboxdrv#

The solution is xboxdrv, the userspace Xbox controller driver. In addition to supporting actual Xbox controllers, it can also simulate Xbox controllers based on inputs from other devices like a PlayStation controller or some less common controller.

Too many input devices#

On a modern computer there are often many input devices,

$ ls /dev/input/event* | wc -l
28

They are just identified by numbers, so it can be difficult to choose the right one and trial-and-error can get tiresome with so many. There is some help from the by-id and by-path listings:

$ ls -go --time-style=+ /dev/input/by-id/
...
lrwxrwxrwx 1 10  usb-045e_0291-if06-event-joystick -> ../event26
lrwxrwxrwx 1  6  usb-045e_0291-if06-joystick -> ../js6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 10  usb-0b43_0003-event-if00 -> ../event20
lrwxrwxrwx 1 10  usb-0b43_0003-event-joystick -> ../event19
lrwxrwxrwx 1  6  usb-0b43_0003-joystick -> ../js1
lrwxrwxrwx 1  9  usb-BTC_USB_Multimedia_Keyboard-event-if01 -> ../event2
lrwxrwxrwx 1  9  usb-BTC_USB_Multimedia_Keyboard-event-kbd -> ../event1
...

$ ls -go --time-style=+ /dev/input/by-path/
...
lrwxrwxrwx 1  9  pci-0000:00:1a.2-usb-0:2:1.0-event-kbd -> ../event1
lrwxrwxrwx 1  9  pci-0000:00:1a.2-usb-0:2:1.1-event -> ../event2
...
lrwxrwxrwx 1 10  pci-0000:00:1d.0-usb-0:1:1.6-event-joystick -> ../event26
lrwxrwxrwx 1  6  pci-0000:00:1d.0-usb-0:1:1.6-joystick -> ../js6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 10  pci-0000:00:1d.0-usb-0:2:1.0-event -> ../event20
lrwxrwxrwx 1 10  pci-0000:00:1d.0-usb-0:2:1.0-event-joystick -> ../event19
...

But, for the most part, those names aren't very helpful, especially since many joystick devices support 2 or 4 joysticks connected to the same device.

identify_evdev.py#

Enter identify_evdev.py:

$ identify_evdev.py
/dev/input/event22

Where /dev/input/event22 is the device of the joystick I touched after running identify_evdev.py.