News and research

Progress report #2

10 December 2022  <- Previous  Next ->

Console legacy profile and firmware improvements

A new profile Console Legacy is now implemented. It comes with mouse emulation completely disabled, and right thumbstick emulated in the 8-direction switch.

This is the last fallback for games that may have issues when mouse movement is detected, that do not support mouse and keyboard at all, or in which a second thumbstick is absolutely mandatory. These kind of games should be extremely rare, so if you know some please ping us.

To support this new profile, some core features of the firmware had to be improved.

A new version of the Alpakka reference firmware was published 0.86.0 with all these changes and the new profile.

Changelog 0.86.0:

- Created Console Legacy profile.
- Any gamepad axis (thumbstick and analog triggers) can be assigned to any button.
- Gyro as a configurable input in the profiles.
  - Gyro to mouse mapping can be customized and inverted.
  - Gyro axis Z is now also available to profiles.
  - Foundations to assign any action to gyro axis (still not functional).
- Gyro modes:
  - GYRO_MODE_ALWAYS_OFF
  - GYRO_MODE_ALWAYS_ON
  - GYRO_MODE_TOUCH_OFF
  - GYRO_MODE_TOUCH_ON
- Calibration and non-volatile memory now include gyro axis Z offset.

This means that now profiles can define gyro behavior as for example:

profile.gyro = Gyro_(
    GYRO_MODE_TOUCH_ON,  // Gyro mode.
    ACTIONS(MOUSE_X),    // Gyro axis X.
    ACTIONS(MOUSE_Y),    // Gyro axis Y.
    ACTIONS(KEY_NONE)    // Gyro axis Z.
);

And that any digital button can emulate an analog axis as for example:

Button_(
    PIN_A,                    // Physical button.
    NORMAL,                   // Button mode.
    ACTIONS(GAMEPAD_AXIS_LX)  // Actions.
);

These features also set the foundations to be able to assign any action (or group of actions) to gyro directions, for example turn gyro up => press space which will be an important accessibility feature, specially later in the Kapybara controller. But the implementation is not complete yet.

Accessibility database

Additionally our lovely Patrons voted these 8 games to be added to the accessibility DB:

• Borderlands 3
• Bullets Per Minute
• Call of Duty: Warzone 2
• Fortnite
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Hunt: Showdown
• No Man's Sky
• Rainbow Six Siege

Thanks for your support!

- Marcos and Michael <3