Question for the people who emulate Nintendo DS through hyperspin

[noiseordinance]

Hi there. I just set up DS emulation through hyperspin simply because I could do it. The DS has always been one of my favorite systems. I use xbox 360 controllers for all of my emulators. Now that everything is configured, I'm wondering how some of you use it. Do you always keep a mouse nearby to access the touchscreen, or perhaps program a controller to interface with the touchscreen? Do you play only games that don't involve the touchscreen? I'm hoping to make it somehow usable from my couch, but for now it seems like I'll just stick to games that don't involve touch. Thanks!

[zero dreams]

You could use a keymapper like xpadder to emulate mouse controls but I believe djvj said it best that you're going to get the best experience using an actual mouse. Another alternative would be to have a keyboard with the touchpad but nothing imo works better than the mouse. I've never really enjoyed emulating the mouse with DS so to use a controller only with the system has never been a viable option.

I'd love to one day get my hands on a db that contains games that don't use any touch controls but that's probably an extremely short list.

[Grizz]

someone needs to design a hand controller with mouse..keyboard key buttons and joys and joy buttons just for hyperspin emus.

that would be cool..

i know they make controllers with built in mouse..etc..

but i am saying something specific just for emus :}

[32assassin]

As Zero mentioned, use xpadder. I use the second joystick on the 360 controller as my mouse input, and the left mouse button is the joystick button.

[noiseordinance]

Thanks y'all. I'll probably just setup the right joystick for basic mouse control. In the very least I can use it to push start on the touchscreen for games with minimal touchscreen usage.

[brolly]

I think we need to have Mindlink revived all problems with controllers would be gone:

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/mindlink.html

[ninjuhturdel]

Give it some time. The touch interface on the PS4 is just begging to be utilized for this very situation.

[zero dreams]

ATTENTION...ATTENTION.... MY TOUCHPAD ON MY DUALSHOCK 4 WORKS... ATTENTION

DS4Tool_1.1_Final

http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-DS4-To-XInput-Wrapper

Edit: It also moves my mouse pointer around as well without having my xpadder on.

[Polemicist]

I think Zero got a little excited.

OK for a non DS user please tell me why I want to use a DS4 controller over say a DS2?

[cheynespc]

I've been wanting a DS4 to try with DS sounds great I'm glad zero got excited in buying one tomorrow . YESSSS!!!!!!!

[Jumrun]

DS4 has full quality audio through a standard headphone jack at the bottom of the controller. As of now i don't think they have it functional on pc but it is a work in progress. The Touch interface being utilized in NDS Emu sounds great though. I'm tempted to steal my brother's controller and test it out right now. I've always been a fan of 360 controls over Dualshock especially with the nativity on pc being 360, but after playing around with PS4 and recently connecting a DS3 wirelessly to my Microsoft Surface for Emu Sony is slowly stealing me over. with Bluetooth there's no damn dongle hanging out of my pc. The 360 wireless dongle only works with USB 2.0 ports and my pc has only one 2.0 port, USB 3.0 has its downfalls unfortunately. Hope my little spill on controllers gives you a little insight to my opinion.

[zero dreams]

My progress with the DS4 touchpad and DeSmuME:

The DS4 tool uses the touchpad for the mouse motions, L1 for left-click, & R1 for right-click.

Navigating through Windows folders is easily possible but it loses focus after overlapping most applications rendering the functions mute.

Launching DeSmuME through the emulator only, the functions remained but L1 (left-click) would not select an item from the screen.

Also note that it doesn't seem like Xpadder can overwrite commands set from the tool so key mapping didn't work for me either. AHK? I don't know much about those.

[paddyboy]

360 controller ....

map all standard buttons

map anolog stick to mouse control

map second anolog stick to emulator functions for switching top/bottom screen and aspect

(up/down stick changes the aspect and size - left right changes from both screens to full screen top/bottom)

apply a custom (mario pointing hand ! as mouse cursor)

how about that ?

[Dogway]

Here's my desmume 360 controller profile for xpadder:

http://www.mediafire.com/view/ho85y5694poshh5/DesmumeTouchScreen.xpadderprofile

move with left stick, and click with right trigger which is unused on real DS. I would like to do on AHK a bit of limiting, for example, not allowing the cursor to go beyond a certain range, so it always stays within the screen (faster for point and click).

BTW how do you change the cursor for desmume only?

[MaskedMavel]

That does sound great, zero. I hope it ends up working out because that would be a really nice solution for DS games. If you happen to have one of the drawing tablets for artists I bet that would work nicely as well. They can be expensive so thats probably not a good option unless you already have one.

[Dogway]

I have one wacom, didn't think about it really could be useful. I had thought about the Wiimote, but setting up to work on PC seems a bit of a pain.

[Awakened]

The libretro version of Desmume included in the latest test builds of RetroArch is pretty cool in that it maps the left analog stick as a cursor for the bottom screen and right trigger as tapping the screen. I've remapped them in my config for that core to be right analog stick and left trigger which works better for using the dpad and cursor at the same time (and I use right trigger for fast forward for most systems). You'd still want to use a mouse for touch heavy games, but it works well for games that use the touchscreen for extra buttons, like Super Princess Peach:

In this example, you can leave the cursor on an emotion and press the trigger to activate it. The cursor will disappear after a couple seconds of not being moved too, so it's not always in the way. And you can still trigger whatever you have it placed on even when it's invisible (so in New Super Mario Bros. if you place it over the item icon, it's like assigning your trigger to activate the reserve item).

[Dogway]

hehe Super Princess Peach, last game I acquired very cool.

If you check my xpadder profile it is set as the libretro version, left analog with right trigger (I didn't look up, was a coincidence). For some reason using my right thumb for cursor feels awkward, like if I didn't have enough precision. Anyway I don't recommend using any other DS emulator than 432X, 3D games look like crap otherwise.

[DamnedRegistrations]

432X? Did you mean the X432R build of Desmume? I agree that it really helps with 3D games and makes them look better but it's poorly optimized once you go above 2x resolution. I'm not sure how much that build will be updated with fixes either.

I didn't even realize RetroArch had support for dual screen, let alone touch screen too. They must've recently implemented it. What about when you need to rotate too? Try out "Nanashi no Game (Japan) (Translated En)" for example, requires some weird rotation to display properly.

[Dogway]

Yes sorry X432R, I said from memory.

For many systems you either add scanlines or give it an internal resolution increase. Since the desmume shaders aren't very good to start with I opt for the extra added resolution. In my opinion there's no need to go over 2x, you can add AA on top of that so it fixes the remaining aliasing, the result is very smooth and clean except there are still on the emu side some polygon popping and flickering going on, but I expect those to get fixed along the road.

AFAIK the rotation or gap settings can be defined in the DeSmuME.ini. But I still don't know how to do it properly.

[DamnedRegistrations]

I know how to rotate in Desmume, you can actually bind a hotkey to do it when you need to. I was just wondering if there was a way to do in RetroArch.

[Awakened]

You can rotate the screens 90 degrees in RGUI's video options, but that won't automatically fix the aspect ratio currently. That's something that could be added I think, since vertical games in MAME have the correct aspect ratio while being rotated. For now, you could figure out what the aspect is supposed to be when rotated 90 degrees and set it in your config.

Unfortunately the pointer controls don't rotate with the screen, so it makes rotated games unplayable. I was thinking changing the pointer core option from Relative to Absolute might fix that, but it didn't seem to.

I don't really like any rotated games so it's not an issue for me. Rhythm Tengoku is OK, but not super great to play without a stylus because of the flicking mechanic.

[DamnedRegistrations]

Figured it'd be a RGUI option. I actually use the old RetroArch and just update the libretro cores as they come out. Can't stand that RGUI they switched to, reminds me of trying to navigate a clunky DOS menu like something out of 1988. Not very PC friendly like the old Phoenix GUI that takes two seconds to set up per-system configs. It's also missing a bunch of useful hotkey binds last I checked. Seems catered to mobile or console users.

Sounds like it'd be best just to stick with Desmume standalone then, thanks for the info.

[zerojay]

Figured it'd be a RGUI option. I actually use the old RetroArch and just update the libretro cores as they come out. Can't stand that RGUI they switched to, reminds me of trying to navigate a clunky DOS menu like something out of 1988. Not very PC friendly like the old Phoenix GUI that takes two seconds to set up per-system configs. It's also missing a bunch of useful hotkey binds last I checked. Seems catered to mobile or console users.

Sounds like it'd be best just to stick with Desmume standalone then, thanks for the info.

It's ironic considering all the shit Squarepusher dropped on Haze about MAME's UI.

[brolly]

Nah Squarepusher is always right the guy knows it all.