aToad #34: Virtual Controller

Controller (joystick, gamepad…) emulator

Some stupid programs expect input from a controller and don’t even allow you to rebind said input to a mouse and keyboard setup. Some even go as far as to refuse to run if they don’t detect a controller.

While I’m not sure this is a viable solution for regular daily use (I mean, for user-friendliness, as technically I don’t see why this wouldn’t work), Virtual Controller is a perfect tool to bypass these limitations, on Windows. As the name says, it’s a virtual controller, more specifically you can use it to create a virtual joystick or a virtual Xbox360 gamepad. It can also create a virtual keyboard and a virtual mouse, which I guess could be very interesting to rebind your physical mouse/keyboard/controller controls for software that don’t allow control rebinding.

The UI is a bit rough, but once you figure it out, I find it easy enough, and rather conveniently minimalist. Here’s a quick start:

• Go to Setting → IO Devices → Virtual → Setup
• Pick the device you want, we’ll go with the Xbox360 gamepad
• Install it, if necessary (as far as I can tell, it’s the case for the vXbox and the vJoystick, not for the virtual keyboard or mouse)
• Ignore the message that tells you a restart/reboot is needed: for me on Windows 10, it all went fine without restarting, you can always restart later if it’s not working for you)
• Tick the “Enabled” box and close the vBox dialog then the IO Devices dialog
• Go to Setting → Controls
• Create the bindings you want using Bind → Create (shortcut Ctrl + N). There is also a “quick binding” feature in Tools, which I assume auto-generates usual bindings, but I didn’t try it.
• Close the Controls dialog
• Click Main → Run

There is more to explore, but that’s beyond the scope here. There’s also a manual included with the software, if you want to do more reading.

I believe this software is supposed to be open source, being hosted on Sourceforge and all, but I can’t seem to find the source code. If you do, please do post the link in the comments (NB: WordPress requires an e-mail but it’s never checked so you can just put any valid-looking value here, like dflshgfsl@fslkh.com).
It is also sadly not maintained anymore (last version released almost 5 years ago, in August 2020), but I guess it should work as long as Windows 10 does (maybe even Windows 11? anyone tried?)