[Beta] GamepadRumble - DOF feedback on an Xbox controller, no cabinet hardware

[kara2010]

Like a lot of people here I play on a desktop and have never owned feedback
hardware. But DOF already knows exactly what happens on the playfield for over a
thousand tables, and without contactors none of it reaches you.

So I wrote a DOF output controller that sends those signals to the rumble motors
of an Xbox controller instead. Shaker, knocker, gear motors, slingshots and
bumpers, driven by real ROM events, using the config database this community has
spent years building. It is an ordinary output controller - if you own real
hardware nothing changes unless you add it to your cabinet config on purpose.

There is also a Visual Pinball build adding what DOF cannot see because it
happens in the physics engine: flipper rumble on real ball contact scaled by
impact speed, rumble on drain and on nudging, and sliders you can adjust while
playing. It is 10.8.0 rev 2051 plus those commits (10.8.0.2053.ccf0725); your
executable is backed up and this part is skippable.

 

One thing took work. Some toys follow the raw solenoid state and stay on as long
as the mechanism runs - the train in Cactus Canyon being the obvious one. Correct
on a cabinet, unbearable on a gamepad. Anything held longer than a configurable
time now fades towards a configurable level; short hits are untouched.

 

Setup is an installer that asks before every change and backs up what it
replaces, or the same steps by hand - both documented, with screenshots. 32 bit and 64 bit are
both covered, and if you do not have B2S.Server and DOF yet
they are downloaded and set up for you. The one manual part is generating your own DOF
config, roughly ten minutes - that data belongs to the community, so the guide
walks you through it.

 

What I need from testers: tables where it feels wrong, whether the fade defaults
suit you, and setups where it does not start at all - the installer writes a log,
please attach it.

 

Source: https://github.com/kara2010/DirectOutput/tree/gamepad-rumble (MIT) and
https://github.com/kara2010/vpinball/tree/gamepad-rumble (non-commercial), built
on DOF v3.2.1. Full credit to the DOF authors and everyone maintaining the config
database.

 

Built with AI assistance, tested on my own cabinet-less setup across a lot of
tables. Happy to answer questions about how any of it works.

 

GamepadRumble-Paket-10.8.0.2054.fa150ab.zip

Edited Tuesday at 12:22 PM by kara2010
New updated ZIP File

[thechadisgr8]

Cool, thank you for posting will check out as soon as possible!! I don't have dof setup though

[kara2010]

No DOF setup needed beforehand - the installer takes care of that.

 

It installs B2S.Server and DirectOutput for you and puts the rumble controller
and its cabinet config in place. The one part you do yourself is generating
the free DOF table database at configtool.vpuniverse.com (about ten minutes
with an account); the guide walks through it click by click with screenshots,
including the exact port assignments.

 

And even before that: the physics-side rumble (flipper hits, nudge, drain,
ball collisions) works with the included VPX build alone, no DOF involved -
so you'll feel something the moment you launch a table.

 

If anything trips you up, post here and I'll sort it out - that's what the
beta is for.