Linux Joysticks and Gamepads

Setting up a Joystick or Gamepad in Oolite under Linux

Linux distributions such as Ubuntu Lucid have many joystick and gamepad drivers built in. While they work out of the box, they offer limited configurability. Here I will outline a better alternative which works irrespective of whether your Linux distribution includes joystick support.

[ EDIT: The author of xboxdrv has updated it to also work with non-XBox controllers and to directly accept an INI configuration file. It should be possible to alter oolite.cfg to this INI format. If anyone does this before I get round to it, please post on the [Forums]. ]

1. Install [XBoxDrv] - for Ubuntu there is a binary package. Installation instructions are [here].

2. Don't worry about all the stuff about sudo modprobe uinput and changing permissions on /dev/uinput etc.

3. Download [runxboxdrv] a wrapper I wrote to make using xboxdrv very simple. Hopefully, this will be included in a future release of XBoxDrv.

4. Also in the download are an Oolite configuration for xboxdrv: oolite.cfg and a key configuration for Oolite to go with it: keyconfig.plist

5. Extract them to your home folder and move keyconfig.plist to ~/.Oolite/Addons

6. Make runxboxdrv executable eg. chmod +x ~/runxboxdrv

7. Run from a menu icon or shell using: ~/runxboxdrv --cfg ~/oolite.cfg /usr/bin/oolite

8. The only joystick setup needed in Oolite is to set up the axes. The left hand analog stick left-right should be roll. The right hand stick is up, down, left, right.

9. Open oolite.cfg in a text editor to see the mappings of everything else. The option names correspond to those at [xboxdrv manpage] but without the "--"

10. The left shoulder button acts like a shift key and effectively almost doubles the number of buttons.

If you have any problems, post on the [Forums].