I give up

Engines, Libraries and Tools JInput
#1

I’ve tried for the… hmmm… about fifth or sixth time to get Jinput running with no luck. Coming to this list, there’s no idea which of the zillion versions of JInput out there is supposed to be the one to use, there’s no current getting-started guide. I end up reading every thread and coming up with a half dozen different ways to download and deploy JINput. It’s a mess.

Please understand, I’m not saying that anyone here has to produce such materials, just that I’ve tried several times to get this project to work, it never has for me, and it’s extremely frustrating. I’m going to switch to another technology.

Nobody needs to care that I’m too stupid to make JInput work, but if anyone here is interested in the technology being used, then it might be an idea to make it more usable for newbs.

#2

I always simply used the one which comes with lwjgl. Works for me. :slight_smile:

#3

yup me too, the jinput included with lwjgl is pretty simple to use, not sure if the api is the same as the standalone version, might be wrapped up to make it easier.

#4

It’s wrapped up and the plugins that are generally used are hidden away so you don’t have to worry about them.

Kev

#5

Hi

Does this help?

Does it make sense?

What needs adding or improving?

Help me to help you :slight_smile:

Endolf

#6

Wow! Thanks!

Yes, that worked a treat.

Hey, sorry if I bugged you - I didn’t mean to whinge, I had just gotten very frustrated with the whole thing.

Just a quick question - I see you noted the existence of the queues in JI2. Would you recommend that approach, or is it just a preference kind of thing?

#7

Hey, no problems.

Having put in as much work to JInput as myself and the other devs have, it seems a shame for people not to be able to use it :).

It depends what your after. I suspect that for most game devs, the queues are the best way to go. They make it easy to detect ‘which device and axis just moved’ for doing your controller configuration screens, and once up and running, you know exactly what and when changed.

If need to query an axis, I believe you can actually mix the 2 techniques anyway, so you can read the event queues to find out what has changed, and then query the value for any other controller you are interested in, should you so wish.

HTH

Endolf

#8

I understand your frustrations Kaffine, I was recently playing around with some java physics library. I dont’ mind if library is not mature, and I can expect to find bugs.

What I don’t like is many groups don’t offer ‘real’ releases, and their sites are very empty with regards to how / what is available. In the end I just hunted down the CVS repository and built my own version of the project… But it’s not a very easy / professional way to distribute an open source package. And I really don’t think the excuse of “it’s free so you should be happy is valid” because in the end it only hurts the open source group. If things are too difficult no one uses it / reports bugs / is willing to contribute. Even if you don’t have a great / mature product; helping and facilitating ease of use will end users greately increases the exposure and number of users of the project.

I think lwjgl have done a great job of releasing and making an easy to use product. Many other groups could learn a thing or two from their practices.

(Sorry for the rant, but it’s been on my chest since it took me 8 hours to get a physics library working when it should have been a 30 minute low effort task)