Gamepad problems with 'Nvidia Shield TV'

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dlanor
Posts:2
Joined:Thu May 21, 2020 3:17 pm
Gamepad problems with 'Nvidia Shield TV'

Post by dlanor » Thu May 21, 2020 4:15 pm

I've used DraStic for a long time on some Android consoles (eg: 'H96pro+') as well as some tablets
(eg: 'Teclast M20_4G') and have been very satisfied with its performance.
But today I experienced my first real problems with it, in trying to use it on my newly acquired 'Nvidia Shield TV'.

Problem 1:
Drastic's gamepad profile for the Nvidia shield controller has no button defined for the Nintendo DS 'Select' button.
This makes it impossible to play a game properly using that profile, if the game needs the 'Select' button.
And since that profile is not editable, there's nothing a user can do about it.
eg: Sid Meier's 'Civilization Revolution' uses 'Select' to open a sub-menu for diplomacy and government change.

Problem 2:
An obvious workaround for the problem would be for the user to define a custom gamepad profile to fix it.
But that's impossible to do well, since the profile editor doesn't accept use of the trigger buttons (aka: L3 & R3).
(This surprised me, since both those trigger buttons are used in the predefined profile.))
So a custom profile defined this way will have to lack some of the functions of the predefined one,
simply because the profile editor won't accept the trigger buttons.

At present my only workaround for this is to play such games using both the predefined profile and a custom one,
switching back and forth between them via the emulator menu, each time I need to press the 'Select' button...

Suggested solution:
The L3 and R3 buttons (aka: 'Thumb buttons') are both used for screen swapping, though only one is really needed.
By this I mean that only the swapping of main and secondary screen is truly needed, while the swap between two
different rendering modes is not as important as regaining the use of a missing button of the emulated system.
So I suggest that the predefined profile for the shield controller be modified to use R3 as the 'Select' button,
with L3 retaining its current purpose to swap the two screens.

Suggested improvement:
I also think that the gamepad profile editor should be modified so as to accept the L2 and R2 trigger buttons.
The fact that those buttons are used and work in a predefined profile is proof that this can be implemented.

I hope the developers will provide some fix in an upcoming release.
(Whether they choose my suggestions or some other approach.)

Best regards: Ronald Andersson (aka: dlanor)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Manually merged:
In my recent post about a problem with gamepad on 'Nvidia Shield TV', I incorrectly referred to the trigger buttons as "(aka: L3 & R3)".
That was of course just a brain-freeze typo as I really meant to say "(aka: L2 & R2)".
I had hoped to edit that post, rather than make a new one, but due to the moderation delay I had to do it this way instead...:(

If/when a moderator finds time for it, please feel free to combine my two posts.

Best regards: Ronald Andersson

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