Dolphin 8+ Controller Recognition for Parsec & Dual Emulator use Via BBA link on 1 PC

[RHAYNE]

[color=#ffffff]Dolphin 8+ Controller Recognition for Parsec & Dual Emulator use Via BBA link on 1 PC... [/color]
[color=#ffffff]+some[/color]


[color=#ffffff]Im using parsec (allows people to connect to my pc w/ their controllers and control a game with 0 latency!) anyways i can connect 8 players in 1 party. I was playing mario kart: double dash!! and i hooked up 2 emulators w/ BBA lan play on the same pc. both emulators split in half horizontally 2 players on top 2 on bottom ( driver and item thrower) now here is where it gets a little hairy so bear with me... my computer recognized the 8 controllers but dolphin will only recognize the first 4 controllers ( or so i think, haven't trouble shooted but perhaps i can have the first 4 players disconnect with the emulators minimized and have the other 4 connect with the 2nd emulators open, connect them then have the other 4 rejoin and perhaps i can trick dolphin into using all 8 players that way...) now ive tested and say i have controller port number 1 connected to my game pad i close the controller configuration and minimize dolphin then open the same configuration on the other emulators and set controller port number 1 to my keyboard then they both work separately unless i open the game pad emulator then it will switch to my keyboard. so effectively what im asking is 1: can you give dolphin the ability to have more then 4 controller ports and 2: if not at least have dolphin recognize the multiple controllers as i can just change them manually and not click back to the first emulator that i left with the other 4 controllers.[/color]
[color=#ffffff]or maybe you know of a plugin if someones made perhaps?[/color]
[color=#ffffff]btw it seems if you leave the emulators idle for too long after they've (found) each other via BBA link it freezes perhaps either leaving them idle w/ out clicking start for too long or b/c  of clicking onto something else triggers the freeze perhaps and once it freezes yo cannot link two emulators via BBA with each other from the same dolphin installation you have to reinstall dolphin for it to work...[/color]

[MayImilae]

Ok ok, I'm going to try to parse all of this. Let's just, ignore parsec for the moment. So, you have two Dolphin instances on one PC and they are connecting them via BBA. And you are having trouble configuring the 4x2 inputs for it. I'm just going to continue with this base assumption.

From what I can tell reading this, I think you are misunderstanding how this all works?

RHAYNE Wrote:now ive tested and say i have controller port number 1 connected to my game pad i close the controller configuration and minimize dolphin then open the same configuration on the other emulators and set controller port number 1 to my keyboard then they both work separately unless i open the game pad emulator then it will switch to my keyboard.

That's just how it is, they are supposed to be separate. So here's how Double Dash's 8 player works: you need two entirely separate GameCubes, each with their own controllers and television. Then you place a BroadBand Adapter (BBA) into each console, and connect them via ethernet. Then you can have 8 person play - 4 players times 2 consoles. It's a super quirky and niche thing that almost no one ever did, but it's neat!

So, Dolphin emulates a single GameCube or Wii. In this case, you are swapping out the GameCubes with Dolphin, then are connecting 2 Dolphin instances together with emulated BBAs. It doesn't matter that the two Dolphin instances are together one one host PC, they have to be totally separate for this to work. So, you need to configure each Dolphin instance separately. It can get confusing since the host PC will be running both, but it's no different than having 8 controllers in real life and needing to keep track of what goes where.

Oh, also, remember that each instance of Dolphin should be totally separate, so both should be running in portable mode. You didn't bring up anything that would imply you are running into problems with that but, worth mentioning!

RHAYNE Wrote:so effectively what im asking is 1: can you give dolphin the ability to have more then 4 controller ports

That is not how this works. We can't just magically add more ports, even if we tried, it wouldn't work with BBA anyway. What you need to do is set it up so each player has their own unique controller. But you are running two Dolphin instances on one PC, and each Dolphin instance can detect the 8 controllers on the system. So you need to be careful to make sure each player has unique controllers and there is no sharing of inputs.

[RHAYNE]

well i had 8 players and both dolphin emulators only showed me game pad 0-3 and my keyboard...
so i didn't see a game pad 567 or 8 that i could put into port 123 or 4. as like i said before as long as i keep the first emulator minimized it wont refresh the controllers to the other dolphins controller setup. now maybe if i used two completely different dolphin installations? could take that idea an run with it.. but i dont see how that would detect the other 4 controllers if i just had the option to put the other 4 controllers connected to my pc into port 123 or 4 i could make this work on 1 pc.. worst case i can minimize the first dolphin have the first 4 players disconnect dolphin should remember their controllers not positive by a long shot and have the next 4 connect to the 2nd emulator and the first four rejoin and perhaps that will assign everyone their own unique controller..

besides that i did have issues using a completely separate installation of dolphin and connecting it to my current dolphin im quite sure they were the same version not positive. perhaps i have to put them in portable mode. so i just used the same installation of dolphin but it could of been just a small error that caused that.
Also couldn't get two emulators on two separate PCs to connect to each other probably the portable thing again both pcs connected via Ethernet to my router & having each pc w/ a BBA bridged to my internet (my Ethernet port/cable) but may of been a BBA_MAC address issue as both dolphins used unique address and i think i had named the actual BBA to the same address the dolphins used which may be a big no no.. (cant remember i may have troubleshooted and gave all 4 a unique address) my obs ndi pushes data through to my other pc and shows me the image on my main pc so i know both computers are communicating via my router.

you said dolphin will recognize 8 controllers im curious if you could expand on that thought... as it seemed to only recognized 4 game pads..

[MayImilae]

Oh, so apparently Xinput has a limit of 4 controllers. Hmm, that complicates things. What controllers are you using?

[RHAYNE]

all were xbox 360 controllers

[mbc07]

AFAIK you can't connect more than 4 Xbox 360 controllers simultaneously on PC, but you can connect up to 8 Xbox One controllers as long as you're using Microsoft's proprietary USB dongle, so, it's probably not a XInput limitation...

[RHAYNE]

well under device management it shows my computer recognizing all the controllers so...

[RHAYNE]

(07-16-2019, 09:52 AM)mbc07 Wrote: AFAIK you can't connect more than 4 Xbox 360 controllers simultaneously on PC, but you can connect up to 8 Xbox One controllers as long as you're using Microsoft's proprietary USB dongle, so, it's probably not a XInput limitation...

Well I opened device manager and under Xbox 360 peripherals it shows all the connected controllers so im sure my computer recognized all 8 controllers... (testing the reply feature on this fourm, ignore the similar comment(s)).