There was a thread about this a loooong while back but it didn't entirely relate to what I was wanting to ask.
VNC has issues with input on Dolphin because it doesn't use SDL and DInput (not that DInput would be useful anyway since I want to use Xubuntu). Is there any other way to transfer input from a gamepad or keyboard to remotely connected computer that could help me run Dolphin? I would be connecting from Windows or Linux to a Windows or Linux machine.
Bump... Does no one have any idea?
Ideally, I would think that your VNC software is capable of producing keyboard events on the host machine. Also ideally, SDL would recognize this. If this much is possible, and assuming the host machine's Dolphin gamepads are all mapped using keys, you can do something like the following:
1) On the client, use software that translates joystick input to keystrokes. Look at Xpadder for Windows and QJoypad for Linux.
2) Connect the client to the host via VNC. Run Dolphin on the host machine.
3) Start up Xpadder or QJoypad on the client. You may need to ensure that the VNC software window has input focus, so it can send keystrokes to the application.
Basically, it looks something like this: (Joystick Input) -> (Xpadder/QJoypad) -> (Keystroke Input) -> (VNC software) -> (Dolphin). Again, such a method is pretty meaningless if you can't even get Dolphin on the host to read keystrokes at all (i.e. even when using a real keyboard).
Other methods include gruesome hacking, e.g. modifying Dolphin to accept input from a custom networked application. You could build your own application that connects to the host machine, takes input from the client's joystick, then directly plugs it in to Dolphin. But at that point, you'll probably spend more time crafting a solution than actually enjoying it.
SDL unfortunately won't take input from VNC at all, so Dolphin just sorta sits there.
I guess there isn't a way to do it then other than waste time writing my own program.
Can your VNC software generate any keyboard event, i.e. does the keyboard even work when using VNC for anything?
For everything but Dolphin, yes. Could I maybe use some sort of keyboard mapping software on the server end to take VNC events and put them in SDL? Maybe a hot-key type set up where every keyboard key is mapped to itself? Idk.