Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello all,

I've been at this for two days now. Googling, YTbing, trying various fixes of every kind that I can look up. I've been unable to get any controller to be recognized in Dolphin. My gamepad is seen in my device manager, and all my Steam games work perfectly with it. I've been attempting to use my Dualshock4 through BT running through DS4Windows, and also without. I've tried wired and wireless, and I've tried my old wired Xbox controller. I've attempted every single setting in Dolphin I can see in the controller config to no avail. Dolphin simply refuses to see it no matter what I try.

Pardon my snideness, but at this point, my impatience and frustration is quickly coming to a head. I don't understand why Dolphin has such trouble recognizing such a rudimentary thing as a simple controller interface when my entire system and every other program has no issue with it. I shouldn't have to go into drivers or backend this through Steam (as I've seen some solutions suggest) to get it to work. From what I'm seeing, this is not an uncommon problem and has been something that has plagued numerous Dolphin builds for years now. The only game I can get running is Prime Trilogy with PrimeHackRelease using the M/KB, which is a whole new experience and hard to fathom how it could've been played any other way, but it'd be wonderful to be able to play games that benefit better from a gamepad (Galaxies). Dolphin just will not see it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I'm at the end of my rope and am out of options. Thanks folks.

If you run Dolphin in portable mode, do you have the same problem? (create a blank txt file named portable.txt in the same folder as Dolphin.exe)

(12-28-2020, 06:33 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: [ -> ]If you run Dolphin in portable mode, do you have the same problem? (create a blank txt file named portable.txt in the same folder as Dolphin.exe)

No, I figured out the problem.

In all other emulators I've used, the controller is immediately seen and all button inputs show from the get go in the controller config without having to program them first. With Dolphin, I needed to click and assign each button, axis and trigger before Dolphin showed any response in the controller screen when I pressed them. A simple mistake, but one I don't feel at total fault for as Dolphin is different from other emulators. All show that the inputs, despite their assignments, are being recognized.

I think this is something that should be noted in a disclaimer box the first time a user enters the controller screen, it would save a lot of headache.

Hi Kale,

Could you provide a little more detail as to how you solved this problem? I'm having the same issues.

(12-28-2020, 09:29 AM)C_Bucs_Rule Wrote: [ -> ]Hi Kale,

Could you provide a little more detail as to how you solved this problem? I'm having the same issues.

Sure, what I did was just not realize that buttons, axis and triggers need to be assigned before the program will show that they are recognized. Simply click the button/axis/trigger you want, hit the respective button on the controller, and Dolphin will now show that it's seeing it, and it will now work in-game. Not sure if this is your problem, but it was mine. I'm used to emulators showing responses to controllers right off the bat without first having to assign buttons that I assumed it's how Dolphin worked as well.

Hope this helped.

Which other emulator responds to input before you assign your buttons?

(12-29-2020, 07:40 AM)Billiard26 Wrote: [ -> ]Which other emulator responds to input before you assign your buttons?

I know RPCS3 does, and think Mednafen does as well.

Aside the point. It's an oversight, the program should always indicate an interface is seen to the user, regardless if they have assigned buttons or not.

RPCS3 also shows no indication of controller input until your controller is mapped. There are no indicators for the buttons (only sticks/triggers) (unlike Dolphin).
I have never used Mednafen.

Dolphin shows your controller in the "Device" list to indicate it is present. What else should be done?

(12-29-2020, 12:13 PM)Billiard26 Wrote: [ -> ]RPCS3 also shows no indication of controller input until your controller is mapped. There are no indicators for the buttons (only sticks/triggers) (unlike Dolphin).
I have never used Mednafen.

Dolphin shows your controller in the "Device" list to indicate it is present. What else should be done?

RPCS3 does show some indication the controller is recognized.

What I mentioned might help is to place a small disclaimer box in the control config that buttons need to be assigned before being shown as recognized. Usually at least the analogs are seen and that they didn't show any response is the reason I thought Dolphin wasn't seeing my controller. It threw me off.

Not a huge deal and I realize my mistake, but it did cause a bit of frustration. But thanks for the hard work.