jinput under other platforms

[endolf]

Hi
 read the postings that say jinput is being worked on for osx, what about linux and solaris?

Cheers

Endolf

[Jeff]

Not yet.  

Would you like to?    

JK

[endolf]

B****x

 I don't have access to solaris, I was just asking, and, erm, linux, erm, yeah, erm, arse, spose I have too now

know nothing about the joystick interface to linux, guess I have some learning to do

Endolf

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Jeff]

Well, I have a book on Linux game programming on my shelf.  Ill see what it says about input devices tomorrow if yould like.  Might give you someplace to start

JK

[gregorypierce]

I'm going to attempt to integrate the OSX HIDManager JNI binding I was working on for another project into this API next week. Then at least I'll be using one standard API for that project

[Jeff]

Way cool, thanks

If you need help figuring any of the code out ping me.
I inherited it from Mike Martak but as I've been through the upgrade to DX8  (his code was DX7, and DX9 broke it) I
am fairly comfortable with the machine-interface layer.

JK

[gregorypierce]

As long as the API is fairly generic and deals with devices in a generic manner using Flyweights or similar to allow any generic device to gain capabilities - this will likely work out very well.

[endolf]

Well, I have a book on Linux game programming on my shelf.  Ill see what it says about input devices tomorrow if yould like.  Might give you someplace to start

JK

Hi
 That would be cool, I've had a quick look, and there are other joystick librarys about out there, that have good docs, so I can work that out, it's just the keyaboard and mouse that stump me, the only docs I have seen so far require knowing at least which display the app is on on the Xserver, or even down to a specific window, which isn't particularly usefull . I'm trying to get to the stage where the win32 and linux version behave much alike, i.e, even if there is no window, or your window isn't the one in focus, you still get the mouse/keyboard events/names. But this is new to me, and being butt headed, i *will* figure it out

Cheers

Endolf

[endolf]

hmmm, X really does suck, with no access to any window that exists (ie, no JFrame etc is passed down through the jinput api, and I don't know that I can get one from jni), and if you look at the windows version you don't even *need* a window open to reference it, I have no idea where to go with this on the mouse and keyboard front, I can knock up some joystick support I think without much problem, but I don't know where to go from here.
 I've not played myself but understand OSX to be a modified BSD clone, so I *guesS* it runs some version of X?, if so, how is the osx version doing it?

Cheers

Endolf

[leknor]

I've not played myself but understand OSX to be a modified BSD clone, so I *guesS* it runs some version of X?, if so, how is the osx version doing it?

MacOS X runs on a BSD-like base operating system. The gui user interface is seperate and runs in user space I think and it is completely new. It is not based on X Windows. That said you can get X Windows compatibility though an app from Apple.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Jeff]

I'm behind sprry.  Ill check my Linux Game Programminng book today for any helpful words of wisdom.

While it might be possible to do some kind of AWT based psuedo-device through the plug-in system, lets see if we can avoid it first

JK

[Jeff]

OS9 had a set of very DX-like libraries called "Game Sprockets".  I haven't researched OSX's equivalent yet.

JK

[Jeff]

On the Linux front.

My Linux game development book (premier press) suggests SDL as the way to read mouse, keyboard or game controllers.

I havent read deep enough to find out if there is discovery yet.

One solution might be to have an ini file in Linux and then discovery tools could write that ini file when we figure out how to do diescovery.

[endolf]

Hi
 I looked at SDL, but it needs you to open a graphics window with it (that is more that 0,0) before you can capture the events , unesll I missed something

[tortoise]

It also seems with SDL you have to start it and have it running in the background in its own thread? It didn't strike me as too appetizing.

There are good docs on the joystick interface under (doing this from memory at work..) /usr/src/linux/documentation/input/joystick-api.txt

If that's not it exactly, it's pretty close. That document is really helpful for direct, low level joystick polling.

I'm pretty sure that's how JavaJoystick does linux.

[endolf]

Hi
 The joystick isn't a problem, the interface is easy, and the hardware specifics are abstracted out as the should be. I've had a look and libgii, but this looks like i would have to guess at what type of mouse, where it's attached, what device the keyboard was etc etc etc. It's just a right mess. Hence the lack of mouse or keyboard support yet, joystick should be too much longer, as long as I don't keep getting too distracted by the one way flow of cash

[Jeff]

Does that discuss discovery at all?

[Jeff]

Cool End, thanks for taking this on


On Discovery we couldjust whim out and use a config file.  Then if we ever fogure out how to do real discovery we  coudl either repalce the config file OR justw rite a utility that does the discovery and writes the config file.

JK

[gregorypierce]

OS9 had a set of very DX-like libraries called "Game Sprockets".  I haven't researched OSX's equivalent yet.

JK

Game Sprokets no longer exist (are no longer supported).

[endolf]

Cool End, thanks for taking this on

Don't thank me yet, it's not done . libgii is a nightmare, I'm having real problems getting it to do anthing, there is very little documentation. I can get keyboard events from it, but only from stdin, so as soon as you switch windows it goes again, I still can't get ti to listen to my mouse, even though the documentation says it should work with USB mice. V little progress last week. Still no job and the money ran out so I was kinda distracted. Hopefully I will get the joystick stuff working this week and stable enough to let people test it. But still no mouse or keyboard

Cheers

Endolf

P.S. I spent 6 pounds (9 USD) faxing the developers agrement thing to the US, but havn't heard anything, did it get there?, do I need to re-apply for developer status, or should I just email you the code?

[endolf]

Hi
 Partial success. I can get mouse events from libgii now. There is an environment variable that lists a set of inputs, and then inside your app you can set it up to read from those. The demos that come with libgii don't give any indication of this. So having given up and tried something myself and googled around a bit the mouse bits works from setting GII_INPUT, keyboard should work this way too but I'm getting an error, persistance will win out, I hope . No more joystck progress as I was playing with libgii again, but I feel I am winning at last .

Cheers

Endolf

[Jeff]

P.S. I spent 6 pounds (9 USD) faxing the developers agrement thing to the US, but havn't heard anything, did it get there?, do I need to re-apply for developer status, or should I just email you the code?

Just email me at jeffrey.kesselman@sun.com and tell me what your IRL name is so i cna match it up with the agreement.

(Oh, and I can reimburse you the $9.00 out of my own pocket if you'ld like, seeing as how your strapped at the moment.  Would PayPal work?)

[endolf]

(Oh, and I can reimburse you the $9.00 out of my own pocket if you'ld like, seeing as how your strapped at the moment.  Would PayPal work?)

Kind offer, but no need, I don't mind paying for something, just not too keen on paying something for nothing