So i just got Second Sight game and found it has direct input 8 wrapper that binds keyboard and mouse to gamepad sort of natively.

I was proposing such wrapper to now dead creator of Pinnacle Game Profiler (his name was Rob, wonderful guy he was) like around 15 years ago, but he was busy with other features so never did this thing.

Was proposing this idea to Xinput Plus developer like 5 or more years ago. He did not do it as well.

Around 2 years ago suggested this idea to creator of Omicron Dinput Fix awhich emulated only mouse, but he lost his code and did not do it as well.

Around half a year ago i suggested it to creator of XIDI wrapper and he was actually going to do that, but i never heard any news and never saw any code updates since than...

But at last i see GOG did it, and im very happy as i can be used with many old games that has no gamepad support or had half baked gamepad support.

But do that, DIXI should but updated following my design guide i wrote to XIDI developer on github and explained not just WHAT and HOW should be done, but also WHY:

Here is a link, please let DIX developers read it:

https://github.com/samuelgr/Xidi/issues/4#issuecomment-767126078

I explained everything in detail there. Also you can borrow XIDI code and mix it with DIXI (and i highly reccomend to make DIXI open source and let community contribute via github).

Right now it seems DIXI does not even allow to bind several buttons as one, and even game it used in - Second Sight really needs it as some buttons of keyboard are context sensetive and easily could be pressed together and will do nothing in one case but will do something in another and there are few places in game where its better to bind few buttons of keyboard and mouse on one and same gamepad button, as one bind does not work there but other does.

So let me see if I can gist this a bit:

EONS AGO, there was someone making wrappers that were basically as the Dosbox Keymapper is; able to rebind any input event to another, even on controllers.

None of these projects survived.

So now, you want a slightly obscure game from before either dinput or xinput were even standards to be made compatible with this wrapper, is that right?

And a multimode controller won't do what you're looking for, I presume?

You did not get it right, its not about one obscure game its about tons of pre 2005-2007 era games that had no support for gamepad or had very messy gamepad support!

Now, I might be wrong on that, but I'm not sure many people would want to use gamepads with games that weren't developed for gamepad support, in the first place.

And since you mention Second Sight explicitly - I'm pretty sure, that came with gamepad support right away, since it was (first?) released on XBox, PS 2 and GC.

Which games would you have in mind, which would profit from an input method they never really were intended to use?

It depends on the type of game. I like to play old DOS platformers with my controller (as a couch gamer) and find it more "natural" than using a keyboard in some games.

Of course I have the excellent key remapper in retroarch at my disposal, and it's truly sweet when something *just works*. But I'm not aware of any solution for key remapping outside of retroarch/DOSBox, so things like a directinput remapper would be nice to have for people that want to use them directly with older Windows games.

Quite understandable.
Once one is used to more modern steering methods, it's hard to return to the "ways of the old days". Again: understandable. But the OP is explicitly addressing games from 2005 - 2007.
And while I won't even pretend to have any exact numbers, etc. backing up my following statement, I'm pretty sure that the games from the WinXP/WinVista era, that were meant to be played with a gamepad (e.g.: platformers, racing games), had that possibility already implemented.

That's why I asked the OP what games he has in mind.
Because I assume it to be games that were never meant to be played with gamepads.
And usually there's a reason for that.

I mean, in the end it's more or less an academical question...I don't expect anything to come out of this.

At one time I would have downvoted this as a keyboard and mouse gamer, but these days, I almost don't want to play a game if it doesn't support controller. So comfortable in my hands and more intuitive than a block of buttons on a giant rectangle. Sure Kb/M controls have their place, but I prefer controllers these days, and that's from someone who loves the ideo of power PC gaming over consoles.

Doesn't Joy2Key do what you're looking for?

[Edit] Also, I'm impressed (if that's the right word) at the 529 days between Darvond's response to OP and OP necroing his own thread

Well, yes... but to rephrase, I don't know of any freely available freeware/open source tools that do it :P.

Anyway, a directinput remap layer/tool, for games that do support it, would plug directly into the game and provide far lower latency that some OS-level event capture and remap tool. Though, admittedly, both solutions would work in the end.

There's a lot of those programs, actually. A quick search revealed around half a dozen open source programs.

AntiMicroX seems to be the most recommended one.

Huh... perhaps I do live inside of a bubble then, as I never really bothered to look that much (I'm not using Windows any more, and don't really need it on Linux) :P. Nevermind then.

Hah - yes, that's a crucial distinction. Although for anything old, I wouldn't worry too much about added latency as typically the control schemes weren't that precise back then.

Might I ask where you've been for the past two years to have only just now gotten a word back in?

Not to mention Xpadder and various other tools. And yeah, it's quite an interval to forget one's own thread for. Ahh, I see the difference. Yeah, incorporating it into a DX wrapper does make quite a bit of sense assuming that DirectX is how the game is capturing mouse and keyboard input in the first place. Not to mention the fact it would be a DLL loaded by the game rather than a program you need to keep running in the background or remember to start before the game.