Gamepads and Controllers

You can query any Gamepads that are connected or listen to events ("button" and "axis").

You must opt-in to controller support (engine.inputs.gamepads.enabled) because it is a polling-based API, so we have to check it each update frame. If an gamepad related event handler is set, you will automatically opt-in to controller polling.

HTML5 Gamepad API only supports a maximum of 4 gamepads. You can access them using the engine.input.gamepads.at method. If a Gamepad is not connected, it will simply not throw events.

Gamepad Filtering

Different browsers/devices are sometimes loose about the devices they consider Gamepads, you can set minimum device requirements with engine.input.gamepads.setMinimumGamepadConfiguration so that undesired devices are not reported to you (Touchpads, Mice, Web Cameras, etc.).

js
// ensures that only gamepads with at least 4 axis and 8 buttons are reported for events
engine.input.gamepads.setMinimumGamepadConfiguration({
  axis: 4,
  buttons: 8,
})

js
// ensures that only gamepads with at least 4 axis and 8 buttons are reported for events
engine.input.gamepads.setMinimumGamepadConfiguration({
  axis: 4,
  buttons: 8,
})

Gamepad Events

You can subscribe to gamepad connect and disconnect events through engine.input.gamepads.on.

A GamepadConnectEvent or GamepadDisconnectEvent will be passed to you.

• connect - When a gamepad connects it will fire this event and pass a GamepadConnectEvent with a reference to the gamepad.
• disconnect - When a gamepad disconnects it will fire this event and pass a GamepadDisconnectEvent

Once you have a reference to a gamepad you may listen to changes on that gamepad with .on. A GamepadButtonEvent or GamepadAxisEvent will be passed to you.

• button - Whenever a button is pressed on the game
• axis - Whenever an axis

ts
engine.input.gamepads.on('connect', (ce: ex.Input.GamepadConnectEvent) => {
  const newPlayer = CreateNewPlayer() // pseudo-code for new player logic on gamepad connection
  console.log('Gamepad connected', ce)
  ce.gamepad.on('button', (be: ex.GamepadButtonEvent) => {
    if (be.button === ex.Input.Buttons.Face1) {
      newPlayer.jump()
    }
  })
  ce.gamepad.on('axis', (ae: ex.GamepadAxisEvent) => {
    if (ae.axis === ex.Input.Axis.LeftStickX && ae.value > 0.5) {
      newPlayer.moveRight()
    }
  })
})

ts
engine.input.gamepads.on('connect', (ce: ex.Input.GamepadConnectEvent) => {
  const newPlayer = CreateNewPlayer() // pseudo-code for new player logic on gamepad connection
  console.log('Gamepad connected', ce)
  ce.gamepad.on('button', (be: ex.GamepadButtonEvent) => {
    if (be.button === ex.Input.Buttons.Face1) {
      newPlayer.jump()
    }
  })
  ce.gamepad.on('axis', (ae: ex.GamepadAxisEvent) => {
    if (ae.axis === ex.Input.Axis.LeftStickX && ae.value > 0.5) {
      newPlayer.moveRight()
    }
  })
})

Responding to button input

Gamepad buttons typically have values between 0 and 1, however depending on the sensitivity of the controller, even if a button is idle it could have a very tiny value. For this reason, you can pass in a threshold to several methods to customize how sensitive you want to be in detecting button presses.

You can inspect any connected Gamepad using Gamepad.isButtonPressed, Gamepad.getButton, or you can subscribe to the button event published on the Gamepad which passes a GamepadButtonEvent to your handler.

js
// enable gamepad support
engine.input.gamepads.enabled = true
// query gamepad on update
engine.on('update', function (ev) {
  // access any gamepad by index
  if (engine.input.gamepads.at(0).isButtonPressed(ex.Input.Buttons.Face1)) {
    ex.Logger.getInstance().info('Controller A button pressed')
  }
  // query individual button
  if (engine.input.gamepads.at(0).getButton(ex.Input.Buttons.DpadLeft) > 0.2) {
    ex.Logger.getInstance().info('Controller D-pad left value is > 0.2')
  }
})
// subscribe to button events
engine.input.gamepads.at(0).on('button', function (ev) {
  ex.Logger.getInstance().info(ev.button, ev.value)
})

js
// enable gamepad support
engine.input.gamepads.enabled = true
// query gamepad on update
engine.on('update', function (ev) {
  // access any gamepad by index
  if (engine.input.gamepads.at(0).isButtonPressed(ex.Input.Buttons.Face1)) {
    ex.Logger.getInstance().info('Controller A button pressed')
  }
  // query individual button
  if (engine.input.gamepads.at(0).getButton(ex.Input.Buttons.DpadLeft) > 0.2) {
    ex.Logger.getInstance().info('Controller D-pad left value is > 0.2')
  }
})
// subscribe to button events
engine.input.gamepads.at(0).on('button', function (ev) {
  ex.Logger.getInstance().info(ev.button, ev.value)
})

Responding to axis input

Gamepad axes typically have values between -1 and 1, but even idle sticks can still propagate very small values depending on the quality and age of a controller. For this reason, you can set Gamepads.MinAxisMoveThreshold to set the (absolute) threshold after which Excalibur will start publishing axis events. By default it is set to a value that normally will not throw events if a stick is idle. You can query axes via Gamepad.getAxes or by subscribing to the axis event on Gamepad which passes a GamepadAxisEvent to your handler.

js
// enable gamepad support
engine.input.gamepads.enabled = true;
// query gamepad on update
engine.on('update', function(ev) {
  // access any gamepad by index
  const axisValue =  = engine.input.gamepads.at(0).getAxes(ex.Input.Axes.LeftStickX));
  if (axisValue > 0.5) {
    ex.Logger.getInstance().info('Move right', axisValue);
  }
});
// subscribe to axis events
engine.input.gamepads.at(0).on('axis', function(ev) {
  ex.Logger.getInstance().info(ev.axis, ev.value);
});

js
// enable gamepad support
engine.input.gamepads.enabled = true;
// query gamepad on update
engine.on('update', function(ev) {
  // access any gamepad by index
  const axisValue =  = engine.input.gamepads.at(0).getAxes(ex.Input.Axes.LeftStickX));
  if (axisValue > 0.5) {
    ex.Logger.getInstance().info('Move right', axisValue);
  }
});
// subscribe to axis events
engine.input.gamepads.at(0).on('axis', function(ev) {
  ex.Logger.getInstance().info(ev.axis, ev.value);
});