Xbox joystick ID

Hi,

I’m trying to developp a multiplayer local game. (Obviously, need to use external controllers.)
I successfully changed the input manager tool to make my Xbox controllers work.
But, as far as I know, the only available function to get controllers is : “Input.GetJoystickNames ()”.
And that’s absolutely not enough because when I unplug and replug them, they’re not obviously the same. For example, “joystick 1” can became “joystick 4” but I didn’t find any way to solve this.

I investigated communities without any result. Each topic says : “there is no way, everybody has the same problem”.
The only solution is to use another controller manager, like “wired” asset or something home made…

But all these topic are quite old. And 6 months ago, Unity team was talking about a change in Controller manager. But there is nothing in actual releases.

Have you got any idea about this issue ?

Thanks.

(nearly 3 years ago, someone asked for this : https://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/hashtable-of-joystick-id-key-equals-array-index-of-input-dot-getjoysticknames-value-equals-joystick-id-at-inputmanager)

Well, as there is no answer, here is my solution. It works but there is nothing more than thinking about how to use basics possibilites we have.

When connecting a controller, for each joystick you added in the InputManager, at each frame, check if joystick X button Y has been pressed.
It’s like getting the ID of the controller. You can do whatever you want with this.

When disconnecting a controller, you can use “Input.GetJoystickNames ()” to get number of plugged controller. Just remove the weird empty strings from returned array. This way, you know that a controller is unplugged. But you can’t know which one.
The only solution I found for this, is to ask every player to validate that they are still in game by pressing a button. The one who didn’t press the button is disconnected.

Also if you don’t want to add every button to Input Manager for every controller, which is extremely borring, you can make something like that :

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class XboxInput  {

	private int id;
	public KeyCode A,B,X,Y,BStart,Select,LR,LT;

	public XboxInput(int playerId){
		id = playerId;
		//See http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=Xbox360Controller for button number
		A = (KeyCode)System.Enum.Parse (typeof(KeyCode), "Joystick" + playerId + "Button0");
		B = (KeyCode)System.Enum.Parse (typeof(KeyCode), "Joystick" + playerId + "Button1");
		X = (KeyCode)System.Enum.Parse (typeof(KeyCode), "Joystick" + playerId + "Button2");
		Y = (KeyCode)System.Enum.Parse (typeof(KeyCode), "Joystick" + playerId + "Button3");
		LT = (KeyCode)System.Enum.Parse (typeof(KeyCode), "Joystick" + playerId + "Button4");
		LR = (KeyCode)System.Enum.Parse (typeof(KeyCode), "Joystick" + playerId + "Button5");
		Select = (KeyCode)System.Enum.Parse (typeof(KeyCode), "Joystick" + playerId + "Button6");
		BStart = (KeyCode)System.Enum.Parse (typeof(KeyCode), "Joystick" + playerId + "Button7");
	}

	//These are defined in the Input Manager
	public float getXaxis(){
		return Input.GetAxis ("X_" + id);
	}

	public float getYaxis(){
		return Input.GetAxis ("Y_" + id);
	}

}

Hope it’s helpful for someone.