PPJoy 0.8.4.5 has finally been released!

If you know about GlovePIE, then you almost certainly know about the free joystick emulator PPJoy. But it is more than just a joystick emulator, since it is really a joystick driver for plugging PlayStation 2 gamepads into the Parallel Port (aka the Printer Port).

We all thought PPJoy was dead, because Deon Van Der Westhuysen was tired of not getting any postcards and donations that he asked for (oops. Sorry. I did honestly mean to send a postcard, I just never got around to it). But because it wasn’t working on 64 bit operating systems, and had issues on Vista and Windows 7, he decided to continue work on it and to add Vista, Windows 7, and 64 bit support. So now there’s a new version!

I haven’t had a chance to look at the features yet.

Check out his blog at http://ppjoy.blogspot.com/.

He doesn’t have his own web-host, so I hosted the download here: http://glovepie.org/PPJoySetup-0.8.4.5-early-release.exe.

I’m hoping he’ll add a detailed force feedback implementation so we can get back information from the game and send it to a Wii Remote, Dual Shock 3, Novint Falcon, or whatever other force feedback or haptic device we have. I’d also like to be able to use the force feedback output for other purposes, such as keeping track of what is happening in the game, or mapping it to a completely different kind of output.

Actually I could have added force feedback to PPJoy myself, and was thinking of doing so eventually if PPJoy was dead, since you don’t actually need the source code, or any knowledge about writing device drivers. A Force Feedback driver is just some registry entries and a normal user mode DLL. I could even code it in Delphi. But it would have required some thinking about the best way to pass the information back to the application.

I also hope he allows all 128 possible buttons, not just 32, and maybe the velocity, acceleration and force axes (6 of each), since people keep asking me for more buttons and axes. He could also add 2 POV hats. Or maybe it’s harder to make a joystick driver do that, even if DirectInput supports it. I don’t know much about writing joystick drivers.

Another feature that would be good is a way for other programs to tell which Digital is mapped to which Button, and which Analog is mapped to which axis. I’m thinking I might have to just set each digital or analog in turn to a specific value, and read back from the joystick what it was reported as.

BTW, isn’t it nice that we can trade with South Africa (where PPJoy is made) now that they have abolished apartheid? Wouldn’t it be nice if Israel would abolish apartheid too and be welcomed back into the civilised world?