WiinUPro 0.9 + Open Source

Post date: Jun 30, 2017 4:46:51 AM

Hello Everyone! I know I've been pretty quite for a while but man, have I been busy!

First things first, the first actual, non-beta, non-preview, version of WiinUPro has been released! Version 0.9 (yes not 1.0) is available in the downloads section. I have spent a lot of time on this release and I hope you all like it and find it useful. Here is a list of what it can do:

• Supports the following controllers:

  • Wii U Pro Controller

  • Wii Remote

  • Wii Nunchuk

  • Wii Classic Controller

  • Wii Classic Controller Pro

  • Switch Pro Controller

  • Switch Joy-Con (L) & (R)

  • Generic Windows Joystick devices

• Sync & Pair Wii & Wii U Controllers with the Microsoft/Windows Bluetooth Stack

• Support for the Toshiba Bluetooth stack

• Exclusive mode support (only certain builds of Windows, sorry)

• Emulate up to 4 Xbox 360 Controller (XInput) devices at once

• Link a controller's rumble to one or more XInput devices' Force Feedback output

• Keyboard assignments

• Mouse button, movement, and scroll assignments

• XInput button and axis assignments

• Virtual Joystick button and axis assignments

• Rumble on assignment use

• Assign one button to multiple assignments

• Up to 4 different shift states

• Save/Load assignment profiles

• Advanced Joystick calibration (saved separately, sorry)

• Basic Wii Remote IR Sensor support (including as a mouse pointer)

As you can see, WiinUPro is capable of many things, including the requested support for Nintendo Switch controllers! With WiinUPro you will be able to use both Switch Joy-Cons like a single controller. Pairing your Switch controllers is a heck of a lot easier than the Wii ones. Simply hold down the sync button until the lights start dancing, connect it to your Bluetooth stack and use 0000 as the PIN code, and wallah, your controller should be not only connected but also paired. To turn it off just tap the sync button. Also, along with this addition also comes support for generic Joysticks, so you can use your old Logitech controllers or anything that appears in Windows Game Controllers (joy.cpl) with WiinUPro.

You might notice some things are missing or incomplete, which is why it's version 0.9. There isn't support for accelerometer based input, calibration for the IR sensor is incomplete, controllers can't be nicknamed, and some UI options are unavailable. You might be wondering why I decided to release version 0.9 instead of completing the missing features and then releasing the full version 1.0. Well, I got a new job. A pretty awesome job really, I now work for EA at Capital Games and part of being an employee of Electronic Arts is that developers are not supposed to develop anything outside of work without explicit permission. It was actually quite a hectic two weeks from the time I got the offer to my first day. I was in the process of moving and Mega Maze was Greenlit for Steam which means I had to both add Steam features to Mega Maze and release it as well as finish working on what I could for WiinUPro and make it open source all before I officially started working my new job. It was all quite stressful. I literally added Nunchuk support at the last minute and published the whole project it to GitHub before midnight the night before my first day. During these two weeks I added Switch controller support and generic joystick support and support for all the extensions as well as many features I had lined up. What is miss is what I literally didn't have time for.

But rejoice, as the project has finally gone open source! Which I had always planned on doing after my first release of WiinUPro. If you are not familiar with what open source is, it means that the source code for the project is available to the public so anyone can grab a copy to develop against and add improvements or fixes. There are a bunch of capable developers out there, including fans of the software, who be able to not only complete the project but expand it past my original scope and provide a better experience for us all. By the way, when I say the project is open source that includes WiinUPro, WiinUSoft, and the Nintroller library. The project is over on GitHub.

Also, I was also working on a project to help make the process of pairing controllers easier. It is also available on GitHub as well as in the downloads section under extras. I started the project name as EasyPair, but I'm not confident in it working 100% of the time. Basically, you click the start button to search for controllers, then choose one and click pair, when the available, you can use your computer's Bluetooth MAC address (should be pre-populated) to properly pair a Wii U Pro Controller to your computer.

I hope you all have been enjoying the software and continue to enjoy it. I appreciate everyone's moral and financial support during the 4 years since I started the project (May 27th, 2013). I'll miss working on it. There is still stuff for me to do like create a usage tutorial and answer all of your questions, and hopefully set up a forum or something so everyone can help each other with issues and share created profiles.

Have Fun,

Justin