This project started almost 6 months back now between myself and jamz az, and will probably be in the works for at least a few more while we add, move around, tweak and get everything exactly how we want it, but we wanted to show off some of what the controller is capable of at this point and get some feedback on it also.

One thing that most consoles have never been able to do right, even the 'next generation' of consoles, has been letting the user decide what they want the buttons on the controller to do. This has been an option in PC gaming for years and years, while console games just omit or at best most times give the user a handful of options, and once in a blue moon actually let you remap the controller from in game how you actually want, this is an option that ALL games should have, not just a few of them. With a default controller layout, or even 4 or 5 setups to choose from you have to get used to that layout, which seemed like a fair challenge to do something about, so this project was started.

The controller has, for all intensive purposes, been hacked up so we have access to almost every single button and Analog line in the thing, minus Start and Guide for several reason, but mainly because those 2 buttons are the same in every single game and Guide only has but one use anyway, but every other function on the controller can be remapped, turned off or duplicated to any other function on the controller.

Here's an early Prototype, that we quickly outgrew, poor little thing..



..so it became updated to this version here..



From the start we knew there were going to be way, way too many options to be able to keep this all 'on controller' so a PC app (Mapper Zapper) was also coded up to control the new Hardware (CGnome) in the controller.



Here you can see the different Drop Down boxes to select what you would like the button to be...



Then here it is loading the new remaps...



...and finally loaded, all of which takes around 10 seconds right now.



The controller can store 5 custom remaps, and always has a 'Map 0' that is always the Default settings, so it's really 6 controllers in one, and you just tap the Sync button to 'cycle' thru the stored maps.

Right now the prototypes are at the point where this is all that you see on the controller..



..but there is still a good bit to do and things to iron out before we will consider it done.

Well, there it is, for now anyway, look forward to hearing some feedback and will answer some questions about it, there's still a lot in the works as well as some ideas we tossed out earlier on and are looking at putting back in, but feel free to ask away.

Here's a short video of the latest prototype in action, nothing fancy, just shows the map selecting and a few remaps..

Wow, that is really cool!
How long did it take you to make that decoder board?

As far as the hardware side of things goes, the older prototype boards were all soldered up in a couple of hours really, to build a complete older prototype from scratch takes hours and hours though, while the code side of things is still going on. The prototype boards that are installed inside the controllers were made up by PCB123 and took less than a week to receive, but weeks to create in the app, then a couple of hours for me to populate them with parts, and another couple to install.

Bump from the dead! Hows this project coming?

Edit: Ahh! I see it's finished!

For anyone wishing to mess with the Mapper Zapper application we have a Demo of it available now for download, and would appreciate any feedback (good or bad, it's all the same) on it if you do try it out. Now it's not going to do anything to your controller at all, for anyone that hasn't bothered to read the entire thread, but you'll get to mess with all the menus and such to see what all can be done on the controller via the MZ and CGn.

http://www.cgnome.com/dnldpage.html