Joystick names under Windows

SDL Development
1

I have noticed that under Windows, ‘SDL_JoystickName’ always returns
"Microsoft PC Joystick Driver" or something similar. Moreover, it
returns the same string even when there are multiple joysticks, which
makes the string useless for uniquely identifying a particular
joystick.

Looking a bit deeper, I found that this string comes directly from
Windows through ‘joyGetDevCaps’. In other, words, Windows is at
fault, not SDL.

However, it seems somewhat strange that SDL uses the multimedia API
instead of DirectInput for joystick input. The former is limited to a
maximum of 2 joysticks, and DirectInput is appearently better able to
assign meaningful names to joysticks. Is there any particular reason
for this?–
Rainer Deyke | root at rainerdeyke.com | http://rainerdeyke.com

2

However, it seems somewhat strange that SDL uses the multimedia API
instead of DirectInput for joystick input. The former is limited to a
maximum of 2 joysticks, and DirectInput is appearently better able to
assign meaningful names to joysticks. Is there any particular reason
for this?

Yeah. The multimedia joystick code was written before the DirectX code,
and nobody complained. :slight_smile:

Actually, somebody wrote DirectInput code for joysticks, but I have since
lost the e-mail. Whoever sent that, can you resend it?

See ya!
-Sam Lantinga, Software Engineer, Blizzard Entertainment