Hi!
I’d like to add support in my games for spinner-like controllers. I know it can be done because for example Stella is SDL-based and you can plug original Atari 2600 paddles and driving controllers with a 2600-daptor (which converts the original DB9 ports to USB). I tried it myself and yes, it works (the driving controllers better than the paddles, because the paddles are a bit jittery, but anyway it’s certain that you can get spinner controls with SDL with this approach (well, maybe not anymore because I read at the 2600-daptor page that he just stopped making adaptors… I got mine, but it’s not possible get them anymore).
So, apart from this solution, are there any ready to use USB spinners/dials that will work out of the box on Windows, MacOS, and Linux and that would work with SDL2 and SDL3? I emphasize ready to use because I know you can buy spinners that are meant to be assembled (like the Turbotwist for example), but I’m not interested in that path, because I want to tell my users “you can also play this game with this spinner that you can buy and plug”, rather than “you can assemble your spinner with this screwdriver and then solder these cables here after watching this other tutorial there”.
Searching, I found USB “volume knobs”, (like this one for example) which seem to work out of the box with Windows, MacOS and Linux. However, they seem to be automatically attached by the OS for setting the volume, so I don’t know if a game could use that without interfering with the system volume setting (actually the one I linked says “playing games” as one of the possible uses, but I’m not sure what it means by that, nor how it’s done --and I’m very afraid that it can mean setting the volume of the game rather than using it as a game controller).
I also found USB “jog/shuttle controllers” that can be used for video editing (like this one) and which claim to be compatible with Windows and MacOS (not sure about Linux, though). Maybe this is more promising because if a video editing tool can access this controller, maybe SDL can access it too.
Another path is the “steering wheel” controllers. But their support seems to be Windows-only at this time (with some random success stories on Mac by some Mac users), and even SDL doesn’t seem to support them yet (there’s this ticket about it).
Well, this is everything I found after researching this topic. Does anybody here know more than this? Is there any “ready to use” USB device that has a spinner/dial/knob/jog/shuttle/etc and that is known to work with SDL?
Note: I said SDL2 and SDL3 because I’ll be moving to SDL3 in the midterm, but for the moment I’m still at SDL2.
Thanks!!