Controls

The Controls page decides which device each of the four players uses, and lets you rebind every button and stick direction on it. Changes apply immediately and are remembered between sessions.

This feature is ported from CTR Native Expanded by thecodingbob (PR 54 and PR 70, GPL-3.0). This page is adapted from its docs/features/CONTROLS.md.

Opening the screen

Options → Controls. The page lists Player 1 to Player 4 with the device each one has, and below them AP Shortcuts (see AP shortcuts). Press Cross on a player to open that player's screen. Its title reads CONTROLS P1 through CONTROLS P4, so you always know whose controls you are looking at. Triangle or Start goes back to the player list, and from there back to Options.

Choosing a device for each player

By default, every player is on Automatic: player 1 takes the first gamepad plugged in, players 2 to 4 follow in order, and the keyboard is the last fallback. You do not need to touch this for most setups: plug a controller in and whoever was waiting for one gets it. Assignment is re-sorted whenever a controller is plugged in or unplugged, including in the middle of a race.

To take control of the assignment yourself, open DEVICE with Cross. A SELECT DEVICE popup lists:

1. every device no other player is using
2. Automatic: resolve against whatever is free
3. Disabled: players 2 to 4 only

A controller already assigned to another player is not offered in your list.

Player 1 can never be disabled. If player 1's controller disappears mid-session, the keyboard moves to player 1 and the player who had it drops back to Automatic.

Rebinding a control

Press Cross on any binding row to start listening. That row turns red and shows ..., and the control stops working while you decide.

1. Let go of everything on that device first. The game waits for it to go idle, so the press that opened the row is never taken as the new binding.
2. Press the key or button you want instead. The proposed binding appears in red.
3. Let go of it, then press Cross to confirm. The prompt shows the Cross icon for this step.

Triangle or Start gives up on it: the previous binding comes back and you stay on the screen. Doing nothing for a few seconds reverts the row as well. While a row is listening, that device stops driving the menu, so a press meant for one control cannot leak into another.

A rebind does not start while a text field (for example on the Connection page) is being edited.

The screen only listens to the device you are editing: rebinding on the keyboard ignores your gamepad, and the other way round. A confirmed change is saved straight away.

Bindings belong to the device, not to the player: rebinding L1 on a controller changes it for whoever that controller is assigned to. Restore Defaults puts every binding on that device back to the shipped layout: the keyboard's C/V/Z/X face buttons, arrows, Enter and Space, or the standard gamepad layout for a controller.

Two identical controllers share one layout, because the game identifies them the same way. Restoring defaults on one of them restores both.

Two game controls may share a key. If a press then does two things at once, that is the cause. Reassign one of them. A game control and an AP shortcut never share a key: see AP shortcuts.

Stick deadzone

An analog stick that rests off centre steers on its own, and DEADZONE is the answer to that: Left/Right change it in steps of 5 percent.

The figure is how much of the stick's travel to ignore around centre, from 0 to 90. 0 is the console's own behaviour and trims nothing, so leave it there unless your stick actually drifts.

Like the bindings, the figure belongs to the device rather than the player, so it is shared by two identical controllers, and Restore Defaults puts it back to 0. The keyboard has no axes, so the row is not shown for it. The figure is saved when you leave the player's screen.

Steering

STEERING chooses how the left stick steers: Left, Right or Cross switch between the two.

• Original (default) hands the game the stick as the console did. The game's own curve ignores the first third of the travel, gives 73% of full lock just short of the edge and full lock only at the very edge. A round modern stick leaves that edge as soon as it is a few degrees off horizontal, so a stick pushed hard but slightly up or down steers far less than the D-pad (about 70% at 25 degrees, 25% at the diagonal).
• Modern reshapes the stick for that curve: nothing inside the first 10% of the travel, then steering in proportion to the stick, and full lock from about two-thirds of the travel, which a fully pushed stick keeps up to about 45 degrees off horizontal. The game's curve has no value between 73% and full lock, so that last step stays a jump. Only the horizontal axis changes, and the physics are the game's own (NativeInput_ModernSteerByte in platform/native_input.c).

Modern also makes a smaller push count as Left or Right in the menus that read the stick, since a quarter of the travel already reaches the threshold.

Like the deadzone, the mode belongs to the device, is saved when you leave the player's screen, and goes back to Original with Restore Defaults. To check it, tools/controls/test_native_controls.c runs both modes through a copy of the game's curve.

Editing someone else's controls

L1 and R1 on player 1's device switch between players, and the cursor jumps back to the top of the list.

Everything else on the screen answers to player 1's device or the selected player's own, so the second player can rebind their own pad without player 1 handing it over. The player switch stays on player 1's shoulders on purpose.

A player set to Disabled has no device, so only player 1 can reach the screen for them, which is enough to give them a device back.

AP shortcuts

The Archipelago build has a few keyboard shortcuts of its own. AP Shortcuts, under the players on the Controls page, lists them with their keys, and each one is rebound like any keyboard control: Cross on the row, press the new key, let go, then press the keyboard's Cross key (C by default) to confirm. The shortcuts always read the keyboard, whichever player the keyboard is assigned to.

The rows starting with Dev are hidden unless dev_keys=1 is set in ap-config.txt, and the Dev Demo Camera row also needs debug_democam=1, the same two settings its key needs to do anything. The two stats test mode keys still work without dev_keys; only their rows are hidden. Hidden rows keep their keys in controls.ini, still count in the one-key rule below (a game control that takes a hidden Dev key clears it, so it cannot fire next to that control once you turn dev keys on), and come back with Restore Defaults. With the settings off the cursor skips them, because they are not in the list.

One key never does two things. If you give a key to a game control and an AP shortcut already has it, or the other way round, the newest binding wins and the older one is cleared and shows as None. The same goes for two shortcuts. While you confirm, the row shows the Cross icon with to replace instead of to confirm, and the line under the list names the control that will lose the key. Two game controls may still share a key, as before.

The keyboard's Cross key cannot be given to a shortcut: it is how the keyboard confirms and picks menu rows, so the press is ignored and the row keeps listening. Move Cross first if you want that key for a shortcut.

Restore Defaults on the AP Shortcuts screen puts every shortcut and every keyboard game control back to the shipped keys, and Restore Defaults on the keyboard's player screen does the same. The two sets of defaults never overlap, so they are restored together. Restoring a controller's defaults leaves the shortcuts alone.

Shortcuts never fire while a text field (for example on the Connection page) is being edited, so typing a port on the number pad is safe, and never while a rebind is listening.

On a pad, the Connection page takes Cross or Start to save a text field and Triangle to cancel it, read through that pad's own bindings.

M is not a shortcut today. It was the old map overlay toggle and is kept free for a planned map zoom; nothing reads it in this version.

controls.ini

Your bindings and player assignment are kept in controls.ini, in the same folder as config.ini (the folder the game is started from), and rewritten after every change. A commented template ships as default_controls.ini: copy it to controls.ini to start from it, or let the game write one for you. Values are readable names rather than numbers, so the file can be edited by hand:

[Assignment]
player1 = auto
player2 = auto

[device keyboard]
name = Keyboard
cross = C
l2 = Left Ctrl

[device 03000000c0400000e11000011010000]
name = Xbox 360 Controller
cross = A
l2 = Left Trigger
deadzone = 15
steering = modern

[AP Shortcuts]
character_picker = Keypad 9
dev_trap_icy = none

Keyboard values are key names such as C, Space or Left Shift. Controller values are button and axis names as your driver reports them, and none clears a control. A key or value the loader does not recognize is skipped, leaving that one control at its default rather than breaking the rest of the file.

[AP Shortcuts] holds the shortcut keys, one line per shortcut, with the same key names as the keyboard section. A file without this section, such as one written before the shortcuts were bindable, loads with every shortcut on its default key. If a hand edit puts one key on both a keyboard game control and a shortcut, the game control keeps it and the shortcut loads unbound.

auto lets a player resolve itself, disabled takes a player out, and any other value pins that player to the named device for as long as it stays plugged in. Controllers are matched by their hardware ID, so a pad keeps its layout across replugs and USB ports.