Using Xalia without gamepad

[Frambooisier]

Hello,

is there a way to use Xalia without gamepad? I was hoping to use it in game's menu specifically Company Of Heroes 2 Proton version.

[madewokherd]

Currently, no, but it could be added. What were you thinking of using as input?

[madewokherd]

Oh, I guess your idea is: Steam Input remaps the gamepad to keyboard/mouse (not in a position currently to easily verify that, basing it on pcgamingwiki saying there's no gamepad support, while it has a Playable rating on deck), so if Xalia could use keyboard inputs, it could work there.

It's not an ideal solution, as it depends on the specific mapping, which I don't think there's a good way to check. You'd either have to enable it with some customization (a sort of ".xaliarc" file is also something I'd like to implement fwiw), or we'd have to special case the game ID and assume the default layout is used (although we kind of assume that to some extent already).

The ideal would be an update to Steam Input allowing Xalia to temporarily request gamepad inputs, but that's tricky to set up.

[madewokherd]

Looked into Company of Heroes 2 launcher. It does default to keyboard controls in Steam Input (WASD).

Also, there's a native Linux version. Unfortunately, the native Linux launcher does not support AT-SPI2.

The Windows version doesn't seem to have a launcher at all. The menu is also inaccessible. So while keyboard support would be a good feature, it won't work for your use case, sorry.

[Frambooisier]

I was hoping to be able to interact with in-game buttons, I was trying to levreage this beautiful project to bind some shortcuts or at least navigate the menu with arrow keys that are made only for mouse navigation. I'm not using the native Linux version since it's not multiplayer with the Windows version :(

[Frambooisier]

"The Windows version doesn't seem to have a launcher at all."

Yes, the Windows version does not have launcher.

Since I spent thousands of hours in that game, I am interested in small quality-of-life improvements, but if I understand correctly if the game does not support in-game button selection then there is no way for xalia to get around that?

[madewokherd]

Without accessibility support, it's not impossible, but it's much more difficult. It'd basically require capturing the screen and doing image processing to find the buttons. And in addition to the programming difficulty, I'm not sure how well that can perform.

[Frambooisier]

That would involve determining visually where buttons are and then emulating mouse clicks?

[madewokherd]

Yes.

[Frambooisier]

I guess such functionality is outside of the scope of Xalia?

[madewokherd]

Let's just say it's very far down the priority list, and this game wouldn't be my first choice for trying it (I'd rather have something more visually uniform).