vb.net gamepad support, partially working - vb.net

Question

I found the following class code on a forum. It works great for the gamepad (up, down, left, right) however all the code for the buttons is missing. Can anyone fill in the blanks?
This works:
Private Sub joystick1_Up() Handles joystick1.Up
moveUp()
End Sub
This does not:
Private Sub joystick1_buttonPressed() Handles joystick1.buttonPressed
MsgBox(joystick1.btnValue)
End Sub
because there is no "buttonPressed" event and I have no idea how to write it.
And here's the class:
Imports System.ComponentModel
Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices
Public Class joystick
Inherits NativeWindow
Private parent As Form
Private Const MM_JOY1MOVE As Integer = &H3A0
' Public Event Move(ByVal joystickPosition As Point)
Public btnValue As String
Public Event Up()
Public Event Down()
Public Event Left()
Public Event Right()
<StructLayout(LayoutKind.Explicit)> _
Private Structure JoyPosition
<FieldOffset(0)> _
Public Raw As IntPtr
<FieldOffset(0)> _
Public XPos As UShort
<FieldOffset(2)> _
Public YPos As UShort
End Structure
Private Class NativeMethods
Private Sub New()
End Sub
' This is a "Stub" function - it has no code in its body.
' There is a similarly named function inside a dll that comes with windows called
' winmm.dll.
' The .Net framework will route calls to this function, through to the dll file.
<DllImport("winmm", CallingConvention:=CallingConvention.Winapi, EntryPoint:="joySetCapture", SetLastError:=True)> _
Public Shared Function JoySetCapture(ByVal hwnd As IntPtr, ByVal uJoyID As Integer, ByVal uPeriod As Integer, <MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)> ByVal changed As Boolean) As Integer
End Function
End Class
Public Sub New(ByVal parent As Form, ByVal joyId As Integer)
AddHandler parent.HandleCreated, AddressOf Me.OnHandleCreated
AddHandler parent.HandleDestroyed, AddressOf Me.OnHandleDestroyed
AssignHandle(parent.Handle)
Me.parent = parent
Dim result As Integer = NativeMethods.JoySetCapture(Me.Handle, joyId, 100, True)
End Sub
Private Sub OnHandleCreated(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
AssignHandle(DirectCast(sender, Form).Handle)
End Sub
Private Sub OnHandleDestroyed(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
ReleaseHandle()
End Sub
Protected Overrides Sub WndProc(ByRef m As System.Windows.Forms.Message)
If m.Msg = MM_JOY1MOVE Then
' Joystick co-ords.
' (0,0) (32768,0) (65535, 0)
'
'
'
' (0, 32768) (32768, 32768) (65535, 32768)
'
'
'
'
' (0, 65535) (32768, 65535) (65535, 65535)
'
Dim p As JoyPosition
p.Raw = m.LParam
' RaiseEvent Move(New Point(p.XPos, p.YPos))
If p.XPos > 16384 AndAlso p.XPos < 49152 Then
' X is near the centre line.
If p.YPos < 6000 Then
' Y is near the top.
RaiseEvent Up()
ElseIf p.YPos > 59536 Then
' Y is near the bottom.
RaiseEvent Down()
End If
Else
If p.YPos > 16384 AndAlso p.YPos < 49152 Then
' Y is near the centre line
If p.XPos < 6000 Then
' X is near the left.
RaiseEvent Left()
ElseIf p.XPos > 59536 Then
' X is near the right
RaiseEvent Right()
End If
End If
End If
End If
If btnValue <> m.WParam.ToString Then
btnValue = m.WParam.ToString
End If
MyBase.WndProc(m)
End Sub
End Class

Answer 1

Instead of using the older winmm, I would use XInput instead (or if you can, use XNA).
There are a couple of ways you could go to do this. One step up is to use the XInput dlls directly as outlined by this question on the MSDN forums. That's still fairly ugly though. Probably the "easier" way to do this is using a wrapper library that exists out there like SlimDX or SharpDX.
One of the advantages of using XInput via SlimDX or SharpDX is that it will also work within a Windows Store app for Windows 8 :).
Here's a snippet from the GamePad sample in SharpDX:
C#
var controllers = new[] { new Controller(UserIndex.One), new Controller(UserIndex.Two), new Controller(UserIndex.Three), new Controller(UserIndex.Four) };
// Get 1st controller available
Controller controller = null;
foreach (var selectControler in controllers)
{
if (selectControler.IsConnected)
{
controller = selectControler;
break;
}
}
VB
Dim controllers As New List(Of Controller)
controllers.Add(New Controller(UserIndex.One))
controllers.Add(New Controller(UserIndex.Two))
controllers.Add(New Controller(UserIndex.Three))
controllers.Add(New Controller(UserIndex.Four))
Dim controller as Controller = Nothing;
For Each selectController In controllers
If selectController.IsConnected Then
controller = selectController
Exit For
End If
Next
Then you can get the state to work with using:
var state = controller.GetState();
You will notice that XInput uses more of a polling model, so you will need to occasionally check for a button press to detect this. If you need to poll continuously, you can probably spin up a new Task to do this on.