you'd think in 2024 you can just download a little Windows utility that turns your game controller into a MIDI controller but... you can't? The utilities that do exist are either super old, or have no docs. Or both.
So how much work is it to just write a game controller to MIDI translation layer with a modern scripting language like Node.js? Turns out "less than 30 lines of code, including comments".
I'll take it, my rudder pedals are finally sustain and sostenuto pedals.
Back in 1994 it was so "advanced" that the exact same 15-pin joystick socket was also the MIDI connector.
USB wasn't out yet so this was what every joystick and MIDI was still using on PCs.
The 15-pin connector was included with the audio soundcard's analog I/O sockets on the back of the PC, before later becoming standard and built-in to motherboards once audio itself became built-in. Almost forgotten now.
To use both a joystick and MIDI at the same time you needed special cables, or a sound card for each device :/
Various joysticks were easily configured as the gaming equivalent to a standard analog flight controller with rudder pedals, also like the road-racing steering wheel, gas & brake pedals which can be set as rudders for flight sim instead of NASCAR.
With DOS or Windows you could set checkboxes for what you wanted each "button" to do, and this lasted through about W9x.
Naturally there was no latency compared to today even with such relatively slow processors since there was direct control of the hardware and no USB delay either.
Oh, yeah, with four of the nicer 4-channel soundcards you had a 16-channel latency-free system, and the final version of Protools for W9x was officially released as shareware.
As you mentioned, sometimes it's super not to have to code :)
So how much work is it to just write a game controller to MIDI translation layer with a modern scripting language like Node.js? Turns out "less than 30 lines of code, including comments".
I'll take it, my rudder pedals are finally sustain and sostenuto pedals.