Controller With Windower Question.

Is there any way to make it so your Controller input doesn't control your character while the game is minimized or not in focus? I hate not being able to play an emulator or something while FFXI is on. I've asked this question before. It kinda sucks, I can't seem to find anything on it.

It's very frustrating. The only thing I've figured out is disabling the gamepad in the FFXI Config, but you have to be completely logged out in order to do that.

Is there another way to setup your controller to use with windower if you disable the gamepad through the official FFXI config?

The only way I know of to make input only register on the active window is to open another instance of FFXI, when dual boxing, even after shutting down one instance, it will only take commands when in focus. There was a hook version of windower at some point that "broke" controller input and made this happen also but I'm not sure which one it was. I only recall that it was released around or shortly before WoTG. There must be a way to do it since windower can manage to toggle it when opening another instance but I have no idea how.

Bumping this because my question is similar in nature.

I dual box and I also have multiple displays so it is not uncommon for me to have two instances open with different characters on different screens... This really gives me no reason to tab between them as I can see them both.

Now onto the question... I play with a gamepad and I don't like to have to tab between screens to control my whm.

Is there any way to set up two controlers on one PC and attach them individually to a instance of windower?

i do something simular, i dont think you can do that. you will either probably have to tab or click mouse cursor on the the instance you wish to control at the time. i personally dont do full screen on either char. so thats pretty much what i do.

You're in luck. It's called FFXI Switch Monitor, and it does something similar to what you're hoping for: Alt-Tabs between FFXI windowed instances via user defined gamepad input (I use R3.)

Open source - linked to latest compiled working ver. (working great on Win8 for me.) Enjoy. :>

http://forums.windower.net/topic/10503-ffxi-switch-monitor-latest-v110-3409/page__st__60

As for routing two gamepads to unique instances, I don't believe this has ever been achieved, likely due to the way SE engineered the gamepad support (always seems to hook to the first gamepad, regardless how many I have.)

It isn't exactly what I was looking for but it really looks like it might be a step in the correct direction.

Thank you for the link!

Have you looked into XPadder? You can use it in game and on the fly, so no needing to log out. It uses your controller and assigns keyboard keys. You can also create macro's for key presses on the controller for like alt + tab and stuff like that. You can make it to when pol.exe is launched you can have a profile for ffxi launch with it. It's really nice, I like it alot.

I don't specifically use XPadder for FFXI but I do use for nes,snes,n64,sega and mame emulators. I just create a profile for each one, assign the keys I want and tell which profile to launch with the correct exe file.

Admittedly, there probably isn't too much demand for having two controllers each controlling a different instance of the game. Controller players are rare as it is, and dual boxers even more rare. I'm sure it's possible to do, but it'd likely take some heavy custom programming or other weird methods but even if you can find a method, the problem is, putting down one controller and picking up the other is slow and if you have any proficiency with dual boxing, is going to cause a number of issues. I've only played with two controllers on two separate machines but it's extraordinarily difficult to control both as well as you need to, simply don't have the hands/digits to hit the right buttons on both controllers.

Since I'm incapable of playing both instances at the same time, I go for the next best thing, devoting 100% to one at a time and reducing the time it takes to switch as much as possible. With switch monitor, there isn't "Alt tabbing" exactly since it sends a command to windows directly to place the game in focus rather than having you map a button to have your computer do an alt tab. You can also utilize multiple switchmon instances to only be attached one. This allows you to map a char to one button and the other to another button. I only use this when 3 or 4 boxing but it works quite well since otherwise you might have to cycle a few times. Switchmon avoiding Alt-tab eliminates accidentally pulling up your internet window or other applications instead of your game which is why I can't play without it anymore. It lets me actively play two chars at once with a controller while still having all my random crap up, including other games.

idk FFXI Switch monitor works for me I mapped my controller so R3 is free so I just tap the R3 and it switches windows.. isn't that what you wana do?

Sorry for the bump, this seems to be one of the most recent/relevant posts I could find. I'm trying to use switch mon to dualbox but it rarely seems to let me control the active window. I've also set it to R3, yet when i click it, I still am able to control the character in the window behind the active one. Clicking R3 multiple times (like 6+) sometimes allows me to control the correct character but eventually gets whacky again. I've played with some of the different settings but nothing has worked yet, maybe I'm just missing something. I'd appreciate some help. I'm on win7 and am running everything as admin btw. Thanks

Only thing I can think of is, are you opening/starting Switch Mon after your characters are logged into XI? (If not, you should be.)

That cleared up some issue for me when I started using it. Pretty sure that's in the instructions but idr.