Interactive Fiction/Text Adventure Game Controller

This project simulates typing commands when pressing buttons on your game controller, for navigating Interactive Fiction games. It is configured to enter the most common Infocom game commands. It uses Python 3, the pygame library to read controller input and the pyautogui library to simulate keyboard inputs.

Features

• Controller Support: Only tested with SONY DUALSENSE controller on macOS 14. Should work with others, but will probably require remap in code.
• Customizable Controls: Supports D-Pad navigation, button mappings for actions like LOOK, WAIT, HELP, and more. (customizable in code)

Controls Mapping

• D-Pad:
  • ↑ (Up) -> north/n
  • ↓ (Down) -> south/s
  • ← (Left) -> west/w
  • → (Right) -> east/e
• Buttons:
  • X (×) -> examine/x
  • O (○) -> inventory/i
  • □ (Square) -> open
  • △ (Triangle) -> close
• Triggers & Bumpers:
  • L1 -> help
  • L2 -> look
  • R1 -> wait
  • R2 -> get all
• Other:
  • Touchpad -> space

Requirements

• Python 3.x
• pygame library
• pyautogui library

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/interactive-fiction-controller.git
   cd interactive-fiction-controller

2. Install the required libraries:

   pip install pygame pyautogui

3. Connect your game controller to your computer and run the script:

   python controllerIF.py

Usage

First run, on macOS - a dialog box will appear that asks for system permissions for Accessibility for Terminal. This has to be granted to use the controller as text command input. Not sure what happens for other OSes.

Once the script is running in terminal, the terminal window will display button mapping. Change apps to your interactive fiction window. Tapping controller buttons will type the IF commands + return IN ALL APPS as if it were a keyboard.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.