8bitdo Ultimate, Controller, Pause Screen, Exit combo, Cemu Problems controlling Launchbox and BigBox with 8bitdo Ultimate controller

[Xenivarius]

Experiencing a few controller related issues in both LB and BB:

I’m having trouble getting LB/BB to recognize input from my 8bitdo Ultimate controller when using it through the 2.4g receiver while it is in Switch mode (SDL). Launching LB/BB with the controller already turned on sometimes produces erratic uncontrollable behavior flipping thru menus rapidly on its own which forces me to kill the app in task manager, every other time it simply doesn’t register input at all. In controller settings it does show up as a Switch Pro controller, however no input is registered when trying to map buttons.

The controller works fine when it is set to either xinput mode or to auto-detect mode when going through the 2.4g receiver (shows up as an Xbox controller or an 8bitdo Ultimate controller respectively), and also works when it is toggled over to Bluetooth (shows up as a Switch Pro). However I am mostly trying to use it to play games with motion controls in Cemu lately, so xinput is useless and the Bluetooth mode is extremely janky and unreliable (frequent input lag and needs constant resets and recalibration in Cemu).

I updated the 2.4g receiver to a beta driver to allow it to operate in Switch mode over 2.4g so that I could get motion controls working in Cemu without any input lag, while the controller firmware itself is up to date with the latest driver. It works perfectly within emulators themselves, issues only occur when attempting to use it to control LB/BB.

One workaround that almost works, is setting the toggle to BT mode just to navigate the menu when in LB/BB, then toggling back to 2.4g after selecting a game… but upon launching into Cemu and flipping the toggle, I have to enter into its input settings to configure the controller all over again each time because it was set to the wrong mode when the app launched and Cemu doesn’t adjust to the mode change automatically while running (this occurs even with Cemu set to internally load the correct control profile for the game on boot). Then upon exiting out of Cemu back to LB/BB while the controller is still set to 2.4g, LB/BB bugs out with the same erratic control behavior mentioned earlier and I have to kill the app. Toggling back to BT mode before exiting also doesn’t work as a workaround here because for some reason LB/BB will not recognize input from the controller at all regardless of mode once getting focus back from Cemu. Power cycling the controller fixes this and returns control again, but that’s not exactly ideal.

A separate issue with this controller is that regardless of what mode it is set to, the button combo I’ve set in both LB and BB to close the emulator doesn’t work at all with Cemu, however it works just fine with most other emulators. It also wasn’t working with PCSX2, but I was able to set that emulator’s internal exit hotkey to the same button combo to achieve the same desired result, so it’s a non-issue there. I can exit out of the emulator with mouse and keyboard of course but this defeats some of the purpose of launching it out of BB in the first place. I want the super-console couch experience and this problem just breaks that immersion when I have to return to my desk to close Cemu.

I’ve even tried enabling the pause screen to use to exit out instead, but that doesn’t work either. I did enable the pause screen in LB/BB settings and in each emulator’s LB settings under manage emulators, but was never able to get this particular feature working in any emulator with this controller. Startup and exit screens both work fine, not sure why I can’t get pause to work. I tested it with Retroarch, Cemu, and PCSX2 and couldn’t get it working with any of them.

Any help or advice here would be greatly appreciated!

OS: Windows 11 Pro 22HS 22631.3447
8bitdo 2.4g receiver firmware: v1.02 Beta 1
8bitdo Ultimate controller firmware: v1.03
LB/BB: 13.13 Beta-4 (all issues were also present in 13.12)