Touhou Joystick problems

[buskerdog]

So, having played various of the earlier Touhou games by now (6 through 10), I have noticed that none of them seem to be all too happy about controller joysticks. They are fine registering the four cardinal directions of the joystick, but the games never respond to diagonal inputs. So far I've been using a controller to keyboard input converter to make diagonal inputs count as pressing the two arrow keys that would make that direction, as clearly there isn't really much else I can do to fix it, but what I was wondering was if it was a problem with all joysticks, or just my type of controller.

I am using a Nintendo Switch Pro controller, but most people who don't use the keyboard use Xbox or PlayStation controller. Perhaps the shape of the joysticks are slightly different, resulting in deadzones on the Nintendo controller that other controllers wouldn't have? Or maybe the older Touhou games just don't work with modern joysticks in general? Thing is, I don't have an Xbox or PlayStation controller, so I can't test if this issue is just a Nintendo thing or if it universal to all joysticks.

I'd also like to know if more recent Touhou games fix this issue.

I know that most people use a keyboard to play and probably don't know the answer, but if anyone could shed some light on this it would be appreciated.

[￰￰]

I've recently been using a PS2 controller on Touhou but I've only tried it on 14, 15, 15.5, and 16. So far it's been working well but the keys the buttons are mapped to are in odd positions. Other than that it seems to work fine. I'll test it out on the earlier games.

[GasterMaster70]

I think it's just a Nintendo thing. My main controller is a Microsoft Xbox controller, and iirc it allows for diagonal inputs, even on the D-pad. If at all possible, change the input style to XInput(then again, the Switch doesn't have that option, but WHO KNOWS? Clearly not me.)

[buskerdog]

I posted this ages ago and I've actually sorted my problem now, but thanks for your reply.

The problem seemed to be something to do with deadzones. Changing the stick sensitivity in the settings for Touhou down to 400 from the default 600 fixes everything. Or at least it does for modern era onwards, however classic era doesn't have the option to change stick sensitivity so I still have to use a joystick to keyboard converter for those : /

Interestingly, the fighting games (all of them, even the first) don't require me to change any option to get my controller to work.

btw switch pro controller does use XInput. The default joy-cons also use XInput when connected to the switch but seem to change to DInput when connected to a PC, for whatever reason. Not that it matters, if you're trying to get the joy-cons to work as a pair with a PC anyway then you're already doing it wrong. (Unless you want to play using just a solo joy-con, but... come on, really?)