Hi, It would be great to have proper support for Nintendo Switch controllers in the Gamepad extension. I’m requesting this because as of now I’ve been trying to put controller support into my platformer game because a lot of people use controllers for platformers. Dualshock 4 and Xbox works fine as they’re the main 2 types of controllers the extension supports, but trying the Switch controller results in not having any functionality for the d-pad and then the Screenshot and Home buttons take 2 of the direction buttons inputs. I tried to look up if there was anything to fix this but most posts that talk about the lack of support aren’t responded to at all, or are just told to use Dualshock 4 and Xbox. This frustrated me because Nintendo Switch outperformed the PS4 and Xbox one in sales and I wouldn’t want to cut off a lot of players who want to play with their controller but only have a Switch one. I tried editing the scripts in the extension to recognize switch controls but don’t know how to use Javascript or how to use a controller input library, and when i check out the Hardware Tester it shows 2 different controllers. One of them is the one the extension was using that put the input number of 2 d-pad directions to the Screenshot and Home buttons. The other one shows accurate d-pad inputs, but for some reason sets off the ZL and ZR inputs when Y is pressed. I’m not sure if this means there isn’t any good way to have a completely accurate set of switch inputs for this extension but hopefully if there’s a way to fix it we can get support for Switch controls! With Gdevelop being more advertised as a serious tool to produce games with, i think it’s very important to make it more accessible for both developers and the players.
Thanks for reading, if you respond it’d be very appreciated!!
As far as I know the gamepad extension is just a representation of the web gamepad AI, shown in hardware tester. I can’t think of anything that could be directly done to support the controller in the way Nintendo makes them display.
That said, it’s worth calling out that based off the c 2025 steam hardware survey analytics, 90% of all players use either an Xbox or Playstation controller.
Of the 10% that remain, there is no major outlier, it seems like the most common brands ar 8bitdo, them nintendo. Which would mean at most Nintendo controllers make up 5% of all gamepads used. a max of 5% doesn’t seem super common.
Doesn’t mean impossible, but I can’t come up with anything.
How would devs be able to port games to switch? I’m not at that stage of wanting to port my game to switch but I’ve seen others and I’m curious how they would even be able to do it if they don’t have proper inputs and the home and screenshot buttons trigger random d-pad inputs?
The switch does not support HTML5 or Javascript based engines or web based renderers. GDevelop is not compatible, much like Construct 3 or Phaser.
Any porting to switch would involve porting it to another renderer from the ground up.