How can I get six Xbox controllers to provide input to an HTML5 game?

Question

I'm creating a six player HTML 5 game designed to be played locally (Red Ice).

I've previous set up handling 7 Wiimotes using something along the lines of Joy2Key to map each input for each player to a separate keyboard key, but Wiimotes are pretty hard on the hands for these types of games and not very ergonomic so I thought I'd try and get Xbox controller support.

I don't believe that any simple key mapping solution will work due to the nature of the directional stick.

My inclination is that this will require a browser plugin and if so I'd prefer to write the plugin for Google Chrome.

How do I create a Chrome browser plugin to handle multiple Xbox controllers or is there some other way?

Please do not answer this question saying it can't be done, because it absolutely can.

EDIT: I don't believe any keymapping/mouse simulating solution will work unless it can reliably distinguish six axis of inputs, one per player.

Answer 1

Assuming your controllers are wireless, the first thing you'll need is the Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver. It's a $20 USB device that lets you use your Xbox 360 controllers as input devices.

• If you're using Mac OS X, grab the Tattibogle OS X controller driver.
• On Linux, try the xboxdrv userspace driver.
• If you're using Windows there are probably thousands of options, but try starting with the Pinnacle Game Profiler (as mentioned in the Amazon reviews for the dongle).

Once all that's set up it's a matter of syncing the controllers with the dongle and binding the buttons and sticks of each controller to different keypresses.

Good luck!

Answer 2

I've created Boomstick, an NPAPI and ActiveX plugin that grants JavaScript an API to access native Joysticks and Gamepads. Assuming that 2 XBox 360 Wireless Gaming Receivers can each handle 4 controllers, Boomstick will grant HTML5 access to the 8 controllers. This works on all major platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux) and browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE).