Controller Player OrderUpdated 2 months ago

On an arcade machine, it's important for player one to appear on the left side, and player two to appear on the right side. This is one reason we created the Neo-Arcade Board, as it ensures player order is consistent.

However, there are exceptions to this functionality due to:

• Controller swapping.
• Game flexibility. Because Polycade supports games from a variety of sources (Steam, ROMs, etc), sometimes choices made by the game developer alter how you might expect player order to work. This is particularly true for Steam games.

In order to navigate issues you encounter, read below to understand what's going on.

Steam or other non-Polycade games

1. In some cases, the game developer has forced the game to only work with a certain controller (you're likely to encounter this with some Steam games). One example is the "Arcade Game Series: Pac-Man" title available on Steam. This game forces the player to use the player 2 controls, and this is not remappable.
2. Some games (again, you're likely to encounter this with Steam games) set player 1 as the first player to "join" the game. Mortal Kombat 11 is an example of this.

Hardware nuances

1. Polycade's "full controller" that's included with the Sente arcade forces player 1 to the left and player 2 to the right. If you were to swap the USB connections, it would swap the player position.
2. Polycade's "half controllers" do not force the player position, as the internal Neo-Arcade boards would need to be connected by a wire in order to achieve this. Note a few nuances to using a Polycade with 2 separate controllers:
   1. If you boot up the machine and the players are out of order, you can swap the USB connections (recommend doing this where they plug into the PC). This should resolve the issue, but you may see the machine boot up with them swapped once in a while (just reboot or unplug/replug the controllers).
   2. If you disconnect and reconnect the controllers with the system on, the first controller you connect will be player 1. 
3. When connecting controllers, whether they are arcade controllers or gamepads, the player order will be according to the order you connected them. So, the first one you connect is player 1, the second is player 2, etc.
   An important example is if you are connecting gamepads to a Sente. In this case, your joystick controllers are going to be player 1 and player 2, which means gamepads you connect will be player 3 and player 4. If you then disconnect your joystick controllers, your gamepads will still be player 3 and 4. If you also disconnect your gamepads, and then reconnect them with the joystick controllers still disconnected, then the gamepads will come back as players 1 and 2. 
4. Most Polycade games are mapped to players 1 and 2, so connecting gamepads will require you to first disconnect your joystick controllers, and then connect your gamepads.