Bliss-Box 4-Play integration for RetroArch will soon be here!

RetroArch now has native support for the Bliss-Box 4-Play – a universal game pad adapter – in the latest nightly builds. This support will be included in the upcoming stable release (1.7.0). The new support includes a dependency on libusb, so anyone running the nightly builds should be sure to download an updated redist package to get the new lib.

(Editor’s note – RetroArch version 1.7.0 will be released later this week)

Bliss-Box

RetroArch has support for many adapters and the ability to add countless more, however, it does so by mapping per adapter. Similarly, the 4-Play also supports a large number of controllers but outputs them as one device.  Previously, RetroArch could not map each game pad because of this. Fortunately, the 4-Play was designed with this in mind and has a built in API any project could take advantage of without the need of drivers. In this update of RetroArch each pad seen by the 4-Play is read in to RetroArch appending the pad type to the cfg file found during controller detection.This is just the beginning and there is a road leading to amazing potential with the 4-Play adapter. Using the same API mechanism, we could expect to see but not limited to: native game pad communication with Gamecube and Dreamcast, direct memory card support and LCD screen writing, support for all 12 Playstation 2 pressure buttons, and more. The latest version of the 4-play firmware is required and you must configure your 4-play with the API tool available on the Bliss-Box page for download.

In addition the new firmware from Bliss-Box gives each player a unique USB ID. This allows players to be specific to the physical ports. Each USB name has a number indicating the player order.

You can read more about the Bliss-Box 4-Play here or follow the project on the FaceBook page.