Adding only Controllable to list of mods results in my controllers not working.

[phonybaloney1975-hub]

I added Controllable to my modded game (lots of mods, everything working fine) last night. Can you tell me why it only registers the right trigger as an input? I can attack, but nothing else. Neither stick works, no other buttons work. Going into the settings, my specific controllers are detected, it looks like everything is mapped correctly, but it's still not working. Also, it registers WASD and keyboard shortcuts, but mouse input is also disabled.

[TheWoWNerd]

Second this, the latest versions of Controllable recognize the controller(s) connected to the system but in terms of the controller input only the triggers are recognized... This is not the case with my PS5 controller oddly...

[akg-bit]

I believe I've found the root cause of this, and it likely also explains the "only some inputs work" reports in other recent issues. TL;DR: SDL's RawInput joystick backend on Windows cannot work inside Minecraft, and it is being selected by default for Xbox controllers. Disabling it fixes everything.

Symptom

Controllable 0.26.1 (NeoForge, MC 26.2), Xbox One S controller over Bluetooth, Windows. Controller is detected and shows the correct name/mapping in settings, but in game only the triggers register (so attack on right trigger works). Face buttons, bumpers, D-pad, sticks: nothing. The same jar with the same controller works perfectly on macOS.

How I isolated it

I extracted the bundled controllable-sdl-2.32.10 jar from the mod and wrote a small standalone Java program that drives it exactly the way SDL2ControllerManager does — same natives, same hints (including SDL_HINT_JOYSTICK_ALLOW_BACKGROUND_EVENTS=1), same gamecontrollerdb.txt, then polls SDL_GameControllerUpdate() + SDL_GameControllerGetButton()/GetAxis() in a loop, outside of Minecraft. Results on the affected Windows machine (Steam closed, no remapper software):

Default backends (what the mod uses):

Joystick 0: name=Xbox One S Controller, guid=00720000-0000-02e0-0000-045ef0440003, isGameController=true
Active mapping: 030044f05e040000e002000000007200,*,a:b0,b:b1,... (RawInput/HID device)
→ Only LTRIGGER/RTRIGGER axis changes register. All buttons and sticks silent.

With SDL_JOYSTICK_RAWINPUT=0 (same program, same controller):

Joystick 0: name=Xbox One S Controller, guid=01780000-0000-02e0-0000-045e67fa0003, isGameController=true, gcName=XInput Controller
→ Every button, stick, D-pad, and trigger registers correctly.

On macOS the default configuration works fine (no RawInput backend exists there).

Why this happens

SDL's RawInput joystick driver receives button/stick data via WM_INPUT messages delivered to a window owned by SDL. Minecraft is a GLFW application — SDL is initialized with only the joystick/gamecontroller subsystems and never creates a window, so those messages never arrive and the RawInput device reports no button/stick changes. The reason triggers still work is that the RawInput driver correlates with XInput to split the trigger axes, and that XInput-sourced data keeps flowing. That's why affected users report "only the right trigger / attack works", which is otherwise a very strange failure signature.

This regressed when the bundled SDL was updated — newer SDL versions changed which backend claims Xbox controllers by default on Windows.

Suggested fix

In SDL2ControllerManager.init(), disable the RawInput backend before SDL_Init, since it can never function inside a GLFW-hosted process:

SDL_SetHint(SDL_HINT_JOYSTICK_RAWINPUT, "0");

SDL then falls back to XInput/WGI for Xbox controllers, which works fully (verified above).

Workaround for affected users (no mod change needed)

Set a user environment variable and restart the launcher:

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("SDL_JOYSTICK_RAWINPUT", "0", "User")

SDL reads hints from the environment, so this forces the working backend. Confirmed working in game (Controllable 0.26.1, NeoForge, MC 26.2, Windows, Xbox One S controller over Bluetooth).

[shearmez]

Workaround for affected users (no mod change needed)

Set a user environment variable and restart the launcher:

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("SDL_JOYSTICK_RAWINPUT", "0", "User")

Good work and thank you!

I didn't know what you mean by environment variable, but AI gave me the following instructions:

Using the Windows Settings GUI

• Press Win + R on your keyboard to open the Run dialog box.
• Type sysdm.cpl and press Enter (or hit OK) to open System Properties.
• Switch to the Advanced tab.
• Click the Environment Variables... button at the bottom right.
• Under the User variables for [Your Username] section (top half), click New....
  Enter the following details:
  • Variable name: SDL_JOYSTICK_RAWINPUT
  • Variable value: 0
  • Click OK on all open dialog windows to save your changes.

Restart your Minecraft launcher completely so it picks up the new environment variable.

[PMStanley]

Also impacted by this issue. To add the variable for a standard user account (which can't access the system control panel) you can do one of the following:

settings UI:

• Press Win + R
• type rundll32 sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables
• follow the steps listed by shearmez above

Alternatively, on a command line enter :

• setx SDL_JOYSTICK_RAWINPUT 0