altctrls.info

A list of resources for creating alternative controllers, playful installations and physical-digital hybrids

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Are you interested in games that let us play differently? Have you found some intriguing project on Shake That Button and would like to find some extra information to help you start to make your own thing? This community-curated list of resources is here to support you: it is focused on tools, materials, and things that you can use to craft alternative controllers.

If you’d like to join in curating this list, please check the contributing section. Suggestions, revisions, and ideas are always welcome!

How to Use

Feel free to browse for topics that pick your interest! You can also search the page (Ctrl-F or Cmd-F or F3) for a keyword or phrase (for example, “cardboard”, “OSC”, “mouse”, “Arduino”).

Contents

Resources

Last updated on 2022-11-14.

Alternative controller tools

Some tools are a bit of an amalgam, and cannot really fit into some of the other categories, as they integrate both crafting, software and making-ofs.

Articles

Crafting

Electronics

Game Engine Plugins and Tools

If you are making a game using some specific game engines, you might be able to use some of the resources below to connect your alternative controller to the game engine software.

Software

Here you can find general use applications and standalone software that can be useful we making, testing or planning your alternative controller project.

Libraries

These are packages, libraries, and APIs for a variety of software creation environments.

Open Projects and ‘Making Of’s

Sometimes it can be helpful to access and explore the source code, diagrams, documents, and processes of different projects. This topic is a list of making of articles, as well as free and open-source alternative controllers.

Videos

Contributing

You can use the links below to propose new resources, help us fix errors in the list, suggest, comment or ask things. Contributions being reviewed and ongoing discussions can be accessed here.

Contribute via GitHub (login required) Contribute via form (no login required)

Our goal is to slowly grow this list so it can help more folks. You are welcome to contribute with tools and resources! We aim to be informative and support people in diverse situations, and we prioritize affordable and approachable resources.

To help with that, we ask contributors to provide each resource with a short description, information about price and / or license and credits (with a link) to the resource creators. If you want to add a resource to a specific topic or even propose a new topic altogether, that is great too. If you contribute, we will add your name (or nickname) and optionally a link to the contributors list by default, but you can opt-out too. Just mention that in your contribution.

Code of Conduct

Please, check our Code of Conduct before posting, to know more about how we aim to build this project together as a welcoming environment.

License

This list and website are licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, with the exception of the logo image (under CC-BY-NC-SA). The linked resources each have their own licenses and terms.

Contributors

altctrls.info is created by a community of contributors, credited below in alphabetical order. You can email the repo maintainer here.

Acknowledgement

Logo FRQSC

Enric Granzotto Llagostera’s work on this project is partially funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture (FRQSC), as part of the Doctoral Research Scholarship 2020-B2Z-276952.