Controls, hotkeys and touch

PokeDaisy works out of the box on handhelds like the AYN Thor: the face buttons, shoulders, START and SELECT are the GBA's, and a few button combinations do emulator things like saving a state. Everything here is about changing that: which button presses what, which shortcuts exist, and what happens when you plug in a controller or play by touch.

The button settings live in the CONTROLS group, on both screens: the top screen's Settings (from the library) and the companion's SETTINGS. AUTO-RUN, RUN INDOORS and WILD ENCOUNTERS change the game itself, so they're in the companion's GAMEPLAY group, near the top.

#Game buttons

GAME BUTTONS sets which physical button presses each GBA button. Open it and you'll see a row per GBA button with the keys it's on now.

START 2 and SELECT 2 are a second START and SELECT, so X opens the menu and Y uses your registered item, like in the DS games. Each GBA button also has a keyboard key (Z, X, A, S, Enter and so on) for when you play with one.

To change one, tap its row (it says PRESS A BUTTON…) and press the button you want on your device. That works the same on the top screen and on the companion: there, while a row waits, the game's screen shows a window asking for the button and the keys you hold. CANCEL, or BACK, leaves the button as it was. TURBO A and TURBO B also get CLEAR, which takes them off every button again.

The new button replaces everything that GBA button had, keyboard key included. A button can only do one GBA button: put it on a new one and it leaves the old one.

The D-pad and the analog stick always move; they can't be remapped. First-time setup has a page listing these buttons too, and you change them right there the same way.

#Turbo A and B

TURBO A and TURBO B press A or B over and over for as long as you hold them. They're good for mashing through text, or for anything that wants you to hammer a button. They aren't on any button until you put them on one in GAME BUTTONS.

Turbo counts in game time, so with fast-forward on it mashes faster along with the game. It pauses while the companion's battle buttons are pressing the game's buttons for you.

#Hotkeys

Hotkeys are shortcuts for things outside the game: save states, fast-forward, leaving the game. A hotkey can be one button or a chord, several buttons pressed together. SELECT + R1 is a chord: the second button fires it while the first is held.

Chords don't take a button away from the game. SELECT alone still works in game; only SELECT + R1 together saves a state.

RESTART GAME and CLOSE APP have no buttons until you give them some.

The speed hotkeys are explained in Fast-forward and game speed, states and rewind in Saves, and zoom in Screen.

Changing a hotkey

Tap a hotkey, under Settings > HOTKEYS on the top screen or SETTINGS > HOTKEYS on the companion; it says PRESS KEYS…. Press one button, or hold several together and release, to set it. While a hotkey waits for keys:

• CLEAR leaves it with no button at all (it shows -).

• CANCEL, or BACK, keeps it as it was.

On the companion, the game's screen shows a window while a hotkey waits, with the buttons you're holding, since that's where your presses go. The game doesn't see them meanwhile, and neither do the other hotkeys.

The new buttons replace the hotkey's whole binding, keyboard key included.

When a button is already taken

If you pick exactly the buttons another hotkey already has (the same buttons in any order), you get KEY IN USE. Tap MOVE to take them from the other hotkey, or cancel to leave both as they were. Sharing only some buttons is fine: SELECT + R1 and SELECT + L1 can both exist, that's how chords work.

Turning hotkeys off

The HOTKEYS switch at the top of the page turns every hotkey off at once. The bindings stay as they are (greyed out) and every button goes straight to the game. It's handy if a game needs a combination that clashes with a hotkey, and you'd rather not rebind anything.

#The quick menu

The quick menu puts the things you'd otherwise dig through menus for under one button. Press L3 (the left stick, pushed in) and your actions pop up over the game, as a ring or in rows (see STYLE below). The rest of the HUD fades back while it's open, and any HUD panel you had open (a summary, the map, the bag, the wild list) closes:

Press L3 and the menu stays open: move with the D-pad or the left stick (on the ring, point the stick at an action), press A to use it, and B (or L3 again) closes it. You can also tap an action on the screen. While the menu is open your buttons work it, not the game, and the game keeps running underneath.

An action you can't use right now is greyed out and says why, like a battle going on or nothing for it in your bag. BIKE and ROD use the game's own way of using a registered item, so the game decides the rest: where you can't ride or fish, it tells you so. They work in FireRed, LeafGreen, Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald, and in Emerald Kaizo and Ultra Violet, which run on those games. PC, FLY and the spray show only in games where the bag and map offer them.

Pick which actions show, and turn the rest off, in QUICK MENU (in the CONTROLS group of Settings on either screen). Its STYLE picks how they're laid out (tap it to switch):

• RING (to start with): the actions round a circle, like the weapon wheel in a modern game, each the same distance from the next. Point the left stick at one, and its name shows in the middle, with a light tick of vibration each time you move onto another one. The D-pad steps round it too.

• GRID: rows of tiles, all the same size. The D-pad steps through them.

LABELS (on to start with) puts each action's name under its icon. Turn it off for icons alone, smaller and closer together: the highlighted one is then named under the row, or in the middle of the ring.

To use another button, change the QUICK MENU hotkey.

#Touch controls

TOUCH CONTROLS puts on-screen buttons over the game, for when you have no real ones: a phone, or a tablet without a controller. It's a page of its own in the CONTROLS group, on both screens. At its top, a picture of your screen shows the buttons as they are now, and it changes as soon as you change a setting. Upright it shows the part of the screen around the buttons, so they come out bigger. The button under it says which way the phone is held in the picture (UPRIGHT or SIDEWAYS); tap it to see the other. Tap any setting on the page to step to its next choice.

• SHOW: AUTO (the default) shows them only when no controller is connected, and hides them as soon as you press a real button. ALWAYS keeps them on screen, NEVER never shows them. On a phone with nothing plugged in, AUTO shows them.

• LAYOUT: where the buttons sit.

  • SIDES (the default): everything in the black bars beside the game when you hold the phone sideways, so nothing covers the picture. When the bars are too narrow for the buttons (an older 16:9 phone, or a phone held upright) it works like CLASSIC.

  • CLASSIC: the D-pad bottom left, A and B bottom right, START and SELECT in the middle, L and R in the top corners.

  • COMPACT: like CLASSIC, smaller and tucked into the corners, with SELECT above the D-pad and START above A and B.

  • CUSTOM: the one you made in EDIT LAYOUT. It shows up once you've made one, and picking a ready-made layout keeps it for later.

• EDIT LAYOUT: move the buttons yourself (see below).

• POSITION: with the phone held upright, where the buttons sit in their space: TOP, MIDDLE (the default) or BOTTOM. Their space is the gap between the game and the companion, or the game itself when there's no gap. It doesn't move a CUSTOM layout, which keeps your own places. With EXPAND and UNDER GAME the buttons get a space that fits them exactly, so it's greyed out then.

• COMPANION: with the phone held upright, the companion AT BOTTOM of the screen (the default) or right UNDER GAME, which leaves the space at the bottom of the screen for the buttons. It's the same setting as the one in DISPLAY OPTIONS, and only on phones and other one-screen devices. With EXPAND on, the game fills everything above the companion, so UNDER GAME gives the buttons a strip of their own along the bottom of the screen instead, under the companion, where they never cover the game. With no touch controls on screen there's nothing to choose then, and the setting is greyed out.

• SIZE: SMALL, NORMAL, LARGE or X-LARGE, for every button at once.

• OPACITY: how solid the buttons are, from 25% to 100%. 50% to start with.

• D-PAD: 8-WAY (the default) lets you press diagonals; 4-WAY presses one direction at a time, which helps if you keep walking the wrong way in a menu.

• FADE WHEN IDLE: the buttons fade to a faint outline a few seconds after you stop touching them, and come back with your next touch.

• VIBRATION: a light tick each time you press something. Off to start with. It follows your phone's own touch vibration setting.

• RESET LAYOUT: forgets CUSTOM and goes back to the ready-made layout. Only there once you've made one.

On a phone held upright the buttons sit between the game and the companion when there's room; see Devices. Your thumb can slide from one button to the next without lifting: from one direction to another on the D-pad, or from B onto A. Touching between A and B presses both.

Extra buttons

The EXTRA BUTTONS group adds buttons the GBA doesn't have. Turn each one on or off:

• FF (on to start with): a tap turns fast-forward on or off; hold it for fast-forward only while you hold it. Its word lights up while fast-forward is on.

• QUICK MENU (on to start with): opens the quick menu. A phone has no button for it otherwise. Tap a tile to run it; a tap anywhere else closes it.

• TURBO A and TURBO B: press A or B over and over while you hold them, like the turbo buttons.

• SAVE STATE and LOAD STATE: save or load a state in the current slot, like the hotkeys. If you load one by mistake, the UNDO LOAD hotkey takes you back.

Moving and resizing buttons: EDIT LAYOUT

EDIT LAYOUT shows every button at its real size with a dashed outline. In a game it opens over the game itself (from the companion's SETTINGS); from the top screen's Settings it opens over a picture of the game's screen.

• Move a button: drag it.

• Resize a button: pinch it with two fingers, or tap it and use - and + in the bar at the top. Each button goes from half to twice its usual size, on top of SIZE.

• Hide a button: tap it, then HIDE. HIDDEN brings it back.

• SNAP ON lines the buttons up on a small grid; tap it for SNAP OFF to place them freely.

• RESET puts every button back where the ready-made layout has it.

• DONE, or BACK, keeps your layout and makes LAYOUT read CUSTOM.

A phone held upright and held sideways each get their own layout: you edit the one for the way you're holding the phone, so turn it to edit the other. A layout stays put on another phone or with the status bar on: each button keeps its distance from the nearest edge.

#Running: AUTO-RUN and RUN INDOORS

AUTO-RUN runs for you. Once your game lets you run, walking on the field runs without you holding B, and holding B walks instead. It leaves B alone everywhere else: menus, battles, conversations, and while you ride a bike, where B does something of its own. The first time you play a game it starts working after you've walked around for a few seconds. On Heart and Soul, SoulGold, Too Many Types 2, Emerald Rogue and Quetzal it can't always tell yet that you're on a bike. Elite Redux has an auto run of its own on the R button: use that one or this one, not both.

RUN INDOORS lets you run inside buildings too, where the games normally make you walk. It works on games built on FireRed or Emerald. On Ruby and Sapphire it shows N/A: those games decide where you can run in a way PokeDaisy can't change safely.

Both show N/A on a game PokeDaisy can't read the field of yet.

#WILD ENCOUNTERS

WILD ENCOUNTERS turns wild Pokémon jumping out at you in grass, caves and water on or off. It's in the companion's GAMEPLAY group:

• ON (the default) leaves the game's own rate.

• OFF turns them off completely.

Only random encounters change. Fishing, moves that lure wild Pokémon out and battles the story sets up still happen, and items that keep wild Pokémon away work as usual on top. The change applies at once, no restart needed.

It works on the Game Boy Advance originals in every language and on almost every supported hack, including the ones rebuilt from newer source code like SoulGold, Lazarus and Recharged Yellow. On the Game Boy it works in Red, Blue, Yellow (in every language) and Crystal. On Emerald Rogue, Quetzal and the other Game Boy games it shows N/A.

#External controllers

Bluetooth and USB controllers (8BitDo, GameSir, Xbox and so on) work, and you can connect one while a game is running without restarting it. A short message on the game screen says when a controller connects or goes away. Its buttons follow GAME BUTTONS and HOTKEYS like the built-in ones, and diagonals on its D-pad press both directions.

A controller's HOME or guide button, unless you've bound it to something, works like a tap of BACK (see below).

#Analog L2 and R2

Some handhelds and controllers (Retroid's, for example) send their L2 and R2 triggers as analog values rather than button presses. PokeDaisy treats a trigger pulled past half way as a press of L2 or R2. That means the triggers follow your settings like any other button: by default R2 is FF HOLD and L2 is SPEED CYCLE, they stop when HOTKEYS is off, and you can bind them to anything, including GBA buttons. Hotkeys get first go at them, then the game.

#The BACK button

BACK does two different things depending on how long you press it:

• A tap is the companion's back. It closes whatever is open on the companion (a pick-list, a Pokémon's summary, a sub-page of SETTINGS) and steps back from there. With nothing left to close it does nothing, so you can't leave a game by accident. If you closed the companion with CLOSE COMPANION, a tap brings it back.

• A hold leaves the game and returns to the library (or to the frontend that launched it).

This works from either screen. On a device with one screen, a tap also slides the companion panel in and out; see Devices.