Funny thing is that KristofMorva saw this coming back in 2019 and his feature never got approved.
Add functionality to map devices to player controllers by KristofMorva · Pull Request #5209 · EpicGames/UnrealEngine (github.com)
Some context below for those of you without git access.
Assigning player controllers to devices is currently very limited in Unreal Engine, the only possibility (besides coding it manually) is to start assigning gamepads from the second player instead of the first one.
However, there are numerous very general cases, where such functionality is not enough, like:
- Splitscreen race games, one player with ADWS, another one with arrows. The current system does not support sharing a device between controllers.
- Turn-based local multiplayer games, with every player having their own controller. We can’t redirect inputs from devices to whichever player controller we would like.
There is a huge amount of discussions regarding this limitation, but just a few one:
- Multiple playercontrollers using keyboard - Character & Animation - Epic Developer Community Forums
- https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/blueprint-visual-scripting/1518794-how-to-manually-assign-gamepad-or-keyboard-input-to-player-controllers
- https://udn.unrealengine.com/questions/456991/view.html (UDN account required)
This PR proposes a mapping between devices and player controllers to solve this issue. Developers are able to specify, which device should a given player controller get the signal from.
It can be set with a SetPhysicalControllerMapping static function, but it’s currently also placed in the “Maps & Modes → Local Multiplayer” project settings category for convenience so that developer with static requirements can get it done without coding a single line.
It should be entirely backward compatible - not filling up the mapping array will result in the exact same results as it does now.