Gamepad Input

Gamepads (pebble::gamepad, re-exported from pebble::prelude) is every connected controller’s current state. App::new() inserts it automatically — same as Time — so any system can fetch it directly, no plugin registration needed:

use pebble::prelude::*;

fn drive(gamepads: Res<Gamepads>) {
    for id in gamepads.ids() {
        if gamepads.button_pressed(id, GamepadButton::South) {
            // fires once, the tick the button goes down
        }
        let steer = gamepads.axis(id, GamepadAxis::LeftStickX);
        // -1.0..=1.0
    }
}

GamepadButton/GamepadAxis are Pebble’s own types (mirroring gilrs’s exactly) — no raw gilrs type crosses Gamepads’s API. GamepadId identifies one connected controller; it’s Copy, valid for the whole lifetime of the Gamepads resource that handed it out.

What’s tracked

State refreshes once per tick, in PreUpdate, before other systems run:

• Buttons: button_pressed/button_released (edge-triggered — true only the tick the state changes) and button_held (true for as long as it’s down) — same shape as Input’s keyboard/mouse accessors.
• Axes: axis(id, axis) — current analog value, -1.0..=1.0.
• Connection: ids() (every currently connected gamepad) and is_connected(id).

button_held/axis return false/0.0 for a disconnected or unrecognized id rather than panicking — a controller unplugging mid-game is a normal event, not an error condition to guard against everywhere.

Zero gamepads connected is the normal case

Gamepads tracks whichever controllers happen to be plugged in right now — most players have none connected most of the time, and ids() returning an empty Vec is exactly what that looks like, not a failure state. Don’t special-case it beyond however your own input-handling code naturally does (skip iterating an empty ids() list).

If no gamepad backend is available at all

Distinct from “no controller plugged in”: on a platform with no working gamepad backend at all (rare), Gamepads won’t be inserted, and App::new() logs a tracing::error! explaining why. Take Option<Res<Gamepads>> instead of Res<Gamepads> in systems that need to keep working either way.

Platform notes

Backed by gilrs — supported on Windows, Linux (requires libudev-dev to compile), and macOS. No wasm32 target support currently.