AppleWin, the dominant Apple II emulation software for the Windows platform, from version 1.30.5.0 now supports the 4play and SNES MAX joystick cards. Thank-you to Tom and Nick (long time AppleWin developers) for helping me get this feature into the software.
Gamers now have the opportunity to play games such as "Attack of the PETSCII Rebots" which only supports the SNES MAX or a keyboard for user input, on an emulation platform with alternate controllers. A great option for those who do not have access to the physical joystick cards.
This also gives developers an easy way to help out with developing software for these cards. I use AppleWin quite a lot for debugging and this is going to save me a great deal of time. It will also help me with not having to lug around an Apple II development system on my family vacations.
In the AppleWin Configuration page the "Input" tab is used to set the availablity of the required card in either slot 3, 4 or 5. A "PC Controller" needs to be connected to the PC. AppleWin will automatically detect the "PC Controller" (this is independant to what is selected for Joystick1 and Joystick2 on the configuration page). Some game controllers have different mappings for their buttons so the most generic mapping has been setup as default but alternate mappings can be accessed via command line switches.
The latest version of AppleWin can be obtained from here :- https://github.com/AppleWin/AppleWin/releases