Basic Configuration

Most important are the three buttons at the bottom marked "Save", "Use", and "Cancel ". "Save" stores all the settings you've marked and closes the window, kinda like "OK". "Cancel" discards the changes you've made. Use is a bit odd; you can only use it when the emulator is running, and it lets you temporarily try out some settings without saving them permanently. The catch is that the changes are lost if you close the ROM, reset, or if the emulator loads a save state. So if you click "Use" to try some settings and you want to keep them, make sure you open the configuration screen up again and save the changes.

Next to those is a drop-down list at the bottom where you can select your language, if you've installed a language pack. Just pick the language from the list, click Save, and then open up the configuration screen again. The language won't change until you save and open up the configuration screen, but you don't have to restart the emulator.

Controllers support both DirectInput and XInput

By defualt, DirectInput is selected for configuration.

You'll notice in the above example that we've got Controller 1 selected, and that the Controls tab is selected. Each Controller tab has a few buttons and doodads to play with.

Plugged means whether the emulator sees the controller as plugged in or not. If this is unchecked, the N64 emulator will not see any data or button inputs. Each controller tab has one; generally, if you're using that controller for input, you want to check this box. By default, Controller 1 is "plugged" and all others are "unplugged".

Background Input allows the input to be used while main window isn't in focus.

XInput allows the configuration and use of an XInput compatible controllers. Once the checkbox is selected, the configuration will change to the XInput display.

N64 Mouse allows the use of an N64 mouse control.

Clear Controller lets you clear out all the controls, modifiers, and other settings that may have gotten set. It will "unbind" all keys and buttons, and is useful if you want to start your button assignments from scratch.

Default Config restores all the default button assignments as shown above. It also resets controller pak assignments, modifiers, and all the sliders to defaults. It won't erase any mempak games or anything, but it's helpful if you just want a reasonable set of default keys.

Load Profile loads a controller configuration (.cpf) file. Unfortunately, it won't load controller profiles from 1.83 or earlier. Also a bit of warning: if you had assigned controls to a gamepad or other device and try to load a file without that device plugged in, the buttons will not be bound properly. So make sure you leave your gamepads plugged in when you click Load Profile.

Save Profile stores a controller configuration to a file. If you want to switch back and forth between a keyboard/mouse and gamepad configurations, you can save them to files and load them back later. Or, if you want to save a configuration and use it on a friend's computer, you can use this. This does not save your shortcuts, but it saves all controller specific information, including ranges, force-feedback settings, controller pak settings, and modifiers. 

Finally, we have the tabs labelled "Controls", "Devices", "Modifiers", "Controller Pak" and "Shortcuts".

Controls

To assign something to a button or to the analog stick, click on the name of the N64 button or direction. For example, if you want to reassign the Start button, click "Start". Then before the countdown expires, press the input you want to assign it to. If it's a key on your keyboard or a mouse button or a gamepad button, press it. You can also assign things like mouse movement (X and Y directions) and gamepad directions. If you want to unbind the button, press the ESC key on your keyboard while the countdown is going. Obviously this means you can't assign the ESC key to anything.

Rapid Fire controls, well, rapid fire. The slider controls how fast the buttons turn on and off. As for the checkbox... well, it turns on rapid fire for ALL buttons on the N64. To be honest, I don't know why it's there, but someone must have wanted it there.

Under Analog Stick you may notice the Range slider. On a real N64, each axis theoretically goes from -32768 to 32767 with 0 being the middle. However, the physical stick when pushed all the way to the right or left doesn't go that far, and most games are programmed with the assumption that about 20000 or so indicates the stick being pushed all the way. Generally, you should leave this as it is. But, for example, if Mario isn't running when you push the stick all the way, you should increase this. If he runs when you push the stick just a little bit and you want to increase the usable range of your joystick, you can lower it.

Real N64 Range also emulates a quirk of the physical N64 controller. The range of motion of a real N64 stick falls within a circle, because of how the controller is designed. However, Windows calibrates joysticks to within a square. Most people want to leave this on.

Finally, you'll see Config 1 and Config 2 bubbles. For the analog stick (and only the analog stick) you can set two different controls and switch between them with modifiers. We'll discuss how this can be useful later on in the Modifiers section. If you're not using modifiers, just make sure it's set to Config 1.