In the same session where zeromus proposed a series of mapper memos, another call for proposals emerged, this one related to controllers.
A ROM image describes the insides of a cartridge. Controllers are not part of an NES cartridge; there's no NES counterpart to Codemasters' J-Cart for the Genesis. This means metadata describing the preferred controller for a given game shouldn't strictly be part of the ROM image. But there should still be a cross-emulator way to specify the required and preferred controllers in a separate file so that the emulator can quickly switch the mouse or touch screen input among Zapper, Vaus, Oeka Kids Tablet, and Super NES Mouse modes. Hopefully it'd be in some sort of human-editable text format. XML? JSON? INI variant? Any schema ideas?
A ROM image describes the insides of a cartridge. Controllers are not part of an NES cartridge; there's no NES counterpart to Codemasters' J-Cart for the Genesis. This means metadata describing the preferred controller for a given game shouldn't strictly be part of the ROM image. But there should still be a cross-emulator way to specify the required and preferred controllers in a separate file so that the emulator can quickly switch the mouse or touch screen input among Zapper, Vaus, Oeka Kids Tablet, and Super NES Mouse modes. Hopefully it'd be in some sort of human-editable text format. XML? JSON? INI variant? Any schema ideas?