Guides
Emulators and retro games
Console emulators read gamepads natively and need nothing from InputConfig. The retro games that do need it are the other kind: DOS games in DOSBox, adventure games in ScummVM, browser ports of old arcade and Flash games, and old Mac games that only ever knew a keyboard and mouse. A controller layout for those is a few rows, and the same three or four layouts cover almost everything.
DOSBox and DOS games
Most DOS action games use the arrow keys plus Control, Alt, and Space. Map the D-pad and the left stick to the arrows, A to Control (fire in nearly everything), B to Alt (jump or secondary), X to Space, Y to Return, Start to Escape, and the bumpers to the number keys 1 and 2 for weapon selection. DOSBox's keymapper can also see a controller, but a preset is easier to keep per game and switches automatically with DOSBox in front. Keep a Type Text row for the game's launch command if you start games from the DOS prompt.
ScummVM and point-and-click
Point-and-click needs a pointer and two buttons: left stick to the pointer with the Smooth curve, A for left click, B for right click, and the right stick to scroll for the games that have scrolling inventories. Add F5 on Start for the ScummVM menu and Escape on Back to skip cutscenes. The Smart Preset Maker's Emulator / Arcade workflow and the built-in Mouse + Scroll preset are both fine starting points.
Browser ports and arcade
Internet Archive's arcade and console collections, the Flash archives, and thousands of io games run in the browser and read the keyboard. Arrows and Z, X, C, or arrows and Space and Shift cover most of them. Make one Browser Arcade preset with the D-pad and stick on the arrows, the face buttons on Z, X, C, and Space, and the bumpers on Shift and Control, and tweak per game if a title uses something odd. Confine and hide the pointer so it stays out of the way.
Old Mac games
Classic Mac ports and Mac shareware from the keyboard-only era work the same way. The only wrinkle is that a few use the Command key as a modifier for in-game actions; a chord layer on a bumper handles that without a keyboard.
Text-mode and roguelikes
NetHack, DCSS, and friends want a lot of letters. The eight-direction stick with stick regions for the diagonals gives movement; the face buttons and chords give the twenty most used commands; and dictation is a surprisingly good way to type the rest.
Turbo for the games that need it
Shooters from the era expected a fire key mashed. Put turbo on the fire row at 15 presses a second and the bumper becomes an autofire, which is also gentler on a hand that cannot mash.
Questions
Do OpenEmu and RetroArch need this?
No, they read controllers directly. Use InputConfig only for the games and emulators that do not.
What about MAME's keyboard mode?
MAME reads controllers, but its menus and some machine-specific keys are keyboard-only. A small preset for the menu keys next to MAME's own controller input works well.
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