Controller

Overview

Controller is an engine namespace: implemented natively by the game engine, not by any decompiled .lua file in resident/ or elsewhere. It’s always available as a global table — no import() required.

Unlike Object or Event, Controller contains no functions at all. pairs(Controller) shows exactly 25 entries, all plain integer constants identifying gamepad buttons and stick/pad directions (e.g. L1, RPad_Down, LStick_Left, Use_Melee). There is nothing to call — the table exists purely so scripts can refer to a specific controller input by name instead of a raw numeric ID.

The presumed purpose, consistent with where it’s actually used (see Provenance below), is identifying a controller button/direction for minigame prompts and similar input-facing logic (e.g. telling the HUD which button icon to display, or checking which button a player pressed during a quick-time-style sequence).

Provenance

• The full list of 25 numeric IDs comes from a live pairs(Controller) enumeration in-game (ground truth for what exists). This table needed no further research — the constants and their values are complete and authoritative as given.
• Because every entry is a constant (not a function), there is no “argument shape” question to investigate the way there is for Object or Event. The only open question is usage: which of these 25 constants are actually referenced somewhere in the ~230 decompiled .lua files.
• A grep across the full decompiled source tree found real usage in exactly one file: resident/mrxactionhijack.lua, in the vehicle-hijack minigame logic. No other file references Controller.* anywhere in the corpus.

Confirmed usage found

In resident/mrxactionhijack.lua:

• Controller.RPad_Down is used as both the GRAPHIC and INPUT value in a ragdoll/knockdown table (tRagdoll, line 46-47) — presumably telling the HUD which button icon to show and which physical input satisfies the prompt.
• In the hijack “alternate” minigame branch (lines 587-610), self[...].miniGame.button is compared against Controller.Use_Melee and Controller.Use_Reload to decide which pair of Controller.* constants (RPad_Up/RPad_Right, RPad_Up/RPad_Left, or LStick_Left/LStick_Right) gets passed as the button-pair argument to Event.Create(Event.Minigame, {...}). This confirms Controller.* constants are passed through as data into the Event.Minigame event type’s argument table (see Event, where Minigame is listed as name-only/unconfirmed — this call site is itself the only evidence found for that event’s argument shape too, though documenting Event.Minigame in full is out of scope here).

No other constant in the list of 25 was found referenced anywhere in the decompiled corpus.

Reference table

Constant	Value	Notes
LPad_Up	1	No confirmed call site.
LPad_Down	2	No confirmed call site.
LPad_Left	3	No confirmed call site.
LPad_Right	4	No confirmed call site.
RPad_Up	5	Confirmed. Used in resident/mrxactionhijack.lua:592,600 as part of the button-pair passed to the hijack minigame.
RPad_Down	6	Confirmed. Used in resident/mrxactionhijack.lua:46-47 (tRagdoll.GRAPHIC / tRagdoll.INPUT).
RPad_Left	7	Confirmed. Used in resident/mrxactionhijack.lua:601 (paired with RPad_Up for the Use_Reload case).
RPad_Right	8	Confirmed. Used in resident/mrxactionhijack.lua:593 (paired with RPad_Up for the Use_Melee case).
LStick_Left	9	Confirmed. Used in resident/mrxactionhijack.lua:608 (default/else branch of the hijack minigame).
LStick_Right	10	Confirmed. Used in resident/mrxactionhijack.lua:609 (paired with LStick_Left).
LStick_Up	11	No confirmed call site.
LStick_Down	12	No confirmed call site.
RStick_Left	13	No confirmed call site.
RStick_Right	14	No confirmed call site.
RStick_Up	15	No confirmed call site.
RStick_Down	16	No confirmed call site.
L1	17	No confirmed call site.
L2	18	No confirmed call site.
L3	19	No confirmed call site.
R1	20	No confirmed call site.
R2	21	No confirmed call site.
R3	22	No confirmed call site.
Use_Melee	26	Confirmed. Used in resident/mrxactionhijack.lua:587 as a comparison value for miniGame.button to select the melee button-pair.
Use_Reload	27	Confirmed. Used in resident/mrxactionhijack.lua:595 as a comparison value for miniGame.button to select the reload button-pair.
LStick_LeftRight	25	No confirmed call site. Presumably a combined/axis identifier distinct from the separate LStick_Left/LStick_Right constants, but this is not confirmed from source.

Note the numbering isn’t fully contiguous in the sense of “23/24 exist but weren’t in the enumeration” — the live dump lists exactly the 25 names/values shown here (23 and 24 are simply not present as names in the table; there is no gap to explain, this is the complete set).

Notes for modders

• As with Event (see its Notes for modders section), always reference these by name — Controller.L1, not the literal 17 — even though only a handful of names have confirmed real usage in the decompiled corpus. The values are stable within a given game build, but names self-document and survive if the underlying numbering ever changes.
• Only 8 of the 25 constants (RPad_Up, RPad_Down, RPad_Left, RPad_Right, LStick_Left, LStick_Right, Use_Melee, Use_Reload) were found actually referenced in the decompiled source, all within a single file (resident/mrxactionhijack.lua) implementing a vehicle-hijack minigame. The remaining 17 constants are confirmed to exist (via live enumeration) but have no known call site — treat their exact usage context (e.g. whether they’re consumed by native input-remapping UI, or by Lua code outside this corpus) as unconfirmed.
• Given the very narrow observed usage, this namespace is likely consumed mostly by native engine/GUI code (e.g. control-scheme display, button-prompt icons) rather than by gameplay Lua scripts in general — mrxactionhijack.lua’s minigame is the one place gameplay Lua needed to name a specific physical button.