I'm working on a game in Objective-C. The Siri remote works great via GCMicroGamepad and real MFi controllers work well via GCGamepad. However, third-party IR remotes do not work at all in-game (and neither does the Remote App on iPhone or an older Apple TV 3rd gen remote).
How can I recognize and distinguish these inputs?
Two days later... I have found that a UITapGestureRecognizer can be used to detect Up, Down, Left, Right and Select events correctly when presented with a third-party TV remote or iPhone Remote.app. The directional events are actually unique to these types of remotes as well—the Siri remote does not generate directional tap events. Unfortunately, however, tapping the Select button on either the Siri remote or the third-party or iPhone Remote.app will generate a Select event from my tap recognizer. I need some way to distinguish the two.
The only distinguishing factor I can find is that tapping the Siri remote also generates a button-A press on the GCMicroGamepad—a third-party remote or iPhone Remote.app does not affect the GCMicroGamepad at all. But it's very extremely inelegant to attempt to watch the GCMicroGamepad for tap-release events, and then use that event to filter out a matching Select button event. Certainly it's not a recommended use of the APIs; it doesn't seem like a good long-term solution. If I could tell the Siri remote to stop generating UI events when in GCMicroGamepad mode, that would be excellent.
I cannot test this right now, but you could probably differentiate the Siri Remote from a third party remote by using a GCEventViewController with the controllerUserInteractionEnabled property set to false. This way, the Siri Remote inputs shouldn't get passed to UIKit (when the GCEventViewController is the first responder). The third-party remote's input events might go through to UIKit since, unlike the Siri Remote, it's not a GCMicroGamepad.
So far, Apple really doesn't support multiplayer games with multiple Siri Remotes, iOS Remotes or IR remotes. But I think it might be coming because the Remote app on iOS will soon support multiplayer gaming (so I guess the Apple TV will recognize multiple GCMicroGamePad controllers).