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Controllers and Menus
Ember's menus cover Home, rooms, fighter selection, settings and offline training.
Press F10 or Start at the native main menu to open Ember, or during a game you fight in a Practice room, where it opens on End practice (see Training with another player), or during a game you watch, where it opens on Stop watching (Leave this game for a queued member) and is translucent over the fight. Ember's menus select and go back on the buttons SF4's own menus use: A and B on an XInput controller, and on a DirectInput stick its Light Kick and Medium Kick buttons, shown as LK and MK because its physical labels are not identifiable. Moving LK and MK in Game's button settings moves them in Ember's menus too, and changing your fighting buttons with an Ember button layout does not. To use other buttons in Ember's menus only, choose Menu confirm and Menu back on the controller's Button layout screen and press the button you want; the two cannot share a button, and Start, View and the D-pad keep their jobs. Use the game's layout on that screen returns them to the game's buttons. DirectInput sticks the game reads itself have no shortcut buttons. On an XInput controller in a room, X, Y and View are shortcuts (see Play online). D-pad or keyboard arrows move the highlight; Left/Right adjusts value rows. Lists and grids stop at their edges. Direction holds repeat, but actions and confirmations do not.
Note
Coming soon (PR #116)
Press F10 or Start at the native main menu to open Ember, or during a game you fight in a Practice room, where it opens on End practice (see Training with another player), or during a game you watch, where it opens on Stop watching (Leave this game for a queued member) and is translucent over the fight. Ember's menus select with the bottom face button and go back with the right one (A and B on Xbox) on an XInput controller, which every controller you set up in Ember is, whatever your fighting buttons are. On a DirectInput stick the game reads itself they use the buttons SF4's own menus use, its Light Kick and Medium Kick buttons, shown as LK and MK because its physical labels are not identifiable, and moving LK and MK in Game's button settings moves them in Ember's menus too. To use other buttons in Ember's menus only, choose Menu confirm and Menu back on the controller's Button layout screen and press the button you want; the two cannot share a button, and Start, View and the D-pad keep their jobs. Use the game's layout on that screen returns them to the bottom and right face buttons. DirectInput sticks the game reads itself have no shortcut buttons. On an XInput controller in a room, X, Y and View are shortcuts (see Play online). D-pad or keyboard arrows move the highlight; Left/Right adjusts value rows. Lists and grids stop at their edges. Direction holds repeat, but actions and confirmations do not.
Back cancels the current text draft, confirmation or open choice first, otherwise returns one level. On your own table card in a room, Back leaves your seat or queue place instead (see Play online); elsewhere on the room board it goes to Home. Back from Home hides Ember and returns to the game without leaving your room, and Home's Online play row returns to it. Use the explicit Leave room action to disconnect; its confirmation starts on Cancel.
Note
Coming soon (PR #102)
Back cancels the current text draft, confirmation or open choice first, otherwise returns one level. On the room board, Back goes to Home and keeps your seat or queue place. Home stays open while a room is joined; its Online play row returns to the room. Outside a room, Back from Home hides Ember and returns to the game. Use the explicit Leave room action to disconnect; its confirmation starts on Cancel.
Select a text row before typing or pasting with a physical keyboard. Enter accepts the draft; Escape or controller Back discards it. Chat is the exception: its message box is already open when the screen opens, so you just type and press Enter to send. Moving the mouse pointer moves the highlight over menu rows, dialog options and the seat chooser, while a resting pointer never undoes what the pad just chose; clicking selects. Click either end of a value row to adjust it with a mouse.
Choose Online Play, then Create Room or Join Room. Create retains populated defaults. Join prioritizes Paste Invitation and Join. While connected, Online Play returns to your room.
The room overview follows SF6's Custom Room composition: four stacked battle slots on the left, members above chat on the right, and the room's actions (Members, Chat, Table options, Room settings, Copy invitation, Leave room) sharing the right column beneath them, with the focused entry's explanation on a line below. Right moves from a slot to the member pane; Left returns to the last focused slot. Up/Down visits entries in order. Narrow layouts stack the same entries in one scrolling list.
Note
Coming soon (PR #102)
The room overview has four battle slots on the left, members and inline chat on the right, and a smaller action grid underneath. Settings is the single entry for personal preferences, match and connection settings, table rules, and room administration. Invite groups the available invitation formats. Members, Chat history, Training and Leave room remain ordinary controller-selectable actions. Leave seat / Leave queue belongs to your table. Seated fighters also select their fighter there; the separate Fighter select entry appears only before taking a seat, so these controls are not duplicated under chat. Right moves from a table to members; Left returns. In the action grid, Up/Down follows columns and Left/Right moves between neighbors. Narrow or short layouts scroll the board while keeping the chat field below it.
Select a slot with A. With no seat or queue place, it opens the seat chooser: Play as P1 or Play as P2 for an open seat (an empty table offers both), otherwise Join queue; then Watch; and Table options. The D-pad or mouse pointer picks, A confirms and B cancels. On your own seat, A readies (Ready up, Ready for rematch) or takes Ready back (Unready / unlock fighter). On your queue place, or on another table when you already have a place, A opens that table's Table options, which is looking, not joining. B on your own card leaves your seat or queue place at once. It asks first only when leaving would end a set score or hand the seat to a queued member, with the question starting on keeping your seat. It explains why instead when a game or unresolved result holds the seat. While a start is held for a locked-in spectator, B (Cancel the start) takes Ready back, the same as A. On an Xbox pad, X opens Change fighter, Y opens Table options (the focused table's, otherwise your own) and View opens Chat; on the keyboard F, T and C do the same. On the keyboard Escape always goes back, even on your own card, and Delete leaves your seat or queue place. Pressing the same button again returns to the board, and all three work from every room screen, including fighter selection.
Note
Coming soon (PR #102)
Select your table with Confirm to open its actions without readying. Directions choose Ready / Unready, Fighter or Leave seat; Confirm activates the choice and Back cancels. The same controls work with a mouse. A queued player can choose Leave queue directly on their table. An unseated player still chooses an open seat, queue or watching. Leave asks for confirmation when it would reset a set score or hand the seat to a queued player, initially selecting Cancel. A held start offers Cancel the start, which unreadies rather than leaving. A live match or unresolved result keeps its existing departure restriction and explains why.
The same chooser includes More to open Table actions for the full list, including unresolved-game recovery. It does not require a controller shortcut.
Back always navigates without giving up your place. X, Y and View (F, T and C on a keyboard) remain shortcuts to Fighter, Table actions and Chat; pressing the shortcut again returns to its opener. Delete retains its keyboard-only departure shortcut on your own table. A Training call returns to Home > Room > Table actions, so Back takes you to the room.
Player cards use native SF4 portraits. If the game's portrait cannot be loaded, the packaged original-outfit picture stands in where one exists. The Random stage card reads the game's character-select random tile at runtime and shows the usual preview-unavailable placeholder when that tile cannot be read. The members pane and Home profile card show each player's saved main, independently of battle selection. The main is validated and shared during room admission, including for spectators. Battle-slot portraits still show the current match fighter after the pre-battle exchange. Older snapshots without optional profile metadata show an unknown portrait instead of guessing from the match fighter. Portrait metadata does not change selection or readiness.
Members, room rules and host administration retain separate action menus. Chat (View, or C) shows the whole conversation, oldest at the top, with your own messages marked You and a line for each member joining or leaving, a new host and a finished game or set. Typing needs a keyboard: Enter sends, and the draft stays in the box, when you leave the screen too, until the room shows your message. Up and Down (or Page Up and Page Down) scroll; Escape or B goes back. While you type, F, T and C are letters, so the keyboard shortcuts wait until you leave the box. Messages from other members that arrive while you are elsewhere show as a count on the Chat row and above Recent chat until you open Chat; your own and muted members' messages never count. Table options (Y) opens Battle setup for a table: both players' Ready status stays visible. Change fighter (X) opens the roster at your fighter; picking one goes on to its Ultra, and picking the Ultra returns to the room. Then press A on your card for Ready up. Ready requires both seats, a connected assigned input device, valid choices and a healthy room. Missing requirements appear in the detail panel. Ready locks fighter changes; Unready / unlock fighter cancels Ready before the match begins. Rematch uses the saved selection. Host-only actions remain unavailable to other members, with an explanation. Battle setup has, in order: Ready, Change fighter, Ultra Combo (Left and Right step it), Input delay (Left and Right choose 0 to 5 frames or, below 0, Auto; Select applies the recommendation; the detail names the recommended and match delays), Check connection, then the table's rules. The host edits Rounds, Round time and Edition Select there and presses Apply rules; others see the rules on one line. Both fighters play at the higher of their two delays. See custom rooms.
Note
Members, room rules and host administration retain separate action menus. Chat (View, or C) shows the whole conversation, oldest at the top, with your own messages marked You and a line for each member joining or leaving, a new host and a finished game or set. Typing needs a keyboard: Enter sends, and the draft stays in the box, when you leave the screen too, until the room shows your message. Up and Down (or Page Up and Page Down) scroll; Escape or B goes back. While you type, F, T and C are letters, so the keyboard shortcuts wait until you leave the box. Messages from other members that arrive while you are elsewhere show as a count on the Chat row and above Recent chat until the newest message is visible in focused Chat or in Recent chat while you attend that panel with the mouse or controller; your own and muted members' messages never count. Table options (Y) opens Battle setup for a table: both players' Ready status stays visible. Change fighter (X) opens the roster at your fighter; picking one goes on to its Ultra, and picking the Ultra returns to the room. Then press A on your card for Ready up. Ready requires both seats, a connected assigned input device, valid choices and a healthy room. Missing requirements appear in the detail panel. Ready locks fighter changes; Unready / unlock fighter cancels Ready before the match begins. Rematch uses the saved selection. Host-only actions remain unavailable to other members, with an explanation. Battle setup has, in order: Ready, Change fighter, Ultra Combo (Left and Right step it), Input delay (Left and Right choose 0 to 5 frames or, below 0, Auto; Select applies the recommendation; the detail names the recommended and match delays), Check connection, then the table's rules. The host edits Rounds, Round time and Edition Select there and presses Apply rules; others see the rules on one line. Both fighters play at the higher of their two delays. See custom rooms.
Note
Coming soon (PR #102)
Settings > Match & connection contains your stage (P1 only), input delay and connection check. Settings > Table rules lets you choose which table to inspect; only the host can edit, and Apply rules appears after a change. Settings > Room settings contains name, capacity and admission. Player & controller, Interface, Training and replays, Discord and reporting remain under Settings. New-room defaults affect rooms created later, not the current room; outside a room, Match & connection holds your default input delay.
Inline chat and Chat history share the same draft, transcript and unread tracking. Enter sends while typing; room shortcuts do not fire from text input. A four-second notification ends without discarding unread state. The small badge remains until the relevant messages are visible in an attended chat panel. Selecting a table action or browsing Settings does not mark unseen messages read. See custom rooms.
Discord invitations use the same pending, cancellation and confirmed room-switch flow. Cancel does not leave your current room. Live table/member updates preserve focus by identity, and stale destructive confirmations are discarded.
The arcade roster previews the highlighted fighter. Select commits it; merely moving the highlight does not. Saved choices are marked. Appearance opens separate Costume gallery and Color gallery pages with individual artwork cards. Move to preview, Select to save, then Back to return. Choices use native availability rather than asset counts. Ultra, Stage and additional options remain separate; P1 retains stage authority.
Home also includes Profile. Edit your name and choose a main from the portrait roster. Press A on Xbox (or click a portrait), then wait for Saving to finish. After the settings update is accepted, the menu returns to Profile and names the saved portrait. A failure stays visible with Retry. Merely highlighting a portrait does not save it. Your saved main supplies the player-card photo and name; it does not overwrite your next match's fighter. The card shows local confirmed online wins, losses and win percentage. Tracking started with v0.8.0, is local to this settings profile, and excludes offline/training, spectating, draws, cancellations, disconnects and unresolved results. It is not a Steam rank or historical record import. A native result must agree with the room's confirmed result, and repeated notifications are deduplicated. The profile persists through the existing asynchronous settings writer. Your name, main and personal settings cannot be changed while you are in a room; leave the room first.
Prompts name the buttons that select and go back: A and B by default on XInput, or the buttons you chose for Menu confirm and Menu back. None of this rewrites your SF4 attack mappings or the game's own menus. DirectInput uses a generic button sprite with LK/MK labels instead of guessing another controller's labels. The launcher's recovery window, which runs before the game, keeps buttons 1 and 2 on a stick and says so in its prompts; it does not follow the game's tables or your Menu confirm and Menu back. While you set up a controller's buttons, the summary selects with the button you just recorded as Light kick and goes back with Medium kick, and its prompts name those buttons, until you save. Controller, direction and keyboard sprites are unmodified assets from Kenney Input Prompts 1.5A (CC0), not custom-drawn shapes or font-dependent Unicode symbols.
Player & Controller, Gameplay Defaults, Interface and Discord use named value rows. Valid personal changes are coalesced and saved asynchronously. Saving/Saved/Error feedback is quiet; Retry saving resubmits after failure. Room rules still require Apply and host authority.
Note
Coming soon (PR #102)
Player & Controller, New-room defaults, Interface and Discord use named value rows. Valid personal changes are coalesced and saved asynchronously. Saving/Saved/Error feedback is quiet; Retry saving resubmits after failure. Room rules still require Apply and host authority.
Ember automatically adopts SF4's connected controller, or the sole connected controller when the native menu still points to keyboard. Multiple unassigned controllers trigger release-all / press / release capture; simultaneous presses cannot choose an arbitrary device. With no controller, keyboard is provisional until explicitly chosen or used to join a room. You can explicitly choose a device under Player & Controller. Disconnecting never silently replaces an established device.
Before starting a match, Ember rechecks the device and verifies native P1/P2 binding. Each local GGPO input sample is read only while that binding and device identity still match. A disconnect, replacement, or changed native slot produces neutral input and a visible warning, never another controller's buttons. Reconnect the original device; if its slot changed, return to the room to reassign it. These checks use SF4's native type, index and device name; they cannot prove physical hardware identity when identical devices are re-enumerated under the same slot/name.
In offline training, F6 opens and closes Ember's training controls from the keyboard. On the assigned pad, hold Back and press Start within half a second to do the same: View and Start on an Xbox pad, Select and Start on a DirectInput pad, whose physical Back and Start the game normalizes to the same buttons. Inside, the pad works as in the other menus: the D-pad moves, the menu buttons select and go back (A and B on an Xbox pad, LK and MK on a DirectInput pad, unless you chose others), Left and Right change values, and B at the root closes the controls. Keyboard arrows, Enter and Escape, and the mouse, work too. The legend and the training HUD's chips show the buttons of whichever device was used last. Typing a recording's name or reply moves needs a keyboard.
The chord takes nothing from the pad's other uses. Start pressed on its own still opens only the game's pause, and Back alone still resets the position on a tap and saves it on a half-second hold. Start counts only when Back is already held, a Back used for the chord neither resets nor saves (a Start later than half a second comes after the save), and the chord's Start never reaches the game, so it does not pause it. An open flyout captures gameplay input everywhere, including controllers. Held closing buttons must return to neutral before gameplay resumes.
The controls hold Dummy recording, Input history, Frame data, Dummy, Dummy reply and Position. Dummy Recording has eight slots, playback, loop and clear, and saves and loads recordings by name; Input History exposes each player's runs; Frame data gives each fighter's last move, the colour key, the meter's style and how many frames it shows (the HUD page holds Meter settings); Position saves and resets the fighters, on two keys of your choice. Occupied recording overwrite and clearing require confirmation. Record and Play close Ember only after the game thread accepts the command. Failure stays on screen. Opening the controls stops standby, a recording and a playback. Close native pause separately before practice resumes.
F5 toggles the passive training meter, F6 the controls, F7 standby, record and stop, and F8 play and stop. F2 resets and F11 saves the position until moved on the Position page. F7 opens the recording menu for confirmation when a slot is occupied. See Training lab.
When a room calls you back from Training, the banner offers Go now: Enter, or View on an Xbox pad, leaves at once instead of after its two seconds. That View press only goes now; it does not also reset or save the position. During the call Back and Start do not open the training controls, and that Start does not pause the game. Other pads are shown Enter, and their Select still resets and saves.
These checks require your physical controllers and a running game; synthetic tests are not substitutes:
- XInput: A selects and B returns even with an Ember button layout; after moving LK and MK in Game's button settings, Ember's menus follow; after binding Menu confirm and Menu back, those buttons act and the prompts name them. X, Y and View never activate a menu row unless bound to one, and otherwise only open Change fighter, Table options and Chat inside a room. DirectInput selects on LK and goes back on MK. Check release/open, directional repeat, focus restoration, disconnect/reconnect and explicit reassignment.
Note
Coming soon (PR #102)
- XInput: A selects and B returns even with an Ember button layout; after moving LK and MK in Game's button settings, Ember's menus follow; after binding Menu confirm and Menu back, those buttons act and the prompts name them. X, Y and View never activate a menu row unless bound to one, and otherwise only open Change fighter, Table actions and Chat inside a room. DirectInput selects on LK and goes back on MK. Check release/open, directional repeat, focus restoration, disconnect/reconnect and explicit reassignment.
Note
Coming soon (PR #116)
- XInput: A selects and B returns even with an Ember button layout; after moving LK and MK in Game's button settings, Ember's menus keep A and B (a stick the game reads follows); after binding Menu confirm and Menu back, those buttons act and the prompts name them. X, Y and View never activate a menu row unless bound to one, and otherwise only open Change fighter, Table options and Chat inside a room. DirectInput selects on LK and goes back on MK. Check release/open, directional repeat, focus restoration, disconnect/reconnect and explicit reassignment.
- Native main menu: no cursor movement, selection or Back action underneath the visible overlay; no held close-button leak on return.
- Training: Start alone opens only native pause, and Back alone resets on a tap and saves on a hold. Back held, then Start, opens and closes the controls without pausing, resetting or saving, on XInput and DirectInput. Inside, the D-pad, the menu buttons (A/B, LK/MK on DirectInput, or your bound ones) and Left/Right work, and the legend and HUD chips follow the last device. F6 and keyboard arrows/Enter/Escape still work.
- Training isolation: navigation, by keys or pad, never moves fighters or enters recordings; a recording or playback starts only from a command, never from navigation.
- Rooms: create/join, seat chooser, queue/watch and Lock in to watch, Ready/Unready/rematch, B leaving a seat or queue place, host rules, stale/rejected commands, safe leave, Discord cancellation/switching and two-PC play.
Note
Coming soon (PR #102)
- Rooms: create/join, seat chooser, queue/watch and Lock in to watch, Ready/Unready/rematch, the visible Leave seat and Leave queue actions, host rules, stale/rejected commands, safe leave, Discord cancellation/switching and two-PC play.
- Settings: rapid changes coalesce, failed persistence displays Retry, and a restart reloads accepted settings.
- Match input: test the same controller as both P1 and P2, after rematches, and after disconnect/reconnect. Press a second controller to confirm it cannot control the local fighter. Check the warning on a changed native device slot.
ControllerNavigationTest exercises the renderer's shared semantic model and shell/training journeys. UiRenderTest renders all redesigned screens across ten viewport/DPI configurations, including 1920x1080 at 150%, and can decode the installed game's artwork without launching it. Its row-text probe caught 35-pixel Home text being drawn into a 24-pixel padded interior. Rows now reserve space from their actual font metrics, and the extra heading scale was removed. The test checks this on every standard menu row and verifies that all four battle slots fit at standard landscape sizes. The native input analysis is recorded in 2026-09-08_reverse-USF4-menu-input-report.md; the visual references are in SF6_ROOM_REFERENCE.md.
Build only with scripts/build-current.ps1. Package only from build/current and build/current/stage, using scripts/package-team.ps1. The parent workspace's verify-current-package.ps1 checks the source fingerprint, receipt, staged/package binaries and ZIP contents. Other historical checkouts are not release targets.
Note
Coming soon (PR #51, PR #102, PR #104)
Room chat is available directly below the conversation on the room board. Select the composer or click it to type; Enter or Send submits through the existing acknowledged chat path. Back/Escape releases the composer and keeps the draft. Chat history remains available for reading older messages. Changing rooms releases typing focus and clears the previous draft.