I really do appreciate the help, and have learned a few things, but I feel it was a mistake on my part to include in this
thread the specific issue I was having with Slick2D and LWJGL, because that issue seems to have taken center stage. The theme of this thread was really to be pointed in a direction where I can learn to help myself on concepts pertaining to the issue. For instance, I don't know what a path environment variable is or how I'm supposed to manipulate it. And yet again, when I try to look it up, the explanations are beyond me: "Environment variables hold values related to the current environment, like the Operating System or user sessions." This means nothing to me, I really don't know what to do with this information. Will I find this in a book on Java? Computers for dummies? If I'm told what to do, and I do it, and the specific issue is resolved, then I'm no better then the computer itself in that I'm just following instructions without really knowing why. Being self-taught, my knowledge in this field is quite fragmented, and I blame no one but myself for not being better prepared.
That being said, should I (can I) close this thread and try again or should I roll with it? This is my first time on any Java forum ever, so perhaps I'm doing it all wrong?
But while I'm here:
Junilu, I tried moving the .dll files to to one of the listed directories and updated the build path and still the issue is not resolved, so I put everything back. Do you think that if I spent some time learning how to use Java with the command prompt (as opposed to an
IDE) that I might be better serving myself to understand the problem?
Mike, I wrote the class, here is the code:
package com.derrick.controllertest;
import net.java.games.input.Controller;
import net.java.games.input.ControllerEnvironment;
public class ControllerTest {
public static void main(
String[] args) {
ControllerEnvironment ce = ControllerEnvironment.getDefaultEnvironment();
Controller[] c = ce.getControllers();
for(int i = 0; i < c.length; i++){
System.out.println(c[i].getName());
}
}
}