Even if you emulated it, like I've experienced some games doing, why would you want it? It feels weird as hell having the cursor or aim snap back once you stop moving the mouse entirely (rocket League does this if setting camera movement to mouse).
It's for emulation, and unfortunately retroarch doesn't allow using mouse as a joystick. I should really just buy a cable for my xbox 360 controllers, but I was looking for a solution in the meantime.
Just as an FYI, if the 360 controllers are wireless, then you cannot plug them in. The port is just for charging if you have a play and charge kit.
You can get knock-off 360 wireless adapters for the PC though and they generally work well.
In case it's relevant, you can plug in Xbox One (and series) controllers via the cable and newer Xbox One (and all Series) controllers can pair wirelessly via Bluetooth.
I think you're gonna have a pretty rough time trying to use a mouse as a joystick
You can get wireless receivers for 360 controllers, joy cons, switch controllers, PS4 and ps5 controllers all work with PC over bluetooth if you have any of those lying around, PS3 ones should work wired with some effort
Steam input is your best bet. It has a desktop configuration thats loaded when not playing games and usually autoconfigures the joystick to act as a mouse
I've tried to take a look, but unfortunately it seems you need to connect a controller for it to do anything. I just have a keyboard and mouse. I've also done some searching on how to accomplish this, but came up empty. Do you have any insight on how to accomplish it?
this looks like highly sophisticated gamepad emulation. IDK if you can map mouse and keys to your virtual gamepads easily, but the readme suggest that you definitly can. Looks like some work though.
this one is a fairly simple python script. I don't know if you're into programming, if it works you only need to change it so it registers mouse input and map that to the virtual controllers stick
Rewasd might work. Depends on what type of controller you are trying to emulate. I don't know if they have an option for "joystick" emulation, but it can spoof your keyboard to act as a PS or Xbox controller