Name: bridiebee Date: July 12, 2006 at 09:09:29 Pacific Subject: Gamepad instead of keyboard? OS: xp pro CPU/Ram: athlon64 4200
Comment:
I have a few games on my pc. Some downloaded from the net some from shop. I bought a wingman gamepad thinking it would come in very useful. I am surprised to fine that most of what I have appears to be keyboard controlled only. is this usual? Is there a way to make it gamepad control only? I have obviously looked in options of games and dont see anything to do this. many thanks bridiebee
By default, games are set to use the keyboard out of the box. Why? Because the game maker doesn't know if you even have a gamepad or not. You should be able to remap them though.
If you're however playing first person shooters like Half Life 2, FEAR, etc., do yourself a favor and learn to play with a keyboard and mouse. No gamepad or joystick can offer you the precision for aiming like a mouse can.
Some games have the capability of using the gamepad, some don't. As I recall, half-life 2 had very weak, if any native gamepad support.
The wingman gamepad should have come with some software that will allow you to map keys on your gamepad to keyboard and mouse inputs. That's essentially what joy to key does, but your gamepad software should do it at the driver level.
I started writing a program a year or so ago that would do something similar to joy to key, but with more finely tuned controls to help in aiming. The problem was that most games nowadays interact with DirectInput, which doesn't really go through the normal OS input channels. Hopefully with WinFX & Vista...
In general, I agree with heropsycho...First person shooters are better played with a mouse.
Lol...hes a she! Bridiebee? Thanks everyone. I am not stupid and do realise that pc games are probably keyboard orientated. I have never played\games on pc up until 3 weeks ago. My wingman came with software that I had to update on Logitech site...no mention of being able to map keys in utility. I wanted to put these games on my laptop also and i have a mini mouse but its always akward on laptop with mice. Will look up the program mentioned.
"No gamepad or joystick can offer you the precision for aiming like a mouse can"
Theres a misunderstanding about this. I use a joystick for ALL my FPS games. The misunderstanding is that a joystick would be used to aim your crosshairs, When infact you still use the mouse to control this movement if you so choose.
The way i play FPS games is with the joystick in my left hand and the mouse in my right. I use the joystick for side to side and foward and backward movements. The joystick buttons are used to switch to various weapons and the joystick trigger is used for firing. The mouse is still used to look around/aim and i use its buttons for things like jump, secondary fire mode and zoom.
Dont be fooled by PC first person shooter games that dont list a joystick on/off option in the GUI. Sometimes joysticks are still supported because of the game engine the game is written upon.
Eample:
Return to castle wolfenstein, call of duty and soldier of fortune II are some games that are written using the Quake III game engine. Because of this we can enable a joystick to be used even if that option is not present in the games GUI. To do this simply drop the console (usually the ` key) and type /in_joystick 1 to activate a joystick. This can also be done by manually editing the games .cfg or .ini file within its install directory.
Games that i have completed using this setup without the use of an emulator are as follows.
Return to castle wolfenstein quake III soldier of fortune II call of duty Medal of honor AA unreal and UT 1-4 half life 1 and 2 Doom III
Games that i have completed using this setup with the use of an emulator are as follows.
F.E.A.R. Farcry
This emulator does just that. It emulates the keys of a keyboard being pressed, when in fact your using a joystick. Basicly its tricking the game into thinking you are using the keyboard.
The software can be downloaded for free from the link below.
I recently purchased Half Life 2, but couldn't get my Logitech Rumblepad 2 gamepad to work with it, no matter how I changed the settings. I know the mouse/keyboard combo is most accurate etc, but nothing's more comfortable than kicking back in my easy chair with only one gamepad in my hands. Anyway, I figured out how to do it, and since I've noticed others with this problem, I figured I'd post my solution here.
First, you have to create a new file using Notepad called "joystick.cfg" (no quotes) and put it in the config folder (in my case it was Half Life 2> hl2> cfg) the contents of the folder is as follows:
I found that on another site, can't remember where. I'm not sure if you need to use "Xbox controller" but I suspect it's so the game engine recognizes the dual analog. I had to change some settings to make it work with the Logitech pad.
Next, you'll want to change settings in the file "config.cfg" (in same folder) I strongly suggest copying it first, and renaming the file extension to .xxx so you will have the original at hand in case things get messed up. Simply swap extensions to switch configurations. Anyway, the contents of this file are as follows:
The things that are changed are the "bind" values - they assign which button etc. does what. You can fool around with these as you want; the above is simply my preferred layout.
The only thing left is to tick the checkboxes for Options> Mouse> Joystick, and > Joystick Look as well. You may need to open up the Developer Console and type in "exec joystick", but I didn't need to. (Options> Keyboard> check "enable developer's console" box, then hit the ~ key to open it)
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