X2 Joystick & Mouse wish list - FOUND SOME FIXES

General discussions about the games by Egosoft including X-BTF, XT, X², X³: Reunion, X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

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Catullus
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Post by Catullus »

The Application you're looking for is CTFJ. You'll find the file CTFJV320.zip about halfway down the list of files on the files page.
The website says it only works on Win95/98!! Are there any Win2k/XP programs like this?
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Reven
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Post by Reven »

Dierte wrote:have you found a way to reduce the roll sensativity? I have gotten used to the 5% deadzone for my joystick but the roll is still a little quircky.
There is no way to reduce the initial speed that the ship starts rolling at. That's hard-coded into the game. But... you can reduce the maximum roll-speed and then spread out the entire joystick movement between the game's minimum and the lowered maximum. You need to use joystick software for this. I suggest eliminating the game's deadzone and using the joystick software to handle that as well.

This is what the response curve for my roll looks like with Thrustmapper:
[ external image ]

This is about the best that can be done until/unless Egosoft changes the way roll works.
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Visionism
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Post by Visionism »

I think CTFJ should work on 2k/XP, If it doesn't, well you've only wasted 2 minutes finding out. Its a very short download.
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.natrix
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Post by .natrix »

Reven wrote:The old "RYFM" rule. :oops:

Actually, I just mapped my joystick button 2 to the "L" key with Thrustmapper. I love Thrustmaster's software. :)

I love too :D , great software!

what "L" button means? btw, what joystick do u have? mines TM Top Gun Fox 2 Pro USB, hehe i bought it today. 8)
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Reven
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Post by Reven »

.natrix wrote:
Reven wrote:Actually, I just mapped my joystick button 2 to the "L" key with Thrustmapper. I love Thrustmaster's software. :)
I love too :D , great software!

what "L" button means? btw, what joystick do u have? mines TM Top Gun Fox 2 Pro USB, hehe i bought it today. 8)
This is the exact joystick that I have. I have the older version with the protective cover on the missile launch button. Not very useful, but it's pretty cool to flip up the protective cover with your thumb before firing a missile. :)

To answer your question, the Thrustmapper software is able to make it so that pressing any joysitck button is the same as pressing a key, or a combination of keys, on your keyboard. I don't like having to hold button 2 down on my joystick for a while in order to fire a missile. So, since pressing "L" on your keyboard will launch a missile right away, I used Thrustmapper to make it so that when I press button 2 on my joystick, it sends a "L" keypress to the game.

Play with your Thrustmapper software for a while to see what it can do. It's VERY powerful. You can have it send whole groups of keyboard keypresses by pressing just one joystick button.
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.natrix
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Post by .natrix »

hehe, thanx for answers Reven, but i have one more noobish question:). what the hell is deadzone? everyone is talking about it but i dont know what excacly that means. I never used joysticks, gamepads or other gaming conntrollers, so that word is tottaly new for me :oops:. please explain man
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Reven
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Post by Reven »

A joystick is an analog device. It reports back to the computer its exact position. Most joysticks automatically center themselves, but this centering isn't completely precise. There is a certain amount of "wiggle" in it. The "dead zone" is the area in center that is ignored. If you don't ignore a little bit of movement to either side of center, then things will tend to drift to one side or another - it's almost impossible to get the centering on a joystick completely exact.

Most good joysticks (USB ones especially) will automatically "callibrate" themselves each time they are used. The driver figures out where the current center is, and adjusts for it (it changes over time as springs wear, when the tension is adjusted, with temperature or humitity...etc). This means that nowadays, good joysticks don't need nearly as much dead-zone as they used to.

X2 uses basically the same input routines as X-Beyond the Frontier did. Back then, lots of joysticks still had manual "centering" adjusters on them and weren't nearly as precise as they are now. X2 is a sort of quantum leap in the X series, but its input routines are based on old assumptions. From the look of things in the X2 development thread, it seems as though they are addressing these issues.
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.natrix
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Post by .natrix »

:idea: aaa... now everythingis is clear! thanx for help mate, your help is really usefull for me. i appreciate that. thanks again.
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Tandem
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Keyboard arrow keys

Post by Tandem »

Please include the turn-on-a-dime situation when using arrow keys on the keyboard as well.
GnatB
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Post by GnatB »

A few things, may not be bugs, but glitches in my hardware:

MS sidewinder FF pro:

1. Button 10 seems to be acting as a "roll" shift, instead of the acceleration boost (or whatever it's called) that I set it to in the configuration screen. When held down, left/right on joystick rolls instead of yaws. Incidentally, it's not out of control at all. Played previous games using this stick w/o this problem just fine, setting button 10 to whatever I want, however I no longer have the joystick drivers installed, and am now using a brand spanking new computer with XP pro installed, so maybe this is some wierd automatic "XP" thing... if so, any way to turn it off? (incidentally, what DOES acceleration boost do, simply make you accelerate faster, or is it an afterburner?)

2. Game seems to occasionally recieve down/left input from the hat. looking at the config utility in XP that lets you see presses, no random input was noticeable, however it's possible I just didn't look long enough. Any advice on a possible fix?
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Reven
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Post by Reven »

I'm not sure what sort of mapping software comes with the MS joysticks, but with Thrustmapper I am able to map any joystick button press or hat movement to any keyboard key or key combination. What I would suggest is that you map each hat direction to a keyboard button. The numberpad buttons have the same effect as the hat press. I mapped mine simply because I wanted to invert the hat movement so it was the same as the joystick (push forward to look down). In this case, it might help you debug what's going on.
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SibeTribe
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Post by SibeTribe »

[quote="GnatB"]
(incidentally, what DOES acceleration boost do, simply make you accelerate faster, or is it an afterburner?)

[/quote]

GnatB,

My experience with Acceleration Boost is that it does as you stated; it simply accelerates you faster. It is not an afterburner which will allow you to exceed your default max speed. However, I have noticed that I must press and HOLD the TAB button (or whichever joystick button you've mapped it to) to achieve the desired effect; simply tapping the key/button won't do much. Hope that helps.
GnatB
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Post by GnatB »

Reven wrote:I'm not sure what sort of mapping software comes with the MS joysticks, but with Thrustmapper I am able to map any joystick button press or hat movement to any keyboard key or key combination. What I would suggest is that you map each hat direction to a keyboard button. The numberpad buttons have the same effect as the hat press. I mapped mine simply because I wanted to invert the hat movement so it was the same as the joystick (push forward to look down). In this case, it might help you debug what's going on.
Well, I'll see if I can download some XP drivers for it, as I bought the thing quite a bit before XP came out... though I've heard that XP doesn't let you program joysticks that don't use the USB ports, and mine doesn't. Ah well, I'll see what I can dig up.... mapping the hat to 1-8 then leaving notepad open overnight should do a fairly good job of checking for errant presses... if not, I may be needing to order a new USB joystick.

Incidentally, another complaint... even if I do get that remapping setup, I can't map the hat to anything other than POV looking around, or I loose menu navigation with it...

Bad egosoft... let us map the hat in-game so it stays as menu interface when the menu is up, but does useful stuff (i.e. not wasted on looking around) when the menu is closed.
Slocket
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Post by Slocket »

***There could be some anti-jitter worked in to thje joystick throttle. I don't know if it's just my joystick, but many times when it is no full on or full off, it jitters slightly between two values. This causes my speed to fluctuate which, because of the way the game is coded, makes the ship "shake" continually***

Yes same thing. Analog CH Flightstick. Looking at the test in windows calibration, the throtle bobbles up and down some (0-255).

Every game I played takes this poll data from that port and smooths it out with a small program (average over a few values) simple enough. Basic programming to fix it.

Some newer digital sticks may have software chips inside them to solve this -but it should have been done at the program input software level as aa sub routine call from windows. It could be easily adding in the EXE but since the EXE is encryted, impossible to add code without it pucking up and choke it.
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Dread Quixadhal
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Post by Dread Quixadhal »

Not sure if keyboard issues belong in here or not (it IS a controller), but one thing I noticed seems a bit counter-intuitive. The overall turning speed is much too high IMO, and it would be nice if there were some adjustment between the maximum your ship can have, and zero. It isn't as big a deal on the joystick/mouse controls, but the keyboard is binary, so making it adjustable would be nice.

The oddball thing I noticed though is that the rotation speed is different for the roll axis than for pitch or yaw. A full rotation of my ship along the pitch/yaw axis takes only 1.25 seconds (approx, I'm at work so it's from memory), but rotation along the roll axis takes about 4 seconds. I'm thinking these should be in sync, or should be seperate thruster upgrades for each axis perhaps.

When I get home, I'm going to dust off my X-Tension copy and see how it compares to those, but I want to say there wasn't as large a gap between those values.
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Dread Quixadhal
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Post by Dread Quixadhal »

I'm please to report that the newest patch (1.1) has cleaned up the keyboard controls (among many other things!). Kudos to Egosoft!!!

I still think an adjustment would be handy, but it now has about the same feel as X-T, so I'm happy. :)
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Primus
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Post by Primus »

Looks like the 1.1 patch fixed some things, but broke others. In response to a question about joystick fixes, I got a couple of responses for folks who are now getting drifting in version 1.1. You can see the post at http://www.egosoft.com/x2/forum/viewtop ... 371#216371 , look for Eclipse671.
Slocket
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Post by Slocket »

My analog stick throttle is still causing jitter for cockpit. Can some tel me of a decent new digital stick I guess to buy that will work with X2 and other flight Sims like Falcon 4.0 gold to be released?

Does ayone know if they are going to fix the cockpit jitter bug to smooth out the input in later patch? My old analog CH FlightStick is really precise and nice to use, it works with all other games. It just has some jitter with the Throttle output in X2. Thanks.

SPP use "2" crystals for 276 E-cells produced? price min-max 9-23 was 6-26: someone please verify. Also The NPC SPP do not hardly seem to use the crystals as a secondary resource at all.???? I may have to stat a brand new game under 1.1.
SteveMill
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Post by SteveMill »

Slocket wrote:My analog stick throttle is still causing jitter for cockpit. Can some tel me of a decent new digital stick I guess to buy that will work with X2 and other flight Sims like Falcon 4.0 gold to be released?

Does ayone know if they are going to fix the cockpit jitter bug to smooth out the input in later patch? My old analog CH FlightStick is really precise and nice to use, it works with all other games. It just has some jitter with the Throttle output in X2. Thanks.

SPP use "2" crystals for 276 E-cells produced? price min-max 9-23 was 6-26: someone please verify. Also The NPC SPP do not hardly seem to use the crystals as a secondary resource at all.???? I may have to stat a brand new game under 1.1.
The Saitek x45 throttle combo has always worked fine for me in X2 and would be great for Falcon 4.
WildKarrde
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Post by WildKarrde »

Not sure if this has come up already in this thread and I've just missed it...

With the release of the 1.1 patch, joystick control on my MS SW3D Pro Plus has started to be 'stepped' instead of 'linear'. Has anyone else noticed this? There is a mention earlier in this thread about the rudder being overly sensitive, and fast. That seems to have 'infected' the yaw/pitch control! The first small portion of control in any direction is great! It acts as I would expect, gradual increase in response. But once the stick reaches the end of that portion, there is a MASSIVE increase in speed along that axis. I have experimented with the new sensitivity slider in the config screen, but this just seems to change the senstivity of the initial portion of the axis... it merely reduces or increases the 'step height' so to speak. There are further steps after this initial one too, which seem to have the same effect. As the speed is too fast once I reach the first step, I can't tell if there is any graduation between the first and 2nd steps, it just appears to be flat until it reaches the next step. Would really appreciate some verification or input on this issue.

I don't get this problem in any of my other games... and I didn't seem to get this in 1.0 of X² (I will be testing that now, as I can't seem to play effectively in 1.1).
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