Keyboard not working with Albion Prelude

[Mousse9]

Long story short, my keyboard does not work with Albion Prelude. It does for Terran Conflict.

Indepth: I have been playing TC for a long time, no problems at all. I install AP. While stuff is downloading I play TC, no problems.

I start up AP for the first time and stuff configures. I start up AP and find out I can't skip the intro. When I'm actually in the game, I find out that the keyboard doesn't function.
There are no setup menus for the keyboard, either in-game nor at the startup screen.

When I try to play TC after that, it says I am missing a file (which to my best guess was deleted/renamed/moved by AP's initial configuration).

I then uninstall both TC and AP through Steam, and install AP a second time. The keyboard STILL does not work. Even if there were TC mods that could've interfered with AP, currently I don't even have TC installed.

How do I fix this?

[Alan Phipps]

OK a few things to clear up. To play X3AP you do have to have the X3TC gamefiles installed. The former game is an expansion of the latter and uses its gamefiles. Secondly you do not always have to reinstall to fix game installation faults as there is a neat Steam facility that checks the gamefiles for you; just verify the gamefile caches for X3TC and X3AP separately as per this FAQ.

Note that uninstalling a game (or using delete local files) does not remove 3rd party script and mod files (or corrupt files) from the game folder and so they remain after any reinstallation. You have to manually delete the game folders after uninstalling and before reinstalling to get back to a clean vanilla game later on.

As far as I know the keyboard input coding for X3AP uses the X3TC core files and so apart from perhaps a missing X3AP profile/config file (or in the wrong place - usually Drive:\Users\Your Name\Documents\Egosoft\X3AP\profiles), I cannot see why one would work and the other not. Did you perhaps copy your previous X3TC profile/custom config across into X3AP rather than generate a new one? I am not 100% sure that would work reliably after all the X3AP expansions and changes.

[Mousse9]

This is weird. OK, last night I cleaned up as much as possible, here's what I did:

1. AP uninstall through Steam.

2. TC uninstall through Steam.

3. Deactivated all the mods through XPlugin Manager, then deleted Xplugin Manager. (I know this is backwards and should have been done first, but I didn't think mods had anything to do with it.)

4. Deleted anything related to TC/AP in the Program Files/Steam/Steamapps/Common directory.

5. Reinstall AP through Steam.

I thought that by doing all this, it would be a completely clean install.

So I start up AP, and the problem remains.

Now I read that for me to be able to even start up AP, I need to have TC installed? But for me, I can start up just fine, except for the keyboard. Does this mean I have missed deleting some parts of TC?

As far as I know the keyboard input coding for X3AP uses the X3TC core files and so apart from perhaps a missing X3AP profile/config file (or in the wrong place - usually Drive:\Users\Your Name\Documents\Egosoft\X3AP\profiles), I cannot see why one would work and the other not. Did you perhaps copy your previous X3TC profile/custom config across into X3AP rather than generate a new one? I am not 100% sure that would work reliably now after all the X3AP expansions and changes.

I went and checked that directory. I had deleted the Egosoft directory with everything in it.
It was still in my Trashbin, so I put it back.

The Egosoft directory has 2 subfolders, X3AP and X3TC. X3TC has some stuff in it, "profiles", "save", "save.backup3100", 2 logs, and "Playerstats.pck".
X3AP subfolder is completely empty. Is that the problem? That this AP subfolder has no files?

Deleting that Egosoft directory or having it in place does not change anything about the nonfunctioning keyboard.

I just don't know what to do anymore to fix this.

EDIT: I did what you said about verifying the game cache through Steam. I had just finished reinstalling TC, and verified both TC and AP. No problems detected on either.

[Alan Phipps]

No it sounds like you deleted all you should. TC is always installed when you install AP. Steam just needs to acknowledge that you have it to allow you to play it as a separate game - usually achieved by clicking install or verify X3TC and then Steam adds just a few TC set-up files so that you can play it separately - rather than downloading everything again.

My X3AP folder in Documents/Egosoft has folders for profiles, save, screenshots, 2 logs and playerstats. I assume that is all set up when you first play it and later upload stats.

I did find this rather inconclusive thread from the past.

[Mousse9]

I've actually found and read that thread already (through the magic of Googling!), and yes, that doesn't help this case much. Situation is slightly different as well, he had XRM, I did not. His AP keyboard worked before, mine never did.

The guy from the other post said something about registry keys? I don't know what those are or where I can find those, but I don't know what else I could possibly try.

[Alan Phipps]

The game registry keys don't affect the keyboard, just unlocking starts etc. They are first set up when you first start the game.

The only common theme I can see here is that somehow having once had certain 3rd party mods/scripts seems to affect the X3AP keyboard operation and that issue seems to hang around even after a clean reinstall - I really don't know why as I don't know the mechanism by which the mods/scripts can affect the keyboard.

Maybe copy your X3TC profile folder into the Documents, Egosoft, X3AP folder and see if that somehow unblocks things - even if the result is not optimal. Then you can at least redo the key bindings as you want them. Just a stab at trying something at least.

[Mousse9]

Unfortunately, I have already tried that. It's the "profile0.xpf", right? Plus its directory. No change.

I've pretty much done everything I could think of.

Out of curiosity, is it possible to play with just the mouse? There'd probably be lots of clicking through menus, instead of hotkeys. Not enjoyable, methinks.

Back to TC, I guess. Thanks for all the help, Alan Phipps.

[Alan Phipps]

If you are feeling brave and know what you are doing (and what to leave alone), you can use RegEdit to clear 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\EGOSOFT\X3AP\Values' in the registry and see if that helps at all. I don't think it will but it shouldn't hurt either.

I suppose you could try a game controller as X3AP does support use of one. Not sure if the setting up is possible without the keyboard working though.

Good luck anyway.

[Mousse9]

I just used RegEdit like you said, and cleared the "LastProfile" from AP. No change, unfortunately.

Currently don't have a joystick or controller. Back to TC it is. Thank you for the help.