Xbox360 style controller glitch with left stick for strafe - Confirmed as an issue with the specific controllers used

[Assassin8edKING]

Hi all,

I'm new to the forum, this is my first post, a pre-emptive thanks for any help offered

I've been playing X3TC for a month or so, was doing really well, had my own sector from the plot, a hyperion vanguard, player hq, small fleet brewing up, the xenon hub etc, has been playing this using a keyboard with mouse pad fitted and an xbox 360 style controller, all working perfectly.

Then disaster, I installed cycrows lite plugin manager and opted to use the save manager function, which promptly deleted my game saves and this destroyed my good work, after a day of being grumpy about it I decided to start on Albion Prelude, with the same input devices.

But now, when I set the controller up the same way, specifically with strafe on the left stick and steering on the right, I get a glitch...

When you strafe vertically up, the ship also intermittently steers left, and when you strafe vertically down, the ship steers intermittently to the right, precisely that way round all the time.

But, its not constant, and the degree of how severe the turn while strafing vertically is also varied dramatically. It is driving me insane.

I have tried removing all strafe controls from everywhere else, keyboard keys etc. If I put the strafe and steering on sticks the other way around, steering on the left stick and strafe on the right, it does not happen, only when the strafe is on the left stick.

Things I've tried so far...

Uninstalling and reinstalling the controller
Swapping to another but identical controller
Removing all other strafe controls
Turning off feature "allow game to run in background"
Unbinding all the "turret joystick" commands
Increasing joystick deadzone to 25%
Ans oddly, if I put strafe on the left stick but leave the right stick set to "none", then it doesn't happen either...

Does anyone know anything about this glitch? Seen it elsewhere etc?

I really can't steer in combat properly with my left thumb

I'm running a mid level i5 7th gen 7200 with nvidia geforce 960mx card. Running the cycrow lite plugin manager, bonus package, not many mods at all, I'm close to being vanilla.

Thanks again for any help

[Alan Phipps]

Do you have any other controllers, sticks, pedals, trackballs, etc plugged in at the same time as they can mutually interfere? The way to test this is to unplug other devices one by one and see if the issue disappears.

X3AP, unlike X3TC, does have dedicated controller support and so you may have a custom profile running that is different to the one you had in TC. You can just copy the profile that works from TC and load it into AP profiles (a different area in Your Documents) to see if that resolves your issue, or you can try running the in-game option 'reset controls to default'.
EDIT: I have been reminded that X3TC 3.3 did have the X3AP controller support back-ported into it.

BTW, I doubt that plugin manager actually deleted your TC saves - although you may have overwritten them since. You might find them back again if you change plugin manager from modded to vanilla mode.

[Assassin8edKING]

Hi Alan, thanks for the reply and advice

I have tried bits like running back in X3TC with the same pad, and playing it with the other pad too, and it works fine, the glitch is only with albion.

I did in the first instance actually copy my profile file from the TC to AP game before I started playing AP at all, and the glitch didn't occur straight away either

Regarding the save games being deleted, honestly it was right after I installed the lite plugin manager, and I suspect the reason is operator error really, both games TC and AP are both installed in a shared folder on my hard drive, as I still have my "backed up saves" folder full of saves up until about 8 days before the delete occurred in the main saves folder, makes me think a crossover of sorts has happened?

Either, I tried changing the modded back to vanilla in the plugin manager, it gave me a warning about how my save games may be restored and current vanilla saves marked as modified, but sadly the save games haven't been restored anywhere I can find them, I've checked all the X3 related places I can think of and no joy

I will try removing the current custom control profile file from the folder and moving the TC one in there again to see if it helps. And oh yeah I don't have any other controllers plugged in at all, just a logitech wireless keyboard and the controller

Thanks
EDIT: I've just tried setting the left stick to Ship Roll and to None, and the left stick still gives input to yaw left and right when you push it up and down. And even if I set the controller settings to default at the bottom of the controller settings tab, the glitch still occurs. And if I change the left stick to Cockpit Camera control, the glitch doesn't happen, only when the left stick is set to either None or Strafing then the flitch occurs.

Second EDIT: sorry I'm testing about for a solution. I've just noticed that when I set the control profile to Default and go then to the controller tab, I see under the right and left stick drop down boxes under each when you select them , that the current setting is opposite to the default! Eg, left stick says current setting is "steering" and the default is "strafing". So when I select the default profile, it is giving itself conflicting default settings. How is that possible?

[Alan Phipps]

Just a few possibilities occur to me:

1. You have somehow redefined the default profile at some stage.
2. There is an external 3rd party game profile being applied somehow. (Perhaps possiible since you say the issue was not there with X3AP at first.)
3. The controller attached is not exactly what the game expected it to be or is somehow connected up slightly differently.
4. Something else (maybe a mouse?) is still interfering.
5. The controller port has a genuine mistake that others may be seeing but just reconfigure it away.

Sorry for all the guesses but I don't use controllers myself, nor plugin manager. I protect all my vanilla and modded X3 saves as separate campaigns using mrbadger's excellent savegame manager (vanilla safe). You might get a bit more useful help from somebody better versed in those things such as X2-Illuminatus or Ketraar.

[Assassin8edKING]

Thanks Alan, yes it's confusing me too lol.

I think it's issue number 1, the default profile for the game has gotten changed, and I suspect it is to do with the TC files being in the same directory as the AP files.

Can anyone find out how I would go about altering the games internal default control settings? Is it a T file?

Thanks...

[Alan Phipps]

That is the bit of your posts that I don't understand - the profiles are not intended to be in the same directory, and there should be absolutely no possibility of crosstalk:

C:\Users\Name\Documents\Egosoft\X3TC\profiles
C:\Users\Name\Documents\Egosoft\X3AP\profiles

[Assassin8edKING]

Sorry let me explain, the profile files are stored as you say, under "documents-egosoft-X3TC and X3AP"

But, the actual game files themselves, the .exe files for example, are in one single folder together, called "X3 terran war pack".

Would just reinstalling AP from scratch, keeping my save game files somewhere safe, solve the issue of the default profile getting somehow changed?

Thanks

[Alan Phipps]

X3AP is an expansion/rework of the base X3TC game and uses many of the X3TC core gamefiles. That is why the the two exes are in the same gamefolder but with all the other new-to-X3AP files kept in the 'addon' sub-folder in the X3TC gamefolder. There is, and can be, no unwanted crosstalk of gamefiles, saves, profiles or screenshots which are all stored in different areas in the gamefolder or in Your Documents. Your fears in that respect are totally groundless.

[Assassin8edKING]

OK ok lol yes and I understand why, the game simply isn't coded to go looking in any wrong folders for the files it needs to run, so AP couldn't possibly go looking in the TC files for certain things it isn't meant to.

I'm currently reinstalling the game to see if that works, I'll find out a little later this evening

[Alan Phipps]

Throwing this out here just in case: any mod that was made to X3TC in the past may also affect X3AP as they share some core files. Some X3TC and X3AP mods are not compatible.

[Assassin8edKING]

That's a good point, I'll check them later. The only mods I am running are the bonus pack, the satellite early warning and the community plugin manager.

The sad thing is that last night after a full uninstall and reinstall of the terran war pack, the glitch went away and the defaults for the sticks have returned to normal, i.e when the controls are set to default, the left sticks default setting is strafing and the current setting matches, same but with steering on the right stick...

So I configured everything else on the controller and keyboard the way I wanted, played a very short while then saved up and shut down....booted up this afternoon to play, and the f*****g glitch is back!!!!!!

I did not activate the flat map add on
Did not touch the profile file in the documents folder
Didn't do anything other than just boot it up, and it's back... To say his is driving me just a little insane is an epic understatement.... #souldeflatingsigh

[Alan Phipps]

This is really sounding like a mod issue as several X3 mods once installed require you to exit the game and restart it before the modified files take effect. They are designed that way to ensure that you save your game at least once before the mod takes effect and potentially breaks the game. It could well be an old TC mod that you have forgotten about but that is just a guess - controllers, mod manager and associated mods are not in my area of direct experience.

[Assassin8edKING]

Regardless, thanks for your help so far Alan

I will try running the game completely vanilla, well, with the bonus pack installed anyway, I think this would work simply because the controller was perfect for months until I started added mods at all, all I had installed until the glitch occurred was the bonus package.

And to bolster that theory...

I resigned earlier to not being able to play AP because of the controller glitch etc, and went back to my most recent TC save, from 6th of this month, and just play over the stuff I lost like the player owned sector mission etc, used the lite manager to add some cool mods, early warning, advanced nav, move too coordinates etc etc, loaded into the game, and there is the glitch too. ..

I think I am just gonna give up and buy a sodding flight stick instead

[Assassin8edKING]

Update: just tried running TC from scratch, with only the bonus pack, and the glitch is still there, and now TC shows the controller sticks not matching the default when the controller profile is default, just like in AP

[Alan Phipps]

I think that your 'default' profile may no longer be the vanilla starting out X3 default profile. Unless you are deleting the relevant Documents profile folder(s) before starting a fresh vanilla game, then you may well be carrying over your somehow-changed profile(s). That's still all theory and guesswork though and there could be something completely different going on.

[Assassin8edKING]

It does feel like it's what you said, the game is somehow getting the wrong default settings for the controller, I have no idea how it happened, every time I've tried a complete reinstall I have certainly deleted any profile files, I just deleted the whole Egosoft folder that it creates in my documents.

So I am utterly, completely stumped.

How the hell can the games very own default file get shafted like this? Where does the game even store its default control settings? And if I can get my hands on it, could I even change it back?

Or, what if I installed a different copy of x3tc somehow? Maybe get it from steam or a different source? Would that have any chance of working?

[Alan Phipps]

As a test and sanity check, you could try another restart (either X3 game) and while it is still working and before any reloads, see what the relevant default profile keybindings are. Once you reload and it starts misbehaving, see what the same bindings are then. Once you can see what has changed (if it has), you can look to see what other profiles you may have that show the same bindings as a potential source of the 'new default'.

As a further sanity check, are you absolutely sure that you are not using a 3rd party gaming profile app even if without your express intention? These are typically something that might be bundled in your graphics driver suite or controller driver source and can be run by default when you update your driver suite.

All game code and files of the same latest version (apart from the exe itself) should be the same, regardless of source. They may vary in the sources' compression or encryption methods though.

Oh wait ... are you using Steam or any other cloud or local cache backup/quickload for these games? That may replace profiles that it thinks are missing or corrupt with ones saved from your modded or earlier days (and maybe even saves too).

After that, I'm baffled and stumped too!

[Assassin8edKING]

OK the idea of the gaming profile app sounds plausible, I think Windows has something crap like that included, any advice on where to check for that sort of thing?

As for testing when vanilla, the controls are glitches the instant the game starts, whether it's a new game os a continued save.

And yes I am indeed making sure there are no profile files anywhere on the hard drive that the game could possible access, ie the Egosoft folder that stores the saves and profiles, is being completely deleted before and while the game is running, the glitch happens either way, on both games now, tc and AP.

[Alan Phipps]

OK. I had understood it that your new game behaved at least until the first save and reload. I must have misunderstood, sorry.

Also did you confirm that you are not using backup or cached versions that could reload as soon as you delete things? There is one thing that you could check here although this is a long shot with Win10.

[Assassin8edKING]

Long shot maybe but that sounds very promising, I will try this later, thanks Alan I really appreciate your sticking with me to fix this