Suggestion for Joystick control

Suggestions
1

I’ve been playing with xml file configuration for joystick control in the 0.1.4.0 version. I have a logitech joystick with a handle twist axis along with the usual x and y joystick axes.

I’d like to bind the x and y to pitch and roll, and the handle twist with yaw, but this doesn’t give me as much control as I’d like, since all it does is move the ship’s nose and targeting reticle around, without affecting the ship’s trajectory much. I have to manually fire thrusters in conjuction with joystick movement a lot to get coherent movement.

I’d like to have the joystick pitch and yaw axes simultaneously firing the appropriate up, down, left or right thrusters, to help keep the nose and the the ship’s trajectory a little more in natural sync with each other, I think it would improve the sense of control overall.

It would be useful to have an override toggle button also to sever this link when desired, so you could move the nose around independently of trajectory when you wanted to

anyway, I haven’t been able to think of a way to do this just with the xml files so far, so I thought I’d post it here as a suggestion, if it seems like something that would be useful

thanks

1 Like
2

You mean you want to simultaneously translate? How can the game know how much it should translate? Just 1-to-1 axis?
If I understand it correctly, it sounds like quite the strange request. Also could you elaborate what you mean with “natural sync”?

Flight assist should automatically fire translational thrusters to align your vector with the direction you are looking in.

3

Yeah, unfortunately I can’t say I understand the problem or request :frowning:

4

Do you mean Newtonian Drift vs. an “On Rails” feel to the flight?

5

What you are describe sounds like:

  • well newtonian flight model :slight_smile:
  • or perhaps you accindetally disabled auto-assist ? (spacebar)
  • or perhaps you just fly too fast. If you build up too much speed, ship has to work to change that. Try moving at speeds around 250m/s it should be almost instantaneous. 250m/s is fairly high speed.
    yaeh it might be a bit confusing, but dont take that bar on the right as a throttle bar.
    Its speed setting. If you come from games like Freespace yeah it might feel bit weird… :wink:
6

I think what he wants is both an analogue strafe control feature and a way of binding a joytick’s turn axis to that strafe thing a the same time. Not the best way of doing it but would be possible if analogue strafe existed.

6dof is always difficult for joysticks, my reccomendation is using a throttle or anything with a 4 directional control for up/down/left/right in addition to the standard forward/reverse throttle. Or, use two joysticks, one bound to your ships oritnetation, one bound to strafing.

7

It does. He can allready do that by binding, for instance, the X axis and the pitch axis to the same physical axis.

Oh wait no. An error is thrown if one axis is used multiple times. Maybe if you add a modifier like Left Cntrl it would take it.

8

that sounds like what I tried, and yes it won’t do it, gives an error. can’t map an axis to more than one thing

9

well let me put it this way then

I want to have a single joystick axis, say “Joystick0Axis0,” mapped both to the “ShipX” Input Event, and at the same time, also mapped to the “ShipYaw” Input Event

The idea being that, when the ship is yawed, it will at the same time translate in the same direction.

and I’d like to do the analogous thing with “ShipY” and “ShipPitch”

Is that clear enough?

I can’t do it as it stands, because trying to map a single axis to both events causes an error. But I think it would be helpful if it could be made possible

10

Allright, that’d be easy but… I just don’t see how that’ll work practically. Just spawning in the hangar requires you to turn your ship, then you’re going to bounce and hit the walls in the hangar like crazy. Forget about landing on planets too. Basically, each time you’ll want to turn, you’ll need enough space around you…

2 Likes
11

I’m all for cuttin’ some sick space donuts but Flavien has a point…it doesn’t make any sense. It is precisely the reason you would have strafe mapped to a separate analogue stick.

12

I would understand, if you would like to add bit of Roll (5-10%) into the yaw.

As it was in some space shooters (X-Wing + TIE fighter series , Freespace 1 and 2, Starlancer (there it was rather strong) It felt somewhat good :slightly_smiling:

But this way…hmmm
Are you sure you said it right ?

13

which is why I’d want a toggle to turn the feature off and on. and yes it wouldn’t be useful if the amount of horizontal translation applied along with yaw was too small or too great, or the vertical translation with pitch.

airplanes do this normally with their wings and other control surfaces. I think it would be natural to provide a similar control response in a vacuum flying craft, using thrusters instead of air resistance on wings and tail fins and so on. the amount of translation varies with speed and and so on of course

being able to turn this off and on at will would allow for manuvers not allowed by airplanes, and would increase the options for control I think.

anyway, just thought I’d mention it