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I am in no way meaning to say this idea should be rushed. I do not believe that this feature can be rushed. I have patience. That said, I do expect this to be looked into soon, so that the day it is released isn't further away.
Now, I'm not saying it's an easy task, but it would certainly benefit anyone that is having trouble getting a joystick to work properly.
Anyone who has played War Thunder (a pre-WWII through to Korean War flight sim) with a FLIGHT stick has most likely gone through the setup wizard, which makes seting up controls infinitely easier. If you, the development team, have not played it, then it would be beneficial for you to either research or play it and thoroughly look through everything the control settings has to offer.
For example, your wizard might say "Choose an axis for torso twist left," and the user could move his/her JOYstick to the left. The wizard would then recognize how much of the left axis will be used for torso twisting left. Another prompt might be "Choose a button to fire selected weapon group," and the user would press any desired button, such as the trigger.
After the entire joystick is set up, other features for control should be implemented. The biggest thing is adjusting deadzone, at least for me. You could scroll down on the control menu and select the axis you set up for torso pitch (and all the other movement functions) and tweak the deadzone from high to low, or change the multiplier, nonlinearity, and axis inversion. You could allow the user to set Relative Controls or not.
Another HUGE improvement could be the implementation of one button controlling multiple things, and multiple buttons controlling one thing. For example, if the user wants to press both the trigger and some other button at the SAME time to perform a function, the "Bind Key" could be set to only accept a value when all keys pressed have been released. Therefore, by pressing the trigger and a button, and then releasing them, those two keys could be bound to one control, such as firing an alpha strike.
But let's say, for whatever awful reason, that a user might want to set both the torso twist and leg twist to the same axis. After binding joystick -x to torso left and +x to torso right, you could attempt to put joystick -x to legs left and +x to legs right. For each, a prompt might come up saying "This key" (or "this axis") "is already bound to torso _____." There would then be the option to cancel (cancels the input), add (which adds the joystick axis to the legs, thereby having it on both), or to replace (which adds the joystick axis to the legs and then deletes the input from the torso twist left). The same should be done for buttons, although I cannot think right now for what purpose a person might need more than one function for a button for. Perhaps an alpha strike and override shutdown at the same time?
Now, that covers most of the things that would benefit the majority of joystick users.
There are, however, some things that would benefit a group of individuals who might not want to drop $350 into a good stick. Perhaps some of us are both running Windows 7 (64-bit), and have an adaptor for a certain range of controllers using 15-pins.
Allow me to elaborate. I (and I'm sure many others) have a Jane's Combat Stick (CH) and it has no support from microsoft, since the computer is forced to recognize it as the adapter, rather than the actual stick. It's not a huge issue, but the real problem is that there are these "button codes" that limit the functionality of the thing to just 4 buttons. Any other than these 4 control some combination of these 4. To be perfectly clear:
Right Hand
Trigger: 1
Thumb Red (located on left of stick): 2
Thumb Gray (located on top): 3
Pinky: 4
Thumb Red (Located on top): both 1 and 4
Index Finger Red (located on right): 1 and 3
Hat: recognized in 4 directions
Axis X: recognized in both directions
Axis Y: recognized in both directions
Slider: recognized in both directions
Z-Axis (Doesn't have one, so I don't know why it comes up)
And now, the worst one of them all... I don't know what it's called, so I will refer to it as the "button hat." If anyone has a Jane's Combat Stick, it's the left "hat", not the right.
Button Hat Up: 2, 3, and 4
Button Hat Down: 2 and 3
Button Hat Right: 2 and 4
Button Hat Left: 3 and 4
Now, I know what you're thinking: "You could just use the settings as you described; set multiple buttons to one function." And you'd be right; I'm sure there's a way I could make it work. However, let's try this with
Trigger: Alpha Strike
Thumb Gray: Toggle Weapon Cover
Index Finger on Red: Chain Fire
Now, Pressing Chain Fire will close my Cover (or open it), attempt to alpha strike, AND probably won't Chain Fire. How much worse it must be then if I use Button Hat Up (It has three buttons assigned to it)! So here is what I am suggesting:
Either have the game recognize these inputs and differentiate them as different buttons (would basically be a driver or program that basically recognizes a joystick, and would therefore require knowledge of EVERY joystick EVER made... Which sounds impractical).
OR you could simply have the game recognize an input of two buttons as NOT a combination of both of those buttons, but rather a button alone. That is to say, pressing backspace and backslash at the same time will not perform backspace, will not perform backslash, but perform the function set to them both as an individual.
Now, I yet again know what you're thinking: "Wouldn't that conflict with a person who WANTS the button combination to perform both of the functions simultaneously?" No, it wouldn't. The reason being, you can set some button combination to both of them at the same time, and then have individual buttons for each as well.
So in this case, let's say Alpha Strike is Backslash and Backspace + Backslash. Override shutdown is Backspace and Backspace + Backslash. Now, they can perform Both at the same time, and individually (actually, they could do this even without setting both to Backspace + Backslash (it's entirely unnecessary, but this is to show what I mean).
You could also replace Backspace + Backslash with O, and then pressing O would perform both, Backspace would Override shutdown, Backslash would Alpha Strike, and O would do both.
If a person wanted them to NOT perform at the same time but rather something else, then that user could make Backspace + Backslash be removed from those two functions and placed on some other function.
This opens up a whole new dimension of possibilities, such as ctrl+____ or shift+____; a user could use a keyboard and a joystick simultaneously (though a speedpad would make more sense) and so on and so forth.
On the Joystick, I could simply NOT assign Index Finger on Red, and it would simply perform the actions of both Trigger and Thumb on Gray. If I wanted it to NOT do EITHER, then I could set it have it recognized as bound to something else.
And let this not be limited to a combination of 2 buttons; may it be allowed up to... say 5. This could allow me to press Button Hat Up and Index Finger on Red at the same time if I wanted them to be one function (which would technically be a function of 5 buttons). Not that I would need that, but I don't know what situation might arise. If it can only be limited to 2 or 3, then that's fine too, I suppose.
It does sound slightly complicated, but I assure you that it is worth implementing.
Finally, the topic I am NOT aware of. Anything beyond this point, I have not done adequate research enough to know if the game already supports what I am about to suggest, so I apologize.
Let us assume that, for the sake of suggestion, the game does not itself currently support multiple input devices. Let us assume that the game will RECOGNIZE a left joystick as having the same buttons as a right joystick, despite being two completely different models. This results in pressing a button on either one as performing some function "X" that can be performed by the some other button press on the other controller. If a person wants to use multiple joysticks, the game should be able to see each as having their own separate axes and buttons. We shouldn't have to go through third party programs or write up bits of code to make it work (though we should obviously be able to if we so desire, UNLESS it does not coincide with the EULA).
Many people stick to the precise realism. They use Pedals + HOTAS. Assuming that the game cannot already recognize these as separate input devices, I would think they at least should be. If there's a picture I'm not seeing, I apologize. If it is actually in fact "impossible" to have the game recognize multiple devices without a third party, then I am sorry. But I have faith that it can be done.
Thank you for considering my feature; the effort of reading my very long block is greatly appreciated.
Edited by SaintApoc, 12 October 2013 - 11:49 AM.
