14 replies to this topic

[Deaths Charger]

how? does a amputee play the game, with 1 hand. my friend BIGEED, has only 1 usable hand thats his right hand only. soo pllease fight an or do a patch so those who are amputees can play your game? please let us the players kno what your doing to fix this problem??

[Enervation]

Although this is a slightly expensive option, get a mouse that has a number pad on the thumb side of the mouse. You can custom bind the keys to keyboard commands so you will be able to basically steer/do action stuff with your thumb and still be whipping your torso around with the mouse.
Also these mice are Epic +1 if your friend plays any other MMO games.

[Straylight]

What exactly do you expect PGI do to about this? We don't even have a colourblind mode.

That said... I'd imagine this is a question of control mapping more than anything else. Looking at my old Sidewinder, a joystick and a 3-set of pedals might work to at least get the essentials set up for one-handed operation, if you're willing to get creative with a hat switch.

The stick itself takes care of pitch, turn and twist.

Fire controls are trigger and buttons 2 and 3, 4 is target under reticule.

You can put vision on the hat switch: zoom (down), thermal (left), night (right), adv. zoom (up).

Map the right pedal to throttle up, middle pedal to throttle down, left pedal to jump.

Less common functions like battlegrid, scoreboard, ECM mode, heat override and so on might require a trip to the keyboard or buttons on the joystick's base, but I think it's doable, particularly if you get a joystick with more thumb switches than mine has.

Saitek makes an inexpensive stick with four thumb buttons plus a pinkie switch that can act as a shift key, potentially doubling the number of commands accessible from the stick (18 total... 2 trigger, 8 thumb, 8 hat).

Pedals may be harder to come by... Logitech makes the only 3-pedal set I can think of that isn't way too expensive high-end racing sim stuff, but if I were you I'd ask here and see what they say.

As an alternative to the pedals, there's also this thing. I know nothing about it, but it may be worth researching further if pedal boxes prove too expensive.


Also--just a suggestion--this may be of some use to you: http://www.spellcheck.net/

[The Basilisk]

There are lots of programmable gamecontrollers out in the market.
The best Option for your friend would be to buy some pedals and bind their controls to AWSD.
A control glove would be an other option. It takes time to master them but a friend of mine is lacking a left hand too and she uses one and is faster on the controls than me. She discribed it as like a second right hand. Eye controlls / eye cam would be an other ( expensive ) option.
Steer the Mech with the right hand and the eye controls will substitute your mouse. ( Look kill controls )
Either way HIDs are ample but seldomly supported in games. Do some keymapping and programming for yourself.

[Redshift2k5]

No game can ever cater to the exact needs of every less-able-bodied player. Different players may have hugely different needs and limitations.

What the game does do is support a large number of peripherals and lots of options for control customization.

If your friend can use a joystick, then there will probably be plenty of input options available to him with a joystick. There are mountains of joystick -related threads- if he has questions regarding specific model joysick or specific control he needs to change, check back with the details and someone will be able to help. Rudder pedals for turning (and a regular mouse for aim) also works.

[Clydewinder]

Mouse & Rudder pedals? You could control throttle with the toe brakes or with extra btns on mouse

[Buckminster]

The MMO style mice are nice - I have one that has six buttons on the side and it really helps a lot. The more controls at your fingertips, the better.

I use a joystick for my left hand for moving, and a couple weapon groups and vision modes. A mouse with enough buttons would let you move the extra weapon groups and vision modes off the stick and to the mouse. So what that'd leave you with is trying to find a way to control movement.

If your friend has a usable arm (just no hand) then you could probably rig up something that would allow basic (front to back, left to right) joystick use.

If not, pedals are another option. You could set them up as left and right, and bind the throttle keys to the mouse. I'm honestly not that familiar with pedals though, so you may have more options.

[LauLiao]

Yeah, sorry about his plight, but I don't see Playstation and Xbox making a lot of one handed controllers either.

[Throe]

If I could, I would tag Kjudoon of The Seraphim here, he had an injury to his right arm(he is right handed), and played with left hand only for several months. We call him our One-Armed-Bandit.

The way I heard him describe it was: You can move and steer, or you can aim and shoot, but you can't do both. Something tells me he had very simple weapon groupings.

Edit: Also, this: http://www.infogrip....mouse-plus.html
It's a mouse, for your mouth. It costs $2500, but I'm guessing it would bit the bill pretty well for a variety of uses for a one-armed person, or even a person with no arms. Which brings us to: http://octopup.org/c...er/foot-control Also an option for someone with only one arm.

Also: http://www.instructa...computer-mouse/

Also, you could always go check with the people who build sim-pits. They would probably have lots of ideas about ways to help out an amputee or double amputee. http://mwomercs.com/...um/243-simpits/

Edited by Throet, 19 March 2014 - 09:30 AM.

[Koniving]

I don't exactly go around advertising this, but I'm less-abled as well. Over the course of my life I've broken my left arm three times.

The first time the surgeon said it would be easier to amputate because both of the forearm bones had completely broken just below the elbow. I wasn't even four years old. How it happened was embarrassing, but let's just say gravity doesn't take a break if you let go to get your foot unstuck.

Sequential breaks have been lower. Also have a few scars from impalement but that's another story altogether.

The long story short is that while I do have both arms, I have a few issues with my left. Loss of some function and what could best be described as "Lag" where I want it to do something.. but there's a delay before it will actually perform.

These issues greatly impact my ability to play games and have required some ... tricks to overcome them. One of them was for the longest while I had learned to play with my feet (around the time of the second break). Before analog controllers this was really easy to do with a playstation 1 controller. Later on I used it to compete against myself in games like Battlestations. Before it stopped being about the ships.

Occulus Rift hasn't got good support yet. So that is out of the ball park.

There are certain flight sticks that feature an analog stick under your thumb. Mine unfortunately counts each direction as a different button and has taken some getting used to but it does work.

I've also seen someone in a similar condition (left arm only; paralyzed right arm) use his two fingers to control the sticks on a PS3 controller attached to the computer. He uses a foot pedal pad with 8 large buttons for the other functions. This dude plays Hawken with it and does better than I do.

Point being it will take some expense and some getting used to, but your friend is in a situation that can be overcome and allow you to play. Just keep it 2 weapon groups or fewer.

-----
Since we're on the topic and I always thought this was interesting.

I was able to hide this disability to get into the army before it was eventually discovered. During that time, I learned that when it came to rifles I shoot better left-handed than right. But handguns remain best in the right hand. However, I think this mostly has to do with the reflexes of the hand holding the handguard at the end of the rifle and not the hand holding the trigger.

Another oddity. Doctors were afraid the growth would be stunted. Instead, my left arm is a few inches longer yet my reach is the same for both arms. The extra length makes up for the loss in flexibility. The arm only grew the extra length from the elbow down. o.O;

Edited by Koniving, 19 March 2014 - 09:31 AM.

[Bront]

Foot pedals is probably the best option. Or a flight stick control scheme where all buttons/controls are easily reachable, and some might even be easily pressable with the other arm.

but honestly, it's on his end to figure out ways to play. We can make suggestions, but he's going to need a control scheme that's fairly unique to him, so we can only do so much.

PGI has little incentive to spend a ton of dev time to help simply because you're not talking a large market (amputees who play complex FPS games is probably not a big money market, or user base).

Edited by Bront, 19 March 2014 - 09:30 AM.

[AlmightyAeng]

He has a few options. He could get a specialized gaming mouse, like this, and bind forward/reverse to one of the 6 thumb keys.

http://www.razerzone.../razer-naga-hex

He can also involve gaming pedals, like these.

http://www.gamingmou...fragpedal/quad/

Use a little Google-Fu, and you'll find a variety of options for one-handed gamers. Mechwarrior, I salute him.

Edit: HA! Found it! PCGamer did an article in 2013 about disabled gamers. Give it a look...and the disabled gamer charity the article is about. Maybe your friend could contact them for assistance, too.

http://www.pcgamer.c.../specialeffect/

Edited by Ghost Badger, 19 March 2014 - 10:05 AM.

[Acierocolotl]

I have this thing I never use, a little gamer keypad, Belkin N53te. There's 14 keys, plus a mousewheel, plus a little thumbstick and an extra button, so you can easily manage a few groups, locks, movement, and a few other functions on top of that. It's quite customizeable. Use the stick to aim your torso, use the buttons to control your mech functions, throttle and movement. With some practice, I am positive you could drive a mech entirely onehanded.

It's intended for a left hand, the one you'd normally use WASD with. I bought it because my wife's a lefty and she's tired of using the keypad for what little gaming she does. I've got a second as a gift still in its box, unopened.

[Dramborleg]

Straylight, on 19 March 2014 - 01:45 AM, said:

Also--just a suggestion--this may be of some use to you: http://www.spellcheck.net/

"MWO is the thinking man's smug ****'s shooter" -- IGN

In general good suggestions though.

[Andilar]

For some reason I can't paste in the hyperlink, but see the topic I started today (9/6/2014) on a one-handed Wii Nunchuck + Arduino Micro set-up.