16 replies to this topic

[Turbo Corvair]

Some of you might remember my MechWarrior sim cockpit projects, one of which was even discussed on NG NG with the MWO devs. I am proof that PGI has chased off the most hardcore MechWarrior fans by not caring enough to resolve glaring joystick issues.



Please fix the joystick dead zone so I can return to playing MWO.


I've decided once again to try to return to MWO but it seems the joystick dead zone issue still has not been fixed and the game is unplayable on a stick.

Back in open Beta and for some time afterward I was able to play quite effectively on a joystick setup by fixing the dead zone problem with a user.cfg edit. This no longer works and it seems there is no known workaround any more.

The problem is not my joystick or settings, I promise you. If you want to argue about this I can provide a wall of text but I don't think that is necessary. This is a known issue, in fact I know for certain that the developers are aware of it.

Turbo Corvair

Edited by Turbo Corvair, 09 January 2015 - 10:03 AM.

[InspectorG]

Isnt there some joystick mapping software out there?

I want to say its called 'joymapper' or something like that.

I used it for the old Neverwinter Nights because: lazy.

[HARDKOR]

Stick is still broken. I tried my ass off for three months and eventually moved to mouse and throttle, but it's reduced my immersion to the point where I have installed another game and haven't played in days, and probably won't be back till I beat that game.

Also, I'm kind of a whale and I like to spend money, so maybe it might be worth the three hours it would take someone to fix this. Also also, te otherpeoplewho want o use joysticks are also the sort to spend money,as they buy cockpits and buy expensive gear.

[Savage Sweets]

While I'm not trivializing MWO joystick users. . .

I never expected to hear/read this outside of the fighting game community. In fact, I've never heard the "unplayable without joystick" complaint outside the FGC.

Though, at least no one's claimed that joystick is invariably better than any other kind of control.

[Kaeb Odellas]

Savage Sweets, on 09 January 2015 - 07:30 PM, said:

While I'm not trivializing MWO joystick users. . .

I never expected to hear/read this outside of the fighting game community. In fact, I've never heard the "unplayable without joystick" complaint outside the FGC.

Though, at least no one's claimed that joystick is invariably better than any other kind of control.

You got it backwards. He's not saying the game is unplayable without joystick. He's saying the game is impossible to play with one.

[Savage Sweets]

Kaeb Odellas, on 09 January 2015 - 08:52 PM, said:

You got it backwards. He's not saying the game is unplayable without joystick. He's saying the game is impossible to play with one.

Yeah, I realized that after posting it. >_>;

[Xetelian]

Make it work! Joystick madness up in here.

[Hammerhai]

Can I add my voice here? If you go into my history: Well I am an ardent JS player but got tired of the snark from Company members, and the terribad disadvantages of a JS.

It just does not seem right to wiggle a mouse on the startup sequence now does it?

Also also also: That thar lack of documentation!!! You guys have yet to give us the algorithms for joystick gain and joystick sensitivity or at least explain them!

It is so bad I do not even remember how to enable "absolute"/look spring functionality any more, or what the min dead zone is, and so on.

I am willing to tinker, but not blindly.

And welcome back Turbo. Still remember the times you were in the top 20 of (Lights, I think?) in some of the old events. With a JS, gentlemen!!!.

That needs to be done. So if he says no go, he know what he talkin baht dogg.

[Turbo Corvair]

Hammerhai, on 10 January 2015 - 04:52 AM, said:

And welcome back Turbo. Still remember the times you were in the top 20 of (Lights, I think?) in some of the old events. With a JS, gentlemen!!!.

That needs to be done. So if he says no go, he know what he talkin baht dogg.

Why thank you =). Mediums were what I was top twenty in during the very first tournament weekend (and yes, using a stick).

No third party software can fix the problem I'm describing, no matter what you do you can't make up for a hardwired deadzone in the game. The only possibility is getting mouse emulation to work properly which I'm going to look further into. My friends have dragged me back here and I have to admit the Community Warfare setup is cool but I'm incredibly bitter about PGI having made their poor joystick support become unusable joystick support. They killed the workaround probably over a year ago without fixing the problem. The dead zone slider got me excited until I discovered that setting it to zero it still was nowhere remotely close to zero.

[Turbo Corvair]

Well ladies and gentlemen, I'm happy to announce that I'm now playing with my joystick! This was accomplished via Thrustmaster TARGET mouse emulation. It took some serious adjustments but now it's working as well as it ever did! With a little practice I will stop being terrible!

Also of note, using the same feature I was able to get zero order control out of the stick but my setup has too much spring tension for me to use it. On the down side I think to make the zero order control work optimally would require a different TARGET profile for each mech due to the differences in max pitch and torso twist.

Star Citizen is my one true love currently but I intend to play a little MWO a couple times a week from now on. It's great to be able to enjoy playing MWO again, no joystick meant no interest in playing for me.

Turbo Corvair, a.k.a. Trip Rodriguez (unique ID: Trip) over on Star Citizen.

[Bellum Dominum]

glad to hear you got it working Turbo. I tried a joystick and decided it would take two for ME to be able to even play like a low average player due to leg turn/torso twist. just couldn't get that to work anywhere near an acceptable level for me.

hats off to you guys who can do it

[Void2258]

Kinda a travesty that a Mechwarrior game would lack proper joystick support.

[Dino Might]

Twin joystick, or joystick and throttle sounds like a lot of fun. If I find a good cheap setup, I'm willing to try it out, despite the difficulty in learning a new (and arguably less precise) control scheme. Sometimes, you just gotta do it for the cool factor. So how do you set up the controls. Right joystick does torso twist and a thumb stick on top controls the arms? Which stick do you use?

[MoonUnitBeta]

My friend First Day Reviews does dual joystick and rudders. He is pretty good at it.
He uses a program called Joy to key.
Maybe check it out. He likes it anyway.

Edited by MoonUnitBeta, 11 January 2015 - 08:54 PM.

[Hammerhai]

Turbo, have the Warthog profile by Crimson, as given to me by Loc Nar.
You will actually find that a profile can fit many mechs without too much trouble, I think. At first made a profile for the Orion and the Jenner, for instance, but then found it is fairly ok with one set of tweaks.

What Crimson did was build in a small deadzone where the stick fires the centering command with a keystroke, as long as both axes are neutral. That minimises drifting issues. Pure Pure mouse emulation however is a different kind of beast altogether

[allmhuran]

I know a thing or two about joysticks. I am a flight simmier, I have a TM warthog and pedals. I have an obutto revolution.

I got fed up with trying to make the stick work using the tools in the MWO GUI and notes about user.cfg edits I found from year old forum posts, so I made a polite post in the feedback forum, and downloaded TARGET (which I've never needed for any other game) to set a custom curve... flat near the middle, escalating to 100% on the edges. A standard parabolic/hyperbolic curve.

Then I jumped into the testing grounds to see how it would be. Well, I can move my stick about 20% of the way through its range of motion without any response from the game whatsoever. This is with deadzones set to zero in both TARGET and MWO. Then at 21% it jumps to ludicrous speed.

It's also perfectly clear from combining a TARGET profile with low sensitivy settings in the MWO GUI that the game has very discrete steps in its response. You don't smoothly go from slow movement to fast movement. You go from zero movement to speed 1 to speed 2 to speed 3 etc. At high sensitivity there's just two steps - zero and full speed.

The timberwolf I made in Kerbal Space Program has better handling ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HD6dlLTLsA )

Edit (several hours later):

After a lot (a LOT) of fiddling I got decent performance from the joystick. I tried a lot of things in a lot of combinations, here was my last few steps:
1) Setup config in the MWO gui to something reasonable. I set mine to no deadzone and about 1/3rd of a bar of sensitivity.
2) Close MWO.
3) Clean install of target and reboot, make a new profile. Set no deadzones and a curve of 4.
4) In user.cfg:
cl_joystick_gain = 3
cl_joystick_sensitivity = 4
cl_joystick_throttle_range = 0
cl_joystick_invert_throttle = 0
cl_joystick_invert_pitch = 0
cl_joystick_invert_yaw = 0
cl_joystick_invert_turn = 0
I_joystick_deadzone = 0.001
I_joystick_buffered = 0

(For some reason a deadzone value of zero didn't seem to work properly).

I now have pretty good fine control near the deadzone, and quite smooth acceleration to the edges. I don't think I have full torso speed, (maybe 80%) but I don't want to risk changing anything for fear that it all breaks again!

Edited by allmhuran, 23 April 2015 - 01:59 AM.

[Strum Wealh]

Will this TARGET software work for any joystick, or just Thrustmaster sticks, or even just certain TM sticks?

I have an old (10+ years) Thrustmaster HOTAS that has finally given up the ghost, and am planning to upgrade to a CH setup (Fighterstick & Pro Throttle); I take I'll need TARGET (or CH's equivalent software, assuming there is such a thing) and a corresponding device profile?