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Mw5 Joystick Workarounds Thread


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#121 Peace2U

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Posted 12 July 2020 - 11:54 AM

Almost 14,700 views on this thread now.
How may interested viewers will it take for PGI to realize this is something that requires a little TLC?

I like the sound of the autogen concept, but if the developers would just translate direct input (like many other game platforms), this issue would go away.

Really sad that articles like this even exist.
https://www.fanbyte....eSpeed=noscript

Imagine you were interested in purchasing this software and ran across it?
Personally, I would think, 'I wonder if my joystick will work or not??' then I would think 'I'll just wait till they iron out this wrinkle before buying this game and save myself the trouble'.
Sadly, I fell prey to my desire to play the stand alone version of mech combat again, and assumed (we all know what that means) since my stick worked flawlessly with MWO it would work the same with MW5.

Therefore the adage about 'ASSUME' must be true.
And here we are - - - -

At least I had the good fortune of conversing with some great people, and learned a few things along the way.
Peace

#122 LordNothing

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Posted 12 July 2020 - 04:09 PM

i mostly blame ms for not keeping di up to date. its gone 20 years without an update, and ms wants it dead. im not even sure windows 10 supports it anymore.

im hoping pgi sees the size of this thread and will figure out autogen as part of the dlc patch (which will include updates for the base game without purchasing the dlc).

Edited by LordNothing, 12 July 2020 - 04:12 PM.


#123 Mykos

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Posted 20 July 2020 - 05:08 AM

I've given up on MW5, and I've not even really played it. As the owner of a TM Warthog stick and throttle, as well as TFRP pedals,I've so far spent about 5 hours trying to get them to work properly in MW5. I've tried with and without vJoy and UCR, and I can get close, but not close enough. Config files aside, I can't even remap any keys, let alone HOTAS buttons, as the in-game controls are uneditable for me (click to change and it enters a "blank" instantaneously).

The mind boggles, that the developer would release a product so obviously suited for HOTAS and pedals with little to no support for such devices. Then they later implement half the job in a way that needs you to spend time scouring the 'net for help, studying config files and using 3rd party tools?

I'm just glad I got the game with a good discount and using a free voucher for further money off, rather than paying full price.

I do hope they sort it out in a (not-too-distant) patch, but for now, I can't waste more time on it, and I hate saying that, because I loved some of its predecessors in the Mercenaries line.

#124 JeepStuff

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Posted 26 July 2020 - 02:28 AM

Hey folks, this is my first post in a really, REALLY long time. I took a couple years off to cool my frustration with the game, and now I'm WAY out of the loop on MWO and totally abysmally ignorant in MW5. So if I ask something that has been answered a hundred times, please be patient with me. I did a bunch of searches before posting here, and no joy.

I'm about this close ---><--- to giving up in frustration again and taking another couple years off, purely because of how difficult it was to get the throttle working in MW5 so that I can play with the same controls I use in MWO. Joystick support was sooooo frustrating when MWO was new, and now it's frustrating again with MW5. Sigh. But now I'm just preaching to the choir because I think this thread is full of posts from folks who feel the same way.

Anyway, for reference, I use a CH Pro Throttle in my left hand and mouse in my right.

Now, thanks to the community's documentation (and not PGI's - sigh), I have the axis controls and many of the buttons working the same in both games. In MW5, I bound many of the buttons to keyboard keys, and for the most part it works. However, some key bindings are giving me trouble and I'm hoping you can help.

One more caveat: I really REALLY don't want to have to load different configs into the throttle every time I switch games. I hate doing that. So in order to just "plug and play" both games, I did the keyboard bindings in the HOTASMappings.Remap file instead of using the CH Control Manager. In other words, I want the keyboard bindings to be wholly contained in the MW5 file, and I do NOT want to have to load a new config into the actual throttle firmware (using Control Manager) every time I change games. I want the throttle to stay the same, and the MW5 remap file to deal with the inconsistencies between MWO and MW5.

Thanks to the documentation, I learned that you can bind keyboard keys to the buttons in the HOTASMappings.Remap file by just adding a '+' sign at the end of a line and then including the key you want to bind that button to. So for example, night vision is bound to button 9 by adding a +n to the end of the line like this:

BUTTON: InButton=GenericUSBController_Button9, OutButtons=Throttle_DPad2_Right+n

That works great for easy keys. But for keys which don't have a simple character, I'm not sure how to bind them. For example, jump jets use the space bar and unit commands use the F keys. How do I include those at the end of the line in the remap file? For example, if I want to add "space bar" to the end of the line, is there an escape character I need to include before the space, or put the space in quotes, or use the ASCII code for the space, or something like that? Has anyone done this? I randomly tried a few things but nothing worked, and I don't want to have to guess the correct syntax. I'll quit and take another couple years off before it comes to that.

Any help you could give would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

#125 JeepStuff

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Posted 27 July 2020 - 06:12 PM

Just following up on my own post, it turns out I was being stupid. I was trying to figure out the syntax for "space bar" or the F keys to put into the HOTASMappings.Remap file. But that's dumb. It's easy enough to just re-assign a new key in the keyboard GUI. So instead of using space for the jump jets, you can also map the "j" key to jump jets (in addition to space if you want), and you can do this in game. Then once you do that, you can add a "+j" to the end of the line for whatever button you want in the HOTASMappings.Remap file, like this:

BUTTON: InButton=GenericUSBController_Button9, OutButtons=Throttle_DPad2_Right+j

So no need to figure out the syntax for adding "+<space>" at the end of the line.

Anyway, I'm not sure if anyone else will find this useful. But it solved my immediate issues. Now I can use the same joystick settings for MWO and MW5 without reprogramming the key bindings in the joystick.

#126 Peace2U

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Posted 05 August 2020 - 07:40 PM

Great effort, JS.
I'm sure some users will benefit from your work.
Your solution should work great for button commands.
How about the axis configurations?
That is where most of the problems lie for many users.
I have to utilize joystick gremlin in conjunction with joy2key to get minimal use of my MS Force Feedback Pro.
It is glitch'y but at least I can get some play time in.
Lets keep digging kids because it doesn't look like the developers are going to fix this, even though there are very close to 16,000 views on this topic.
Peace

#127 Hedy Metal

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Posted 08 August 2020 - 03:36 PM

Being a person that lives in the same city as PGI and someone that's done consulting gigs at some of the local gaming studios; as ridiculous as it may seem, I feel a sense of embarrassment that a local studio could screw up so badly.

I've attended 2 of the last 4 Mechcons held here (I attend for the Battletech miniatures play) and based on what I've seen I've been struck by just how much of a Mouse+Keyboard crowd it is. Watching the MWO tournament, I seem to recall that all PCs were only equipped with mice and KB and that was the obvious weapon of choice. I can't even envision those players bothering with TrackIR at their home evirons, because they seemed so comfortable with the setup they were given. I'm thinking PGI probably chose those players as their target audience when developing MW5

Maybe if PGI reached out to more of the old MW 3 & 4 crowd, or fans of space simulation games, HOTAS support wouldn't have been as poorly implemented and currently neglected. I can't totally blame them though - the videogame biz is highly competitive and MWO has really been a license for them to print money. After all, you have to do what puts the bread and butter on the table, so why bother putting development $s into a feature that most of their fan base couldn't give a ratz a$$ about.

Edited by Hedy Metal, 08 August 2020 - 03:46 PM.


#128 Peace2U

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Posted 16 August 2020 - 05:35 PM

I understand and respect your perspective, HM, but must disagree with your conclusion that most players utilize only KB/Mouse for controls/movement/weapons/sensors/targeting - - - and so on.
The game is far too complex, to rely on WASD movement.
As far back as MW1, the game favored the use of joystick.
There are over 16,500 views of this topic, which I believe proves the high interest in Joystick functionality (Or Lack Of).
The developers either ignored the issue, or simply could not get Unreal engine to work joysticks properly (which does not make complete sense in itself since there are many Unreal games that utilize joystick input correctly???)
Total Head Scratchier.

I can assume that, by now the initial interest in the game has brought the Dev's some income.
They can either belly up to the table and apply the necessary resources to correct an issue that potentially 16,000 plus users want to see done, or quit working on improvements to the platform, and invest their resources on other projects and let this terrific label slowly spin down to insignificance.
Peace

#129 Nesutizale

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Posted 17 August 2020 - 12:16 AM

I think one of the problems with Joystick support comes from Unreal, to my experiance, it has never been very good with them.
As far as I can remember all the unreal games caused problems or didn't worked properly when I had my joystick plugged in.
So MW5 even rudemently working with them is an archivement for me.

Will I even use one for MW5? No. I have become so used to playing with MK for MWO that I am far better with that combination then the Joystick. Still I follow the topic because I want to see if someone ever solves the mystery why unreal hates joysticks.

#130 General Solo

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Posted 20 August 2020 - 04:23 AM

Mang I just gotta say (This is feedback)

With the complications of setting up peripherals and the lackluster* nature of the game, I didn't even bother setting up my HOTAS and just keyboard and moused it.

Despite having a beautifull CH Stick, Throttle and rudder pedals with track IR head tracking.

*Games half finished to the point that I only finished the final mission today likes months and months after release due to lack of motovation, as it was samey and grindy. Mods helped with this some what and allowed to complete the campain.

Last mission map was good, needed more custom epic maps like it.

Plus MWO cockpits are much better and immersive compared to MW5, they seem like a bit of a downgrade.
Feedback.

#131 LordNothing

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Posted 20 August 2020 - 08:19 AM

View PostNesutizale, on 17 August 2020 - 12:16 AM, said:

I think one of the problems with Joystick support comes from Unreal, to my experiance, it has never been very good with them.
As far as I can remember all the unreal games caused problems or didn't worked properly when I had my joystick plugged in.
So MW5 even rudemently working with them is an archivement for me.

Will I even use one for MW5? No. I have become so used to playing with MK for MWO that I am far better with that combination then the Joystick. Still I follow the topic because I want to see if someone ever solves the mystery why unreal hates joysticks.


i still blame ms, if direct input was not deprecated and kept up to date, unreal engine would probably support it.

Edited by LordNothing, 20 August 2020 - 08:20 AM.


#132 Nesutizale

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Posted 21 August 2020 - 01:35 AM

Maybe. More likely the reason is that unreal is mostly used with games that support MK and Gamepads. After the age of Joystick games there wasn't realy a reason to keep the support active.

#133 General Solo

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Posted 21 August 2020 - 05:55 PM

Yet such peripherals keep being sold.

Yeah Reminder Microsoft maker of the most common OS

MS neglecting/abandoning the device API which makes such peripherals work with all apps from all vendors easily
forces such support to be built in the app

Which is fine if your MS with a huge library of drivers, Good for their own Flight Simulator Series
Not so good for other app vendors needing such joystick. throttle, rubber, tracking device support.

Anti competitive move by MS imo

Edited by OZHomerOZ, 21 August 2020 - 05:56 PM.


#134 Nesutizale

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Posted 21 August 2020 - 11:28 PM

Yes they are sold but the prime time of those devices is over. I remember when everyone I know had one and there where tons to choose from. Today I think we are down to two or three qualty vendors and I am the only guy left that even has one.
Joysticks today are more for the simulator entusiasts then the common folk.

As for MS...well since they had the Xbox that thing has become their primary focus for gameing, even if they say otherwise every now and then.
With the Xbox gamepad also working for PC that became their main focus of input device for games. Getting everyone to use the same input device makes it easier to get people to switch between both systems and sell stuff.

Edited by Nesutizale, 21 August 2020 - 11:37 PM.


#135 General Solo

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Posted 22 August 2020 - 02:53 AM

Prime Time over?
Prime times just begun as flighty games have been having a resurgence of late Elite, AeroFly, STar Citizen,NASCAR, and soon MS 2020
Dat why you got 800 AUS dololor Warthog Joystick/Throttle

I disagree and think hardy over
dat why MS abandoning richer API with more axis and buttons and better app support is a greedy and crap move.

Edited by OZHomerOZ, 22 August 2020 - 02:53 AM.


#136 LordNothing

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Posted 27 May 2021 - 05:47 PM

*bump*

new players will need this.

i also advise reading the thread backwards, as a lot of the stuff at the top is out of date and goes back to closed beta.

#137 Lightfoot

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Posted 28 May 2021 - 08:03 AM

View PostNesutizale, on 21 August 2020 - 01:35 AM, said:

Maybe. More likely the reason is that unreal is mostly used with games that support MK and Gamepads. After the age of Joystick games there wasn't realy a reason to keep the support active.


I think Joystick and Wheels, Pedals, similar peripherals are in a renaissance. Suddenly these PC games are able to create full worlds and machines like mechs and starships and the peripherals are some of the best ever for accuracy, though the gamepad is kind of limited. Certainly demand for things like joysticks and HOTAS has exploded and the producers can't keep up with said demand. Unreal Engine better get with the times. It was bound to happen.

#138 CFC Conky

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Posted 31 May 2021 - 10:09 PM

Hello all,

Where can I find the @#$%^& hotas mapping file I need to modify to get my stuff working? I've read the hotas remappping document from the mW5 website but the file isn't anywhere to be found, i.e. no 'C:\Users\user\appdata...'

I have the Steam version running in Windows10 Pro.

Thanks,
CFC Conky

Edited by CFC Conky, 31 May 2021 - 10:15 PM.


#139 LordNothing

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Posted 31 May 2021 - 10:45 PM

hotas.remap is supposed to go in:
c:\Users\username\AppData\Local\MW5Mercs\Saved\SavedHOTAS\

i dont think the game comes with this file, its something you have to add. there is documentation here and you can get templates for various sticks here.

Edited by LordNothing, 31 May 2021 - 10:49 PM.


#140 CFC Conky

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Posted 31 May 2021 - 10:48 PM

View PostLordNothing, on 31 May 2021 - 10:45 PM, said:

hotas.remap is supposed to go in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\MW5Mercs\Saved\SavedHOTAS


Hi LordNothing,

I know that, but that stuff does not exist in my C:\Users folder...

Thanks,
CFC Conky

Edited by CFC Conky, 31 May 2021 - 10:49 PM.






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