Completed a few matches with programmable joystick

[Linuxizer]

Long-time lurker (or shadowy Jedi) and first-time poster here (just subscribed for the 12x XP bonus)

 

There's been some threads about joystick support in GSF and I'm going to force jump in. I have a CH Fighterstick USB, which can be programmed to send mouse commands to the operating system in two ways.

 

The fist way is to command mouse speed in the x and y axes based on the stick's x-axis and y-axis angles. The further I bend the stick to the left, the faster the mouse cursor on screen moves left. When I center the stick, the mouse cursor stops moving, but does not return to the center of the screen. This setup is readily available in the CH Control Manager GUI. Unfortunately, I found it unsuitable for GSF. It is unintuitive and too hard to fly straight again after any turning and/or pitching.

 

The second way is to command mouse position based on the stick's x-axis and y-axis angles. This required writing a script, and gave much better results. When I center the stick, the mouse cursor returns to the middle of the screen and the starfighter flies straight.

 

I flew the Flashfire for a couple of matches, but we were always up to our necks in bad guys like Xiao and Toddy. I got 1 kill and about 30 deaths. Okaaaaayyyy, so I was flying well enough that the Imperials just had to shoot me down. I decided to ditch the light armor for something sturdier. Not having any gunships or bombers in my hangar, I chose the Star Guard. Against less-bad bad guys, I managed 5 kills, 11 assists, 4 deaths, 36893 damage, 41%, 166 objectives and 14 medals. So I'm not about to break a record, but I at least contributed to our 1000:881 win.

 

In conclusion, joystick can work in GSF with no change to the game.

[Verain]

While I'm glad you got it to work with a joystick, this isn't really what we are talking about.

 

What you've done is taken the joystick and rigged it such that it guides the reticule. That means, you made the joystick into a mouse. In general, a mouse is the best mouse. I believe that your controls will be worse than they would be with the mouse.

 

When you map a mouse onto a joystick, you end up having to go a few ways with it. The most common current way is to make the deflection of the joystick map to speed of mouse. This works ok, but you can never move the cursor as fast as you could with the mouse, and in general the joystick has to guess at your movements, making your control a lot less precise. The older way is to map positions- upper left would correspond with the mouse in the upper left, for instance. This is amazing for being able to be fast, but entirely breaks your ability to aim precisely, because in this mode holding the joystick at, say, 10 degrees down becomes very difficult.

 

 

 

When people say "joystick control", they mean that the joystick controls the ship, not a reticule. The whole POINT of the reticule is to turn the much weaker mouse based input into a virtual joystick, after all.

 

Holding the joystick slightly down, for instance, should result in a narrow nose up. This would be the same effect you get from holding the reticule slightly outside of the control zone on the mouse- when you do that, it's a virtual joystick.

[ALaggyGrunt]

I wouldn't be too sure about that. I've run across Quake players who weren't bad with pure keyboard.

[Verain]

I wouldn't be too sure about that. I've run across Quake players who weren't bad with pure keyboard.

 

Nah, they weren't. Top Quake players always needed the mouse. Nobody wins FPS competitions without the right controls. I'm not honestly aware of any competitive game where people forgo the "right" input device and thrive.

[Linuxizer]

When people say "joystick control", they mean that the joystick controls the ship, not a reticule. The whole POINT of the reticule is to turn the much weaker mouse based input into a virtual joystick, after all.

 

If they add this (more traditional) joystick control, they would have to allow mouse-users to "lock crosshairs" as well. Otherwise the game would be unfair. Once "locking/unlocking crosshairs" is selectable, I expect all mouse-users and all joystick-users would choose to lock all the time (except when firing railgun, which definitely suits mouse better than joystick). This would turn GSF into an X-Wing Alliance sequel (sequel of a classic), but the uniqueness of GSF would be gone.

 

As it is, GSF offers a new challenge to "move the mouse too far then quickly bring it back a little before you shoot". Some people seem to dislike this. I appreciate it enough to experiment. Even without fundamentally changing the game, joystick is viable, and adds to immersion. So I hope they add native joystick support some day.

[Verain]

If they add this (more traditional) joystick control, they would have to allow mouse-users to "lock crosshairs" as well. Otherwise the game would be unfair.

 

Any joystick support would make GSF unfair to some degree. They'll never do it, of course.

 

The bigger deal is not the ability of the mouse user to lock, it's the ability of the joystick user to use his analog hat to control the reticule. That's the killer app there, from a control perspective- nose up without forcing your guns up.

 

Once "locking/unlocking crosshairs" is selectable, I expect all mouse-users and all joystick-users would choose to lock all the time (except when firing railgun, which definitely suits mouse better than joystick). This would turn GSF into an X-Wing Alliance sequel (sequel of a classic), but the uniqueness of GSF would be gone.

 

No, GSF is absolutely unique and would remain so even with better controls. However note:

1)- It would dramatically alter the relative power of the lasers. Burst Laser Cannon would obviously benefit greatly from being aimed as on live, but quads would really like love a lock to center option. Weapons in the middle would probably ramp down in power.

2)- On live the choice to track an enemy and fire versus trying to steer into position then aim and fire is always a rather hard choice with some weapons (and usually an unrewarding one for the effort). Taking this away would actually take away some flight strategy granted by the inferior and arbitrary "guns bend where you glance" implementation.

3)- There would be a power delta. While some guys come in and ask for joystick support in this game (and I'd love it if they offered it, as a better, more real, and more powerful control system always interests me), the fact is that the power delta in this game is already pretty massive. Many players of SWTOR have little to no flight sim, space sim, or arcade flight sim experience, or they have anecdotal experience in a less competitive environment. They often come in here and poop up a storm- this would definitely be worse if they came in and noticed that I could literally do maneuvers with ease that they could not do without buying and configuring a HOTAS setup. And don't even get me started on if they actually fixed the throttle too, mmmmmm!

4)- Supporting joysticks is highly nontrivial. It would require a LOT of effort on their part to acquire and test joysticks under a realistic variety of conditions, as they do with the rest of the game. We get that "They have Windows XP on their list of crap to fix" guy swinging by occasionally, what do you think it would look like when people stop dropping by with obscure joysticks, or joysticks with the axises in the wrong order, or GSF picks up your software joystick driver and won't let it go, etc.? They are in no way set up to drop the time and money on joystick support, even if they were all about it.

5)- Joysticks are not common among an MMO playerbase.

 

 

As it is, GSF offers a new challenge to "move the mouse too far then quickly bring it back a little before you shoot". Some people seem to dislike this. I appreciate it enough to experiment. Even without fundamentally changing the game, joystick is viable, and adds to immersion. So I hope they add native joystick support some day.

 

Well, the joystick support as mouse doesn't change the thing you just addressed. Honestly, I hope they add it too. Given how much fun I've had here, I'd absolutely love it to have a real control scheme. But I am totally convinced they will never ever. I'd love to be wrong, but I think the arguments against it are too likely.

[ThaadJarvis]

I currently do not play galactic star fighter because:

#1: NO Mouse lock

#2: Sniper ships - way to hire a CoD dev for GSF ..very sad

#3: No PVE or Free Roam - SWG had it and it's engine was from 2003

 

I would actually dive in to this occasionally (instead of raiding/event stuff/ leveling alts) if they fixed #1. It's not that I got pwned by a bunch of sniper ships I don't play I've played nearly all SW space battle sims and full stopping in midair/space was NOT something that happened with other ships. The closest/only thing similar would be EvE online's Dreadnaughts with their Triage deployment only useful as a siege weapon. Lastly free roam or PVE space, I could write a novel on why it should be created.

[arkanone]

I actually use the right and left buttons on my keyboard quite a bit to keep my ship level.

 

If I'm chasing someone over a sat and they duck under it, I'll use the right/left buttons to rotate and keep my ship at a more "natural" flight stance as I go under the sat. Apart from being easier to aim upside-up, it feels more like I'm actually piloting a ship than playing in a arcade shooting gallery.

[arkanone]

I currently do not play galactic star fighter because:

#1: NO Mouse lock

#2: Sniper ships - way to hire a CoD dev for GSF ..very sad

#3: No PVE or Free Roam - SWG had it and it's engine was from 2003

 

I would actually dive in to this occasionally (instead of raiding/event stuff/ leveling alts) if they fixed #1. It's not that I got pwned by a bunch of sniper ships I don't play I've played nearly all SW space battle sims and full stopping in midair/space was NOT something that happened with other ships. The closest/only thing similar would be EvE online's Dreadnaughts with their Triage deployment only useful as a siege weapon. Lastly free roam or PVE space, I could write a novel on why it should be created.

 

I hear you on that. In one corner you've people throwing millions of dollars at Chris Roberts so he can make a HAN SOLO sim.

 

Meanwhile in this corner you've got Bioware scratching for pennies from players because they keep betting on a worn out old horse--tired quest-based treadmill gameplay that was fresh in 2004.

[Verain]

I currently do not play galactic star fighter because:

#1: NO Mouse lock

#2: Sniper ships - way to hire a CoD dev for GSF ..very sad

#3: No PVE or Free Roam - SWG had it and it's engine was from 2003

 

So, you'd play it if only they would redesign the controls, delete a quarter of the ships requiring a complete rebalancing of everything and guaranteed for sure making the actual players quit, and then also add to the five smallish battle maps with instead, about 20-50 times the work of world creation. And also program some AI, change the targeting I guess or something, and generally rework it from the ground up.

 

 

Man, I guess they missed having you as a player by thiiiiiiiis much.

[Verain]

I hear you on that. In one corner you've people throwing millions of dollars at Chris Roberts so he can make a HAN SOLO sim.

 

I think we're all rooting for that game to be successful, but it is both risky and not the design of any part of this game. I mean, think of all the failed games- Bioware spending hundreds of millions to risk that? Seems unwise.

[Linuxizer]

The bigger deal is not the ability of the mouse user to lock, it's the ability of the joystick user to use his analog hat to control the reticule. That's the killer app there, from a control perspective- nose up without forcing your guns up.

 

Separate controls for flight and laser could be provided for everyone... keyboard one hand for flight and mouse in the other hand for laser, stick for flight and mouse for laser, or HOTAS with analog mouse hat, etc. That would add some serious depth to GSF, but make the learning curve even steeper for casual players.

[Verain]

Oh man, you lost me there. Keyboard for that? Goodness, I would hope not.

 

The fact is, a joystick is a BETTER controller than anything else. If you support it properly it will give an advantage. That is THE WHOLE POINT- it's not "for flavor" or to be "more like a sim", it's a better control. You could IMPLEMENT it terrible, sure- but we're not talking about that.

 

Crap like "digital keys" will never work correctly like an actual axis of control.

[ekwalizer]

So, I'm trying to figure out if actual joystick control is to be functional soon .

 

I currently do not play GSF because joystick control isn't really supported, but I would gladly play it if it were.

 

It's 2014, *any* game with *anything* to do with flight should have allowed flight stick control from the start. GSF launched last December or so without it. This isn't the 80's or even the 90s. SWG had flight stick support 10 years and 4 days ago. Seriously.

[Verain]

So, I'm trying to figure out if actual joystick control is to be functional soon .

 

It will not be. I don't think it ever will be, tbh, and if it is, it will be years.

 

I currently do not play GSF because joystick control isn't really supported, but I would gladly play it if it were.

 

It would be awesome, but they won't do it.

 

It's 2014, *any* game with *anything* to do with flight should have allowed flight stick control from the start.

 

Older games had it more. Back when devs could count on joysticks.

 

GSF launched last December or so without it. This isn't the 80's or even the 90s. SWG had flight stick support 10 years and 4 days ago. Seriously.

 

 

Again, most MMO players don't have joysticks, and it would absolutely be an advantage.

 

 

I'd love joysticks. But there's no way it's happening. They would have to revamp stuff a lot.