Too Many Mind

I think I have finally gotten to the point where getting ready to play a game has become extremely cumbersome.

1.  Open the right Xpadder profile
2.  Open and run the correct script (if any is needed)
3.  Start the game.

I would really like to lounge in front of my 32" TV controller in hand and, without touching a mouse or keyboard, play any game I like with the right configuration.  Steam Big Picture is great for this, and with Steam's ability to add non-steam games, it makes it the perfect gaming hub.  But with gamepad profiles and necessary scripts in the way  it makes the experience quite cumbersome.

So, I've started designing a "Master" script, one that will always be running in the background and automatically modify the gamepad profile and set of scripts depending on what game I've launched.  So far I have gotten through all the learning hurdles and have one game working with it so far.  Of course, I have several other games to add so I'm not quite done yet, but with that script in combination of many games with gamepad support through Steam, it will be the perfect setup.  Yay!

Gamepad Setup:

PS3 controller connected via USB, or PS2 controller connected via USB adapter.
Using Motion InJoy for PS3 drivers, also for Xbox 360 controller emulation
XPadder for button mapping
AutoIT for scripting specific controls or methods that aren't native to the gamepad or Xpadder.

I won't highlight Games in which using a gamepad and mapping keys are simple, just the ones that are a little tricky to adapt to a Gamepad.

Diablo 3 / Torchlight 2 - 100% (Xpadder + AutoIT)
Using the left analog stick I wrote/modded an AutoIT script that rotates the mouse cursor around your character and also holds down the dedicated move key, this enables full 360 degree movement.  The script also recognizes when you hold down the SHIFT key and disables movement, but increases the distance that the cursor rotates around your character, this enables ranged characters to Root and fire from a distance.

This takes some time to get used to but this setup has already made me better than mouse/keyboard setup.  There's no automation here, just simple mapping of controls, it allows for very complex and fluid changes between movement and attacks.  I have also scripted the D-Pad to move the mouse cursor specific distances to allow for quick inventory browsing.

I have made it to Act 2 Hell on 2 characters with this setup.

Guild Wars 2 - 100% (Xpadder)
Mapped left analog to WASD, and right analog to mouse cursor.  Pushing the right analog button toggles the right mouse button which enables/disables camera control.  And the way Guild Wars 2 targeting is done this makes for extremely fluid and enjoyable combat.

I have made one character to level 64, and several other mid 20's so far with this setup.

Civilization V - 80% (Xpadder + AutoIT)
I have mapped the left analog to the arrow keys which control screen movement, and the AutoIT script is simple in that when you use the left analog stick it automatically places the mouse cursor in the middle of the CivV map.  This works great for map and unit direction, but it's a bit sensitive.  And there's too many keyboard shortcuts to map out on the gamepad, but most of them aren't necessary.

Right analog stick is set to mouse cursor and navigating the UI is not as difficult as it sounds.  Most of your time is spent on the map UI so the setup works well for 75% of the situations.

I have only made it to turn 500, so late game still needs to be tested.

Steam Big Picture - 100%
Using the Motion InJoy Xbox 360 controller emulation, it works perfectly with big picture and games that support the gamepad work natively with it.

Planetside 2

Planetside was the only MMO's back in the day that held my attention for longer than a month, I have fond memories of that game and had a lot of fun.  Now I'm ecstatic that Planetside 2 is now out, and FREE above all things, that's just awesome!

But things have changed.  The game is 10x better than the original, but I am a different gamer now.  I can't play twitch FPS games anymore, it just doesn't work, so being on the front lines for a while and failing to kick ass leads me to re-finding my niche in this game.  I started out wanting mouse + keyboard to work, but my right hand is useless, I can't use it to control the mouse or sitting on the keyboard, both are way to painful after a minute or two.

So I had to resort back to my trusty gamepad, but aiming is now out the window, I can only get in the way on the front lines.  But wait I can be an engineer and repair things!  Yay!  After a while I got the gist of it, and even being on the TR side the confusing HUD color scheme is starting to make sense.  I'm now right behind the front lines keeping MAXs, vehicles, turrets and generators repaired as much as possible, and I'm doing pretty decent at level 10 with lots of certs unlocked in the engineer track.  If I want to get into the fight then I look for the closest turret, either on a vehicle or in a base or my own (engineers can deploy their own machine gun turret).

Now I'm looking to expand my usage and become a pilot.  Even though PS2 supports controllers, their sensitivity is way off and doesn't feel right, all the good pilots out their use keyboard + mouse, controllers just don't work.  And I've confirmed this; I broke out my Attack 3 flightstick but it just doesn't work well, hard to control and hard to maneuver, there's just too many buttons and movements that you need that can't be binded on a single joystick.

After that I went back to my gamepad, and tried several different key schemes to try and get good controls and I think I may have finally found something decent.  I mapped my left analogue to yaw L/R, Pitch U/D and right analogue to Roll L/R, Pitch U/D.  This has turned out to be pretty good, I've managed to skim surfaces and make pretty decent close maneuvers without hitting anything and I even managed to get my first few kills on my first round with this setup.  Fire and Afterburn mapped to R1 and R2, and Ascend and Descend to L1 and L2.  I can only get better with this, so it will just take some practice.

When making quick turns and small short adjustments, a combination of movements to both analogue sticks gives me a wide range of control.  I can move both of them and fire afterburners to get out of dangerous situations, and move the left individually to make small adjustments while adjusting roll with the right to put me on target.  It's still not as accurate as mouse+keyboard, but it's got potential to be decent enough to be competitive.

Oh, snap!

At least for those of us who pre-purchased the game, Guild Wars 2 is out.   Wait.... Guild Wars 2 is OUT!  Oh snap! :)

Over the weekend I played my primary character, Human Elementalist Salena Carne.  I got 100% in Queensdale, the starter area, and there's still plenty of things left to do.  The dungeon in Beatletun needs explorin.. the Shadow beast in the swamp needs killin... and the Demongrub pits needs a puzzle... -in... completin... hah! :)

And this is just one character, one area, I have plans for 2 more characters in Sylvari and Asura.  Even though all the maps do connect with each other it generally takes 2-3 map areas before you start overlapping content with other race areas.

But still, 100% complete in Queensdale... but 4% total completion... L.O.L.  Hell yeah. :)

And then there's WvW...

And there's also crafting, which I'm trying my best to get as much done as possible, I want to try and make some money once the game goes official tomorrow, but that might not working considering issues with the auction house.

This game is just freaking awesome, I'm only level 14 but I've already had several "oh, snap!" moments when player skill becomes the catalyst instead of skills, levels, or weapons.  Here are a couple I've experienced:


Skills Coming Together:

I was in a bind as I lagged behind the main group, 5 centaur warriors chased me and started beating me up, I managed to get 3 of them down, but the final 2 were wearing out my health.  I had already used my "Panic Button" (Arcane blast + Arcane Shield) and my health skill and they were all recharging.  Just about to die Arcane Blast became active again, so I hit it and then hit a weapon skill which made me dodge backwards quickly but leave a trail of fire.  With 2 health left, they ran towards me running over the fire, Just as they were about to attack they died in the fire.  That was an adrenalin booster :)

Mammoth Monster:

Catching the end of "Secrets of the Swamp" I witnessed this massive shadow boss easily 3x larger than any starting boss, it took me a good minute in order to reach him, but everyone finished taking him down right before I got there.

I'm going to have to come back here to finish up this incredible Dynamic Event.

Took a Wrong Turn:

I was walking along where a bunch of Treants were, I'd been here before they were all passive aggressive so I had no problem walking around.  Came across a big tree but as I was admiring it I noticed a treant doing something to the side of a nearby hill.  Curious I walked over.

Then all of a sudden a Dynamic Event popped up on my radar, and this unique Treant boss crawled out of the ground.  I was all alone and I wasnt even making a dent even with my most powerful attacks, and he was slow enough that I could dodge him and keep my distance while waiting for others to join.

Soon enough, another joined and then another, and we finally saw his life start to dwindle down.  The boss started using unique attacks that rooted our characters, we couldn't use our primary skill as he lumbered towards us to rain heavy attacks on us, but I was able to use my 2nd weapon skill to set the ground ablaze to kill the roots and get us free.

Took me and about 6 others about 10 minutes to down the boss, and I was greeted with some nice loot, as well as a stone that is supposed to bring a special reward in Lion's Keep.

Playstation Certified, doesn't mean you can play games

Guild Wars 2 BWE last weekend was awesome, only got disconnected once when they applied an update on Saturday.  Very smooth experience overall.  I didn't try out any PVP again, but I did hear about some issues with it during the weekend, but that they got it up and running by Sunday.  It should be pretty close to release, here's hoping for one more BWE to try out Sylvari and Asuran classes!

Diablo 3 is still pretty awesome, I've got 2 characters to Nightmare and the fun is only just beginning.  Starting to see unique and champion monsters with a wide variety of dangerous tactics and skills, its making adventuring dangerous!  Already died 6 times in Act 1. :)

I sold an old laptop that I wasn't using and used that money to finally buy a PSP 3000, I'm not sure why I waited so long, this is by far the best hand-held system I have ever used.  The DS was great, but it's tiny size was cumbersome and cramping.  The stylus mechanic only made my Carpal Tunnel worse so it was very hard to even play it.  The 3DS was pretty much the same, and the 3D gimmick made my eyes sore.  The PSP is awesome with many many games that I missed out and want to play!  Plus it serves extremely well as a multimedia device for music and movies for long trips!  Much better and bigger than my old Droid that the wife is now using.

Speaking of hand-helds, the Xperia PLAY is starting to get on my nerves.  More specifically the support for the device is non-existent and promises are being broken.  The hardware and the android experience are absolutely fine, I'm still amazed at the smoothness and responsiveness of the experience.  But if it weren't for the broken promises by Sony (bought Sony Ericsson) I could very well skip the next gen phones and be comfortable.

For one thing, the Playstation Suite/Shop does not exist in the US.  You can buy PS1 games everywhere else, except for US... this doesn't make ANY sense.  And they wonder why the phone isn't selling well?  Seriously?  So I bought an awesome gaming phone that can only play Android crap from the same company trying to market it as a Playstation Phone?  Not to mention the phone went free with 2 year contract a MONTH after I bought it...

So, the XP in the US is forced underground, doomed forever to live a life of ancient emulation.  Wait, what? Yes!!  Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Genesis, Master Drive, Playstation and even old MS-DOS games through 3rd party emulators.  Yeah this is aweseome!

But really, Sony, I was READY to throw money at you!  But you failed us.

My next phone will be a smartphone, I have a PSP and the XP will still be around, maybe on awesome custom firmwares by then.  Thinking of going to Samsung or HTC, I'm a little leary of Motorola since they were acquired by Google.  But I'm seriously looking at companies that have a good track record for updates and supporting phones, I will NEVER again buy a phone based on promises, if a phone doesn't currently have what I'm looking for, then I'm not interested.

Diablo 3 loves a Gamepad

Diablo 3 bought and installed!  And I must say it's an extremely well developed and polished game.  It's too bad network and server issues are still plaguing what is otherwise a fantastic game.  I've only been able to put in around 4-5 hours gametime, but I have been disconnected twice for server maintenance.  I'm not too concerned because I know things will get ironed out quickly.  But there is a small minority of people on the forums that haven't been able to play for more than 5 minutes, or not at all.  Unfortunately I believe these people to have network issues that made it impossible for Blizzard to be aware of.

I also believe that Diablo 3 uses an encrypted tunnel between the client and the server.  Any loss of packets will produce disconnections.  This helps prevent data mining and keeping the online environment pure, but considering that every person's network is just as unique as their computer, it was impossible for Blizzard to make sure that Diablo 3 would work on everything.  Of course, this is all speculation.

One thing that I'm testing if it's really the computer or the network that has issues playing the game.  I've installed the game on two computers now; my main computer; i7 Xeon 2.53 quad core / NVidia GTX 460, and my wife's computer; Core 2 Quad Q6600 / ATI 5770 and both computers work flawlessly.  The final test I have tonight is getting the game to work on an old laptop; Core 2 Duo T2700 2.16 / ATI FireGL V5200.  The video card is on the unsupported list but it should still be capable of running the game on everything low.

If the game works on all three machines with this variety of hardware, then the theory that the issues revolve around networks (Computers to ISP to Battle.net) instead of computer hardware seem to be valid.  I'll update when I've tested the old laptop.

But anyways, Diablo 3 loves a Gamepad.  Using the same script I used for Torchlight and binding the left stick to the dedicated move key in Diablo 3 works extremely well.  The only issue I had is that the dedicated move key overrides SHIFT to root your character.  I resolved this by having the L1 (SHIFT) button open a different set in XPadder where the left stick is unbound to any key, but the script still manages the ranged portion very well.

This whole setup makes maneuvering, combat, positioning, everything work so fluid that it's a wonder Blizzard didn't implement official gamepad support.  It's amazing how well this works.  It does take a little getting used to but not very long.  By the end of the beta content I was extremely content with the layout and functionality.

The whole point of getting it to work on the old laptop is to play on by 37" TV and surround sound from the comfort of my couch!

I'm only level 14 Wizard right now but the available skills already make it complex enough to make it a considerable decision about which skills / runes to use.  I died once, but it was because I got overconfident and the skill layout I chose was not the best for the impending situation.  Combat is getting fast and frenetic and it's just so much fun even exploring.  Maps and dungeons are regenerated every login, unlike D2 single-player.  But it makes sense considering not only dungeons and mobs are randomly generated but also certain events, like finding the black mushroom in the Cathedral level 1.

Anyways, loving the game, my only complaint is that I wish I could play it more :)

Setting up the Gamepad

Setting up the game pad for games like Guild Wars or Tera or even Mass Effect using XPadder was inherently easy, just took some time to make sure I had all the buttons necessary to use all mapped out.  But how does one setup a game pad for a game like Diablo 3 or Torchlight?  There are no mechanics to control your character via the keyboard, these are mouse driven games.

Well, with a little thinking outside the box and some help from some simple AutoIT script programming, I actually got it to work.  I tested this with Torchlight last night and I was able to level a Destroyer to level 10 and even continue leveling my 29 Rogue all with just the game pad, and NO hand cramps!

Here's the gist of the coding behind my AutoIT script:

1. Place mouse cursor at the center of your character (different from every game, but is offset of Y from the center of your screen, different for each resolution)
1. I call this the center of gravity, because your cursor always gravitates towards this center and you use the left stick to force the cursor away from the center of gravity.
2. Force of gravity determines how far away you can move your cursor away from center when the stick is pushed to the edge
3. Going to try and build some code to detect resolution and the game you are playing to auto-adjust values for the center of gravity.
2. Detect left stick movement beyond the dead zone, which is defined by raw values of stick movement and center.
1. Using a series of If/Then statements detect stick's X/Y as +/- from center (65536 / 2)
3. Define Force to gravity; essentially take the raw data from the stick movement and divide by a certain amount to keep the cursor within 100 points of center.
1. In order to account for ranged attacks I added a modifier that if SHIFT (button mapped by XPadder) is held down, the range increases (force decreases) to about 500 points from center allowing easier targeting and aiming at a distance.
2. Using SHIFT also keeps your character still so you automatically try to attack using ranged or use area skills when you press this modifier.
4. When the stick movement is detected and placed on the screen, the left mouse button is pressed every .2 seconds (done with XPadder)

The only issue I had while playing Torchlight is that I would pick up EVERYTHING that was dropped very easily by just moving around.  But this is an issue with Torchlight, the left mouse button controls movement and ALL interaction.  This is also an issue while in town as I would talk with people constantly, and sometimes would trigger going up a dungeon level just after I went down it because the mouse clicks are so fast.  The range trigger helped with these issues once I implemented it, but I had to remember to use it.

But really, I had such a blast playing Torchlight last night, I honestly feel that this should have been a viable control scheme integrated by the designer.  But even games like Diablo 3 which are cutting edge action RPGs completely ignore game pad integration!  It's mind boggling how well this works and how easily it was implemented (still needs some tweaking though).

Even better, is that Diablo 3 has a dedicated move key.  When pressed it will automatically move you towards your cursor without interacting with anything.  This is awesome because I can modify XPadder to use that key instead of mouse click and all my small issues with Torchlight will disappear!  D3 begs to have official controller support like this!