Help on Mod: configure thrust/throttle mapping for joystick

[svarni]

Hi everyone,

I've been long searching for an intuitive way use my (old) joystick with it's native thrust/throttle device. Currently, to stop the ship I need to center the throttle at 50% so that I have 50% of it's range to utilize 400 forward speed and 50% of it's range to utilize 40 backwards speed. I'd like to have it as such that pulling the throttle down means "stop" and pushing it to max means "forward max". In Elite Dangerous, this can be defined over the options (and there a hotkey can be bound in order to use the full throttle range for defining a backward speed...). The current behaviour is usefull for gamepads that have an auto-centering stick, but a joysticks throttle is never auto-centered.

I've been playing around with modding a file in "09.cat", namely

"09.cat/libraries/parameters.xml"

where I've replaced line 18 by

Code: Select all

    <throttle button="2.0" mousewheel="0.2">
        <curve default="1">
          <point position="0" value="0" />
          <point position="0.2" value="0.5" />
          <point position="1" value="1" />
        </curve>
	  </throttle>
  

I expected this to define a new traverse line that approximates the wanted behaviour (this way, the lower 20% of the throttle would be for flying backwards), but it doesn't. It seemed to not change anything at all.

Does anybody know what the above definition actually means or does anybody have an alternate idea on how to use the full throttle axis solely to fly forward? It must be done through a mod - buying another joystick or writing external programms, using special libraries etc. is not the way to go for me. And no, my joystick has no special software to remap the throttle axis.

Is there even anybody out there who's annoyed by having to use 50% of the joystick's throttle axis for flying backwards? I'm always annoyed because my joystick's throttle has latching points at roughly 20%, but none at 50% (where it would need to latch for the ship to stand still).

Thank's in advance

[UniTrader]

no idea what the related node means to the Game - the parameters.xsd defines it as anycontent so anything inside there is considered valid - if it has any meaning to the game is another issue..

just looked up some values, namely in the libraries/inputmap.xml where i found this line:
<range id="INPUT_RANGE_THROTTLE" source="INPUT_SOURCE_JOYAXES" code="INPUT_JOYAXIS_Z" />

and also two similiar lines in the libraries/inputmap_joystick.xml:
<range id="INPUT_RANGE_THROTTLE" source="INPUT_SOURCE_JOYAXES" code="INPUT_JOYAXIS_SLIDER1"/>
<range id="INPUT_RANGE_THROTTLE" source="INPUT_SOURCE_JOYAXES" code="INPUT_JOYAXIS_RX" sdl="true"/>

the latter here is used in the default Joystick control scheme and may account for what you want, no idea. did you already try loading the default control Profile for Joysticks?
( Settings => Controls => Load Profile (almost on the bottom) => Default - Joystick

[gorman2040]

Hi !
I was looking for something similar in another thread.
I will dig in and post results here.

[svarni]

Hi and thanks for the replies. I looked at the lines from inputmap(_joystick).xml but those only seem to define a mapping from the physical device ranges (like joystick slider or axis) to an ingame range (like throttle). There's no actual transformation of the ingame range defined. Setting back to default control profile didn't help either, the behaviour is still the same

PS: ist there any free device-independent joystick mapping software that I could use? I have "joy2key" to map keys, but axis control is not given.

[gorman2040]

Hey,

So here's what I've tried:
I have a custom profile in X:R I copied it and named it inputmap_3.xml.
I edited this file, found the INPUT_RANGE_THROTTLE from UniTrader's post (thanks !) and added the sdl="true" in the line.

When I loaded the profil in X:R it seemed my throttle was deactived.
A quick glance at the controls confirmed that.

I tried sdl="false" and throttle was back in action but no change to range

Also when I was playing X3:TC my throttle was 25% idle (compared to 50% idle in X:R) so the devs definitely made it right before.

I wonder if the "options" for the inputmap.xml can be found somewhere.
I remember playing with this file when X:R was out because all the buttons were not bindable in the GUI.

[svarni]

Any help on this? *bump*

I'm not sure the devs are even aware of this problem. Come on, I can't be the only one using a joystick with dedicated throttle stick (a stick that has no OEM software to define a mapping curve for the axis). Who's going to tell me wether this is going to work in X:R VR?!? I'm not going to buy it without being sure this problem is solved.