I'm in the market for a pc gamepad. I've always been into FPS so i've always relied on a mouse and keyboard convo, however i received Madden and need a gamepad as its impossible to play using the keyboard. Can anyone recommend a decent gamepad?
Gamepad
- Thread starter daztrouk
- Start date
Xbox360 wired pad, using the XBCD drivers
http://xbcd360guide.50webs.com/
Much much better than the stock drivers, plus easy to install thanks to a good guide on the above site.
http://xbcd360guide.50webs.com/
Much much better than the stock drivers, plus easy to install thanks to a good guide on the above site.
Just a question - what makes the XBCD drivers better than the official ones? That website gives deadzone adjustment, sensitivity and button mapping as a reason, but any decent game will allow you to configure that anyway. For button mapping you could easily use a third party program which doesn't replace the drivers (eg writing an AutoHotKey script)
By replacing the drivers do you not lose the special functionality the official drivers provide? In lego star wars II, for example, the 360 pad is detected and absolutely no setup is required. You can plug in 2 pads and it will automatically use a different pad for each player (and indicate which player you are using the "ring of light".) Microsoft XNA (game development platform) has similar advantages - accessing the xb360 controller is easy with the official drivers.. I've written about 4 lines of code and my controller now vibrates any time anyone says my name on IRC. Finally you can also plug a headset into the controller and it can be used like any USB headset. Personally I would rather have these features than those XBCD seem to provide... having said that it would be nice to be able to turn my sensitivity down a bit more in TMU.
By replacing the drivers do you not lose the special functionality the official drivers provide? In lego star wars II, for example, the 360 pad is detected and absolutely no setup is required. You can plug in 2 pads and it will automatically use a different pad for each player (and indicate which player you are using the "ring of light".) Microsoft XNA (game development platform) has similar advantages - accessing the xb360 controller is easy with the official drivers.. I've written about 4 lines of code and my controller now vibrates any time anyone says my name on IRC. Finally you can also plug a headset into the controller and it can be used like any USB headset. Personally I would rather have these features than those XBCD seem to provide... having said that it would be nice to be able to turn my sensitivity down a bit more in TMU.
Zogger said:***lots of stuff*** (scroll up)
Interesting, I've not looked at it like that. The main reason I switched to the XBCD drivers was the deadzone adjustment, as I play NFS and other racing games, GTL is the only one I play that has deadzone adjustment, all the others are rushed console ports sadly.
I bought lego star wars 2 before I came home from xmas so me and a flatmate can play it, it didn't take too long to setup, so wasn't really an issue. As to the ring of light, doesn't bother me in the least!
Vibrating when you get a message on irc is pretty cool, didn't realise you could do things like that. That particular one would bug me though!
Any guides on how to do similar things about - will test them out with these drivers.
Haven't got one of the usb headsets to try that out, but I think one of my uni mates does have, so should be able to give it a go next week.
Soldato
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sadly most games dont have deadzone settings, which can lead to you going all over the place.
there are other reasons too - like swapping bwtween one and two seperate axis for the triggers , allowing independent throttle and breaking for example. cant do that with the ms drivers.
of course, there are games where you can set deadzones and such, but it's always better to do it at the lowest level. set it once in the drivers and forget about it. or set it in every game you can and for any you cant, your stuffed.
there are other reasons too - like swapping bwtween one and two seperate axis for the triggers , allowing independent throttle and breaking for example. cant do that with the ms drivers.
of course, there are games where you can set deadzones and such, but it's always better to do it at the lowest level. set it once in the drivers and forget about it. or set it in every game you can and for any you cant, your stuffed.
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Fair enough.. I've been tempted to try them but like I say I would like to be able to use XNA etc.
Unless you have Visual C# and XNA it's not worth trying this method, but here it is anyway:
EDIT: Or I could just upload the exe... http://knd.org.uk/files/QuickVibrate.zip - I don't know if that will work without XNA redistributables though
This is my quick bit of C# (after downloading the XNA framework and setting Framework (.input) as a reference) to rumble the pad at the force specified in the args. Most of it is just getting the argument and turning it into a float. It just uses mirc's run command and atm it pops up a command prompt for a second. Tried to do it with a c++ dll calling the c# dll but no matter how much I tried I couldn't get mirc to recognise my specified routine in the c++ (whether or not the code was managed / clr'd or whatever)
It would be easier to do something less intrusive, could run it as a windows service for example, but mirc's only apparent method of communication with outside applications is DDE which is long out of date.
You could also do this with DirectX and a normal gamepad so it is a tad redundant anyway.
Whether or not the XNA stuff matters is rather specific to the person as I don't expect you'll see any XNA games that aren't just hobbyist game programming..
Unless you have Visual C# and XNA it's not worth trying this method, but here it is anyway:
EDIT: Or I could just upload the exe... http://knd.org.uk/files/QuickVibrate.zip - I don't know if that will work without XNA redistributables though
This is my quick bit of C# (after downloading the XNA framework and setting Framework (.input) as a reference) to rumble the pad at the force specified in the args. Most of it is just getting the argument and turning it into a float. It just uses mirc's run command and atm it pops up a command prompt for a second. Tried to do it with a c++ dll calling the c# dll but no matter how much I tried I couldn't get mirc to recognise my specified routine in the c++ (whether or not the code was managed / clr'd or whatever)
It would be easier to do something less intrusive, could run it as a windows service for example, but mirc's only apparent method of communication with outside applications is DDE which is long out of date.
You could also do this with DirectX and a normal gamepad so it is a tad redundant anyway.
Code:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
float amt = 1.0f;
if (args.Length > 0)
{
try
{
float p = float.Parse(args[0]);
if (p <= 1 && p > 0)
{
amt = p;
}
}
catch (Exception)
{
//don't do anything as amt will be 1 anyway!
}
}
GamePad.SetVibration(Microsoft.Xna.Framework.PlayerIndex.One, amt, amt);
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000);
GamePad.SetVibration(Microsoft.Xna.Framework.PlayerIndex.One, 0f, 0f);
}Whether or not the XNA stuff matters is rather specific to the person as I don't expect you'll see any XNA games that aren't just hobbyist game programming..
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