Dual Joystick help

Hi. I played IW so long ago, I don't even remember. Since Star Citizen has been in alpha, I have gotten back into PC gaming, and I found out about IW2. I loved the first one, so I purchased the second. The one thing I'm a little disappointed with is the lack of customizable controller options, but I see how you can change this by editing the ini file. I played a little with one joystick, but I'd like to try and make my controllers similar to what I use in Star Citizen. I have 2 Joysticks. A generic, but surprisingly well made cheap chinese right stick and a thrustmaster t-16000m for the left stick.

Does anyone have any experience setting up dual flight sticks or already have or know of an ini profile that I can use? Should I just use joystick2 for the left stick in the ini file? Maybe I just have to play with it and post my configuration when I figure it out.

IronDuke uses two joysticks when he plays. He should know how. If you go to Control Panel/Hardware and Sound/Devices and Printers you should be able to right click on the device and select game controller settings. Then select properties, and go to the "test" tab of the page that pops up. This can tell you the names of the different controls, which is quite useful when making a config.
Since the default .ini file does use Joystick1 to refer to a single joystick, Joystick2 should refer to a second joystick.

Howdy oftheborg! Welcome to the forum! *Coughs on dust* Kinda glad to see someone using a twin stick setup instead of a plane throttle.
You are both absolutely correct. Joystick2 will refer to the second controller. You can probably have as many controllers as you like, actually. Ideally, the order of controllers is determined by a location Chessking told you of. In the game controller settings, there will be a list of the controllers attached to your computer. Ideally, the one on the top is Joystick1, the one below it Joystick2, and so on. Unfortunately, this stopped working correctly in Windows 7 and beyond, so Microsoft has a little "Advanced" button allowing you to set which controller to use for older games. This controller will be Joystick1, I think. I-War2 has a lot of hiccups with modern operating systems, and this may not work perfectly. The easiest thing to do is simply set up the controls, fire up the game, and see if the right stick does left stick things. Then you'll know to switch Joystick1 with Joystick2.

Now, just in case you're as lazy as I am, I'm including my own control config file. It's set up so it doesn't replace either of the default configs, and will show up in the game options as "Custom." I doubt that the buttons on your Thrustmaster T-16000M are arranged the same as my Logitech Extreme 3D Pro, so you might have to do delve into the file and adjust a couple things. It's set up so that the right stick turns the ship, like any joystick. The left stick will control lateral and vertical thrusters for strafing. The left trigger (button 1) thrusts forward, as I almost never use throttle, and button 3 thrusts backwards. Button 2 calls for wingmen to defend you, since I do a lot of Instant Action. I've stuck some comments in the file.

The file is included in a .zip, since the forum won't let me attach .ini files. :dry:

Hope this helps. Feel free to hit me with any more questions you may have. Happy hunting sir!

--IronDuke

Hey, Thanks guys. I actually sort of figured it out. It's joystick3, and I have the major axes working the way I think I'd like it. The Y for WS, X for ad, and the RZ axis for strafing up and down. I'm a little dissapointed that it has to return to 0 before engaging the opposite thruster direction though. Does uncoupling the ship allow it to fly freely without forcing itself to return to 0?

I need to next, figure out what I want all my buttons to do.

The only thing I wasn't able to figure out, was how to use the hat to make me look around. I thought I assigned the proper buttons, but it doesn't seem to work. Does your config have that?

I just woke up, and was only able to work on the game for a few minutes last night. I'll play around with it some more tonight when I get home.

Thanks for all the help.

Sounds like you got it. The reason for it needing to got to 0 before moving in the opposite direction is because of the way input works. It's a thing in every game. Think of it as being like a car transmission. You can have it in either reverse or a forward gear, but not both. That's because games read input as a number. With the stick centered, they read 0; with it all the way forward, they read 1; with it halfway forward, they read 0.5, and with it all the way backwards: they read -1. This makes the math quite easy, since you can have your code simply switch to using reverse thrust whenever the input is negative. Better yet, just multiply the force being applied to the ship by the input. With input positive, the force is applied to forward. But with the input negative, then the force is negative, and therefore exactly opposite to normal. That would thrust the ship backwards.
That explanation was probably horrifically overwordy, but I think you get it. :silly:

Probably I-War2's biggest limitation is the lack of a headlook function. Your head is frozen in the cockpit. It will swing a little as you move the ship about, but that's it. However, there are some additional view options bound to the F1, F2, F3, and F4 keys. You could try those out.

Also, rather thrilled to see that I-War2 isn't pulling a Starboy* and only allowing two controllers. Seems we can have three, and presumably more.

--IronDuke

*Starboy was an ancient, incredibly terrible, and unpopular space game from thirty years ago. I might be the only person in the world who even remembers it, since the thing barely broke 100 sales. It has never existed on the Internet.

oftheborg, so you see that the i-war2.com forum is actually more active than the respective Steam forum. ^^ We may have it quite quiet here sometimes, but there's still a number of folks who come here checking for new posts regularly.