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TIE Fighter
Topic Started: Jan 5 2016, 07:08 AM (368 Views)
Lynx Cat
Orc
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For obvious reasons (well not really the movie, but because of that crap book I read and how it mentions the TIE Fighter's superior maneuverability), I remembered that old simulator I used to have which I... sorta played. It just seemed so complex to me. Sounded great in theory though, so I'm having a go at it again.

I managed to download a version that somehow works in my Win 7 laptop, and had an idea to use a DualShock-type joystick I've got to play it, mapping all relevant commands to the joystick's buttons. However, turns out there are a foooooooorkload of commands, and I can barely try to figure out what's essential enough (or benefits from being quickly accessed) to put on the joystick. In preliminary testing, the joystick certainly helps with maneuvering, though I'm still yet to see how I'll handle more advanced missions that require fidgeting with a lot of stuff like targeting, shields, energy management and so on. I'm actually considering playing this with a "co-pilot", having her man the keyboard while I'm on the joystick. That should be interesting.

So, did you guys play the old X-Wing and TIE Fighter (and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter) games? Did they seem overly complex to you, or do you get the hang of it after a while?
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lgm
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Demogorgon
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When you say dual-shock, I think of a Playstation controller. Joystick reminds me of the ones by Logitech and MS. A Playstation type controller should have two sticks and 8 buttons to map things. That seems like plenty... right? A standard PC joystick has tons of different options. For a more simple one, you could mount it which allows a free hand to use the keyboard. The more complex Logitech joysticks can map 12 buttons plus a thrust controller (and twist). If you're in between a very simplistic one and a very complex one, I can only think you could keep everything but the joystick mapped to the keyboard and use both.

I only had a couple flight games in the past where I used a joystick. This was back in the 90s with a fancy Logitech. I was able to map all the fighter jet features to the stick. It was one of those Jane's games so it was quite a bit. There was another Jane's game where I could only map half the controls to the stick. I dropped all of them and just used the stick with the keyboard. Having not gotten used to the buttons, it worked better.

(Steam sells all four X-wing and TIE Fighter games for $30; $10 each)
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Lynx Cat
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lgm
Jan 5 2016, 01:25 PM
A Playstation type controller should have two sticks and 8 buttons to map things. That seems like plenty... right?
More like 14 buttons (including D-pad, shoulder buttons, Start and Select), or 16 buttons if you use the ones in the middle of the analog sticks (which I'd rather not, it's easy to press them by accident). And no, that's waaay too few for a game like TIE Fighter. (BTW I'm using the words "joystick" / "controller" interchangeably because it never occurred to me that they're different things. Are they?) It's not hard to hold the controller in one hand while I use the keyboard, especially if the only things I need to keep manning while pressing buttons are the flight controls and weapons (i.e. left analog stick and L1 button), so that's what I'm working with so far. I've only played the game for a couple hours so far though, most of which trying to set up my controls, so I'll see.
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lgm
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Demogorgon
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I personally have separated 'controller' and 'joystick' in my head. One is more of a hand held controller with joysticks and the others are joysticks with buttons. But that's just me.

I would hope 14 buttons are enough. I think it's a matter of getting used to the controls and then customize their mapping to make it more comfortable. I'm reminded of my bad experience with the game Watchdogs on the Wii U merely because the button prompts when learning the game are mapped to the same letters as an Xbox controller but are swapped on the Wii U gamepad controller. The less I think about what button to push and rely on instinct memory (that is a thing, right?), the better I do. Otherwise I'm leaping out of cars at high speeds and cars run over me.
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Lynx Cat
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lgm
Jan 5 2016, 04:19 PM
The less I think about what button to push and rely on instinct memory (that is a thing, right?), the better I do.
People call it "muscle memory".

Anyway, I'm trying to find out what's most essential to keep on the joystick. I'd need my home computer to see how I've mapped the controller, but it's easy to fill all 14 buttons with only 2-3 buttons (out of, like, 5, 6, 7 or more) buttons from each system, and feel like I'm missing stuff. But I think it's possible to reach a good compromise if I view the controller as a "shortcut machine".

Like, instead of all thrust buttons (0 thurst, 1/3, 2/3, full, match target, thrust up and down), I keep 1/3 thrust, full thrust and match target, as well as a combo that gives thrust up/down with the main stick. For other speeds, I can either change thrust gradually or use the keyboard. Instead of four buttons for energy settings (from engines to lasers, engines to shields, lasers to engines, shields to engines) I keep just the first two and cycle through the settings if I want to divert energy to engines. Keep only "select next target" and "select closest target" instead of the foooooooorkload of targeting buttons available (like "select whatever's attacking your current target", "select warhead", yadda yadda). One thing that's bugging me is the viewing angle options (i.e. look over your shoulder at the rear window and such) - the game uses the whole 9 numbers of the numpad for that, and I don't even have a numpad. And I can't map that to the 2nd analog stick since I can't map diagonals. So I either decide I can live without different viewing angles or use, like, an USB numpad.

Oh well, first world problems, right :P
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lgm
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Demogorgon
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I don't remember the Jane's flight sims getting that complicated even with all the fancy vector thrusting and dozen targeting systems. They were as realistic as possible at the time too. Flying an F-117 Nighthawk wasn't as hard as that TIE Fighter sounds. Sounds like the game needs to allow some switching between functions so a single button can get multiuse. The thrust seems like it, alone, takes up lots of space.

You just have a challenge ahead of you. Or you can get this: map 220+ commands to this joystick!
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Lynx Cat
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lgm
Jan 6 2016, 09:25 AM
Flying an F-117 Nighthawk wasn't as hard as that TIE Fighter sounds.
It's hella complicated. Feast thine eyes on the manual (controls begin at page 11 on the PDF).
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lgm
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Demogorgon
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It actually seems a bit less complicated than the old fighter jet sims. I had an actual throttle on my joystick so that put all of it in a single place. I mapped the most important things to the stick: cycle weapons, fire weapons, cycle targets and defensive measures (flares, etc. which is shields for you). Still gave me room for several other things. The joystick required both hands but it was easy to use my left hand to quickly use the keyboard for a moment. A playstation type controller would be harder to use one handed. If you're able to map it good enough then godspeed. Otherwise you may have to use the keyboard and mouse setup.
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Benevolance
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Ancient Wyrm
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Quote:
 
A playstation type controller would be harder to use one handed.


That's why PCs won the porn wars.
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Andrul
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Tie fighter is probably THE best of the X-Wing games. It came out after X-Wing and the graphics are much better and you have a nice side story going as well. X-Wing Alliance could have easily taken the top spot, having better graphics and a great story right up until the last mission which is you making a run on the new death star instead of the Millennium Falcon. A joystick typically rests on your table which leaves the other hand free to work the myriad keyboard options and pretty much any of them more than $10 these days will have a tophat button for looking around but honestly, I typically used my radar more than the windows.

Let's see if I can remember the ones I felt were most important to have programmed on the joystick..

Cycle weapon selections, Target nearest enemy, Target nearest attacking enemy, Match target speed, fire weapons, fire ECM. My joystick had an actual throttle control from stop to full. If you have enough remaining buttons you'll probably want to set them up for setting and diverting power for shields/engines as those are critical. Of course I originally played the games with a non-programmable 2-axis, 4-button joystick so had gotten pretty good at using the keyboard.
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