DIY Xbox Frankenpad

cptmassive1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VkrUG3OrPc

I know this has been discussed, rehashed and overdone but it is not technically on the FCT we-will-kill-you list, so saddle up, hombre.

It works. It is tedious workaround-itis but it works.

If this has been done, why didn't you tell me the 19 times I asked? And if you can make it better, please do.

I am only using this for combat because out of combat I am using keyboard and mouse anyway. This method allows me to fly a ship with enough button slots to activate everything I need for almost any combats I run. And once it is done it is danged fun to fly.

Sure, the turn, camera, throttle and basic attacks work great mostly out of the box but the 27 buffs, pets, heals, etc., no way!

You will need a basic knowledge of keybinding and making a keybind file and that is posted several other places so I won't discuss that part here. You'll be modding the (space) keybind file for this. Ground is much easier to do as it has fewer things to activate but I haven't done so yet.

I started looking around for controller mappers and always hit a dead end. I did not try all of them. Maybe one of them does all this by itself but I am hoping if that were true, someone woulda mentioned it by now after all my whining.

Joy2key couldn't do full trays or lots of buttons at once. STO keybinds couldn't use more than one controller button at the same time.

...but what if I combined them?

What I used:
- Joy2key (which is free but I will be subscribing because it saved me)
- STO Keybinds (also free but soon to be subscribed/donated and special thanks to jeffvan who, although he doesn't even play STO much anymore, helped put the idea in my head)
- a 10-year old gamestop brand xbox 360 controller clone left at my house by an ex-friend whose wife no longer lets him game

STO Keybinds works great for much of what you need except you run out of buttons, eventually. The controller has 13 buttons but the game doesn't recognize combos (due to activating on button press and not DEpress). And seriously, Cryptic, whhyyyyyyyyyy? But I digress.

Joy2key allows you to map controller buttons to keyboard keys and does allow some button combos. I used the keys currently unbound by the game UI. Well, mostly.

So: Gamepad->Joy2key (which runs outside the game)->STOKeybinds(sorta in-game)->STOUI mostly. That is, for the buttons I didn't directly use the game UI for, like RB + LB and Rtrigger and Ltrigger.

This theoretically can be done with a joystick, also. I have a Thrustmaster sitting here I will eventually try. That adds another step as you need to map the joystick buttons to the gamepad THEN Joy2key, etc.. Look here for that.

The difficult parts were:
- figuring out what each app calls the buttons - they are mostly different between the game, STO keybinds, Joy2key and the gamepad itself. Translating each button at each step was a PiTA until I got used to it. Thankfully this method only needs 16 buttons to go through all 4 places. The rest are fewer steps.
- figuring out which keys on the keyboard are the same in each app -- they aren't, all, and using the unbound or useless ones (to me anyway) for this project so as to leave my mouse and keyboard keybinds intact
- assigning buttons in combos and groups and THEN matching the trays and slots to them.
- redoing it until I liked it. Well, sort of. I am sure I will change it.

I started with STO keybinds and figured out what its limitations were - mainly, button combos. You get one button on the gamepad per "thing" you want to do. So you have to configure your tray and slot combinations the way you want them in this app and then find out how many buttons or keys you are short of what you need. There are very clear videos in the help section-- no problem.

Then, you have to go to joy2key and map the rest of the buttons and combos you need (using the options tab and "configure button alias mapping" button). Several keys are not used in the game UI (YGHB,][\/*-+ etc.) so you have enough to choose from and not mess up your default set. I sacrificed the d-pad controls to make each of the 4 directions (it will work with all 8 POV directions but I didn't need them) basically alt keys for the 4 main buttons. So dpadup+XYBA, dpaddownXYBA and so on. Sacrifice 4, gain 16. Can gain up to 32.

Other button combos in joy2key did not work for me, like LB+RB and LB+XYBA. I did not try them all. So I have yet to figure that out but again, I have enough slots for now.

The real down side is setting up each ship in each toon will take a while. Like, a Catholic wedding while. But for someone like me who enjoys the building as much as the playing, I'm OK with it.

Anyway, HERE is a doc where I laid out the buttons and keys, names, combos, etc. Ofc, you'll do it differently and likely so will I but it is a start.

and HERE is an example of a setup on a warbird. I am sure that will change too.

It uses all 10 trays but if you're on controller you can shrink the UI down to almost nothing.

Let the dogpiling begin.