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I had a play around with a little program called Xpadder over the weekend, Xpadder is for PC's and works with any usb controller, flight sticks or steering wheels, it lets you map the keyboard and mouse to any button you want, you can even have several layers of controls, for instance hold right trigger to enable another set of buttons to assign.
Now I‘ve had controller config programs before but this really dose take it to a whole new level, it’s a little tricky but thankfully there’s a lot of guides to be found and some helpful YouTube tutorials.
I originally got it to add prone to the Crysis controller setup as there is no in game configuration and the standard set up only lets you crouch, I simply copied someone’s else’s advice on the forum and assigned Z to the left stick click, so now one click goes straight into prone and holding the click crouches, works great I cant imagine playing without it.
Then along comes Dawn of War with no controller support, Nowt wrong with that the forums say keyboard / mouse is the best way to play, and there right. But…. some were saying it would be to slow and unplayable, This got me thinking and in the back of my head a little voice was challenging me to make a controller config that not only worked but worked well.
Now I’ve not played very far into the game, but so far all commands can be accessed via mouse and clicking on appropriate icons, yeah I know there are hot keys but getting the mouse configured to the controller would be the first task.
This was quite easy, mouse direction on right stick, left & right buttons to A & X (360 controller) and mouse wheel to the triggers, So now I had full control with the mouse and I could zoom in and out with the triggers, but the mouse movement was slow, so had a hunt around for stick sensitivity, it’s default was 32, so I put it right up to 100, Wrong!... The mouse curser was now so fast it really was unplayable, tried 60 that was comparable to the real mouse speed, but fine movement and precise object clicking was harder so ended up about 50, a slight trade off for speed to allow better precision. (All this can be done on the fly by just pausing the game windowing out making a change and then going back in, no restarts necessary.)
Now hot keys:
First to quickly access the 4 units, (1,2,3,4) used the D pad
Deselect selected (Esc) B button
Select all units (Ctrl + A) thought I’d have a problem with putting two keys on one button but no Xpadder handles it easy, assigned to the Y button
Menu F10 to the start button
Found I had a problem left clicking and selecting more than one unit because I had to take my thumb off the stick, So also assigned left mouse button to left shoulder button so left mouse is on L/shoulder & X button (tried putting mouse on left stick but it felt unnatural)
Map movement can be done with mouse or arrow keys so assigned arrow keys to left stick.
So far so good, I can play on the couch using the family TV with no problems, all the load out menus work fine as I‘ve got all the basic functions covered, I can even negotiate the internet with it
And I’ve a right shoulder button free so I can layer more hot keys if I need to.
Not a Keyboard/mouse beater but not a bad attempt for a couch potato.
But one thing still alludes me, and I‘ve not even found how to do this with the keyboard yet…. How do you get the unit that shoot in one direction to set up pointing another way?
Xpadder can be found for free, but the latest version requires a donation to the website, for this you get access to help and a huge database of already existing member submitted controller profiles for most games.
….. but the latest version can be found for free if you Google the right words.
Now I‘ve had controller config programs before but this really dose take it to a whole new level, it’s a little tricky but thankfully there’s a lot of guides to be found and some helpful YouTube tutorials.
I originally got it to add prone to the Crysis controller setup as there is no in game configuration and the standard set up only lets you crouch, I simply copied someone’s else’s advice on the forum and assigned Z to the left stick click, so now one click goes straight into prone and holding the click crouches, works great I cant imagine playing without it.
Then along comes Dawn of War with no controller support, Nowt wrong with that the forums say keyboard / mouse is the best way to play, and there right. But…. some were saying it would be to slow and unplayable, This got me thinking and in the back of my head a little voice was challenging me to make a controller config that not only worked but worked well.
Now I’ve not played very far into the game, but so far all commands can be accessed via mouse and clicking on appropriate icons, yeah I know there are hot keys but getting the mouse configured to the controller would be the first task.
This was quite easy, mouse direction on right stick, left & right buttons to A & X (360 controller) and mouse wheel to the triggers, So now I had full control with the mouse and I could zoom in and out with the triggers, but the mouse movement was slow, so had a hunt around for stick sensitivity, it’s default was 32, so I put it right up to 100, Wrong!... The mouse curser was now so fast it really was unplayable, tried 60 that was comparable to the real mouse speed, but fine movement and precise object clicking was harder so ended up about 50, a slight trade off for speed to allow better precision. (All this can be done on the fly by just pausing the game windowing out making a change and then going back in, no restarts necessary.)
Now hot keys:
First to quickly access the 4 units, (1,2,3,4) used the D pad
Deselect selected (Esc) B button
Select all units (Ctrl + A) thought I’d have a problem with putting two keys on one button but no Xpadder handles it easy, assigned to the Y button
Menu F10 to the start button
Found I had a problem left clicking and selecting more than one unit because I had to take my thumb off the stick, So also assigned left mouse button to left shoulder button so left mouse is on L/shoulder & X button (tried putting mouse on left stick but it felt unnatural)
Map movement can be done with mouse or arrow keys so assigned arrow keys to left stick.
So far so good, I can play on the couch using the family TV with no problems, all the load out menus work fine as I‘ve got all the basic functions covered, I can even negotiate the internet with it
And I’ve a right shoulder button free so I can layer more hot keys if I need to.Not a Keyboard/mouse beater but not a bad attempt for a couch potato.
But one thing still alludes me, and I‘ve not even found how to do this with the keyboard yet…. How do you get the unit that shoot in one direction to set up pointing another way?
Xpadder can be found for free, but the latest version requires a donation to the website, for this you get access to help and a huge database of already existing member submitted controller profiles for most games.
….. but the latest version can be found for free if you Google the right words.
