Keybindings (maybe make them stick?)

[Para Handy]

Yeah but he was asking about putting a backup directory there, so no naming clash happening

I know what he was asking but your words (which I quoted to explain my interjection) were "It's irrelevant where you keep the backup." The rest of your remarks were clear about the backup being elsewhere so I was not criticising you but merely making a clarification and explaining why it was important.

(BTW I only just noticed that the board renumbered the line I quoted to #1 - I have amended my post to show the correct #5 - sorry for missing that earlier.)

 

[VR StarLightPL]

I know what he was asking but your words (which I quoted to explain my interjection) were "It's irrelevant where you keep the backup." The rest of your remarks were clear about the backup being elsewhere

You're right, I didn't think of it in this sense. It should read "it doesn't matter where you keep up your backup directory" And also very good point about name clashes inside XML files. That said however, I often name my backups .bak, so I wasn't aware of that preset name clash trap either Thanks for sharing, I will edit the post

 

[Globusdiablo]

...Looking at the vendor and product IDs (VID_16D0&PID_0AEC) I see that this is from a company that sells PIDs to anyone, but using the context of the headlook bind, it makes me think you may have had some sort of head tracker before, but don't now?

Regardless, this would seem to be the problem. Every single physical or virtual device that was bound must be attached when you start the game, or the game will dump your old binds into a backup and give you an error.

Emphasis mine.

Quick update. I just tried "reactivating" my july file by removing the backup extension, and moving all the other crap to my new backup folder. I then inserted my headtrackerdevice. I can't remember specifically which devices went into which ports at the time of the July custom bind creation. But, Elite: Dangerous fired up, and had my July custom bindings on hand in the dropdown menu.

I think you pretty much nailed it in the above emphasis. I'll update my OP with this juicy piece of intel.

I might be giving E: D another try during the holidays yet.

 

[Globusdiablo]

Oh, and I created a shortcut to my bindings folder. I have a feeling it might come in handy.

 

[Morbad]

I can't remember specifically which devices went into which ports at the time of the July custom bind creation.

Evidently, the game itself does not appear to care about ports, only device IDs. However, Windows does keep track of ports when it creates HID devices and in some cases this may result in software giving the device on a different port a different ID.

There must be some additional factor to the complete binding loss issue, as I can get the game to throw these errors and create the backup without touching the custom.binds file. As soon as I attach the devices, everything works and continues to work, without having to rename anything. It's likely that custom.binds is only actually overwritten if one goes into the controls menu and attempts to apply a change.

 

[Globusdiablo]

...There must be some additional factor to the complete binding loss issue, as I can get the game to throw these errors and create the backup without touching the custom.binds file. As soon as I attach the devices, everything works and continues to work, without having to rename anything. It's likely that custom.binds is only actually overwritten if one goes into the controls menu and attempts to apply a change.

Cheers Morbad. Probably, but I wouldn't know what to look for. I take a stab at E: D from time to time, and for the last year or so it has been inconsistent hit and miss for me. Even my July settings were extremely basic, not even galaxy map configured...

I gave it a good run today, configuring most of what's needed for basic flight from the bottom. Flight controls, galaxy map traversing and head tracking device calibration. I had almost forgotten how excellent this game is when it works.

I've learned where and how to check and to some degree handle my custom binding files via this thread, and hopefully that can keep me from too much grief in future.

And I'll leave my headtracker dongle in for safety sake.

Should I delete all the old backup files and just have the latest bind and a start file, and copies in the backup folder?

 

[Gully Foyle]

It's been said a million times before, so one more time can't hurt.

With a game this dependent on custom keybindings, how come Elite: Dangerous never forgets my custom display settings, but always forgets my custom keybindings. Same old Hotas (Thrustmaster X), same old PC, same old usb port.

And on that note, how can FD supply a Thrustmaster Hotas X preset that doesn't even include vertical thrusters? Horisontal thrusters, of course. Verticals? Noo...
And this hits you as soon as you try to launch. I can't be bothered to find out what other basic controls FDs Thrustmaster X preset doesn't include.

Every time I want to get back into this game, FD reminds me why I can't. It almost feels like FD is trolling..

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EDIT and probable solution. Big thanks to Morbad for his patience, insight and time:


In my case it was a missing head tracker...

I forgot to plug in the receiver for the srv game controller and lost all my bindings and was flipping out until I realized

 

[Morbad]

Should I delete all the old backup files and just have the latest bind and a start file, and copies in the backup folder?

Get all of your binds the way you want them, then make backups (you can keep on in that subfolder for easy access, but you should also have another copy saved somewhere else just in case) of that bind and delete the extraneous binds.