Joystick Curves utility no longer works - xedocproject account suspended! [SOLVED]

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
Went to fire up Joystick Curves this morning as part of the same Elite: Dangerous startup sequence I've been doing for the last 6 years and got the following message ..

q1VuEJz.png


It turns out the software performs a "necessary update check" every time it starts and attempts to access a manifest file at www.xedocproject.com (I never knew this).

Unfortunately if you go to www.xedocproject.com you now get ..

Gc0ZtUA.png


So xedocproject's account has been suspended and now we can't use Joystick Curves anymore!

That's an absolute disaster as all of my analog bindings rely on the software's virtual joystick driver to make my twitchy HOTAS inputs manageable.

Has anyone got any thoughts/suggestions? Is it possible to somehow hack the software to bypass the update check? Or could we somehow spoof the URL it tries to get the manifest from?

For now I've created a new bindings file which uses the raw joystick inputs. You can do this by making a copy of the ".binds" file with your control bindings, changing the PresetName on line 2 and then doing a global replace of ..

Device="FEEDFACE" DeviceIndex="0"​

.. for whatever your original joystick input device was called, for example ..

Device="ThrustMasterHOTAS4"​



FIXED

1) run a command prompt as Administrator (you can get an option to do this by finding the shortcut to Command Prompt in your start menu and right-clicking on it)
2) cd \windows\system32\drivers\etc
3) start wordpad hosts

That will edit your hosts file where you can specify IP addresses for specific host names (people often use this file to block spam sites).

4) Add the following line to the end of that file:


127.0.0.1 is a special IP address that refers to your local machine (often referred to as localhost)

5) Save the file and then reboot your PC.

JoystickCurves should now startup normally (it will try to access www.xedocproject.com, get no response and give up trying).



Alternative solution: dev build of JoystickCurves by @dr_chef which doesn't include the installer/updater stuff.

Joystick Curves utility no longer works - xedocproject account suspended! [SOLVED]

Went to fire up Joystick Curves this morning as part of the same Elite: Dangerous startup sequence I've been doing for the last 6 years and got the following message .. It turns out the software performs a "necessary update check" every time it starts and attempts to access a manifest file at...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk
 
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Alec Turner

Alec Turner
alexzk said:
github.com

GitHub - xedoc/WTJoystickCurves: Joystick Curves editor for War Thunder

Joystick Curves editor for War Thunder. Contribute to xedoc/WTJoystickCurves development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

Learn to compile and use open source :D
Click to expand...
What are you saying, is it possible to recompile joystickcurves.exe from an open source repository and hack out the manifest check?

Edit: it's 5 years old but I wonder if we could build a working version from this repository?

github.com

JoystickCurves/JoystickCurves at master · xedoc/JoystickCurves

Contribute to xedoc/JoystickCurves development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com
 
Last edited:

alexzk

A
Alec Turner said:
What are you saying, is it possible to recompile joystickcurves.exe from an open source repository and hack out the manifest check?
Click to expand...
It is source of that it seems (at least names are the same). Check his repo for more projects, if any related. This means you can do anything with this, anything you can imagine.
 

MPL3D

MPL3D
Disconnect from the Internet before launching Joystick Curves so it doesn't perform the check. Then re-connect to the www.

[Edit: Tested & working].
 
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[VR] DDM_Reaper20

[VR] DDM_Reaper20
Yeah, same here. At first I thought I had borked something.

Weird that this program requires internet access. I uninstalled it, unfortunately, so I cannot reinstall. I doubt that disconnecting would do any good, however. If it doesn't get a response at all, it will likely crap itself.
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
FIXED

1) run a command prompt as Administrator (you can get an option to do this by finding the shortcut to Command Prompt in your start menu and right-clicking on it)
2) cd \windows\system32\drivers\etc
3) start wordpad hosts

That will edit your hosts file where you can specify IP addresses for specific host names (people often use this file to block spam sites).

4) Add the following line to the end of that file:


127.0.0.1 is a special IP address that refers to your local machine (often referred to as localhost)

5) Save the file and then reboot your PC.

JoystickCurves should now startup normally (it will try to access www.xedocproject.com, get no response and give up trying).
 
Last edited:

[VR] DDM_Reaper20

[VR] DDM_Reaper20
Alec Turner said:
FIXED

1) run a command prompt as Administrator (you can get an option to do this by finding the shortcut to Command Prompt in your start menu and right-clicking on it)
2) cd \windows\system32\drivers\etc
3) start wordpad hosts

That will edit your hosts file where you can specify IP addresses for specific host names (people often use this file to block spam sites).

4) Add the following line to the end of that file:


127.0.0.1 is a special IP address that refers to your local machine (often referred to as localhost)

5) Save the file and then reboot your PC.

JoystickCurves should now startup normally (it will try to access www.xedocproject.com, get no response and give up trying).
Click to expand...

Sorry to bother you, but I have no clue how to do this. I opened the command prompt (win10, German version) and typed

cd \windows\system32\drivers

but the system tells me that "cd" is unknown. :/

I uninstalled Joystick Curves... any tips on how to do that? Please. :)
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
[VR] DDM_Reaper20 said:
Sorry to bother you, but I have no clue how to do this. I opened the command prompt (win10, German version) and typed

cd \windows\system32\drivers

but the system tells me that "cd" is unknown. :/

I uninstalled Joystick Curves... any tips on how to do that? Please. :)
Click to expand...
OK - so 'cd' is a DOS command which should work in the command prompt to change to a different directory. Can you verify that you see something like the following:

2wj9AXF.png
 

dr_chef

D
Personally I use Joystick Gremlin so I can't really tell if it works. But I just compiled a "dev" version without all of the installer/updater stuff attached to it.
You can try if that one works for you.
It opens up for me without the need to modify the hosts file, but I can't tell if it needs any additional settings.

Let me know if it helped :)

Hm seems like I cannot attach a zip file here? So I'll go with an external link:
 

[VR] DDM_Reaper20

[VR] DDM_Reaper20
Okay, gotcha. I made a dumb mistake -- did NOT enter the command prompt with administrative rights.

I did as you wrote, my file now looks like this (note: I added the line you specified to the very end, then saved and rebooted).

Unfortunately, it still does not allow me to install the programm. I might be (censored)...

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost
# 127.0.0.1 www.xedocproject.com
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
[VR] DDM_Reaper20 said:
THANK YOU, kind Sir.

I am truly a waste of valuable oxygen. I had NOT used the command prompt with administrator rights. NOW I've got it open, I'm checking right now for that addendum... THANK YOU!!
Click to expand...
Let me know how you get on, happy to help.

@dr_chef thanks for looking into that, hopefully we won't need to go that far now but for reference, can we get hold of the dev version you built from somewhere (or if you just built it from that github repository and that was easy to do could you maybe post brief instructions ... don't worry if that's a hassle tho, looks like we have a viable workaround).

Edit: thanks for the link, I replied before it was there.
 
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Alec Turner

Alec Turner
[VR] DDM_Reaper20 said:
Okay, gotcha. I made a dumb mistake -- did NOT enter the command prompt with administrative rights.

I did as you wrote, my file now looks like this (note: I added the line you specified to the very end, then saved and rebooted).

Unfortunately, it still does not allow me to install the programm. I might be (censored)...

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost
# 127.0.0.1 www.xedocproject.com
Click to expand...
Get rid of that leading '#' (which marks the entire line as a comment).
 

dr_chef

D
@Alec Turner: I just compiled the GIT Repo you mentioned (with a few adjustments, as I did not compile by default)

When compiling you have the option to use the dev build or to "publish a build".
The published build contains all the setup and updater stuff, while the dev build does not.

It should still run on any computer. I simply zipped it and uploaded it to my webspace (though I would prefer to upload it here to the forum so I stays here and my personal webspace is not involved ;-) ).
Link is provided in my previous post
 

Alec Turner

Alec Turner
dr_chef said:
@Alec Turner: I just compiled the GIT Repo you mentioned (with a few adjustments, as I did not compile by default)

When compiling you have the option to use the dev build or to "publish a build".
The published build contains all the setup and updater stuff, while the dev build does not.

It should still run on any computer. I simply zipped it and uploaded it to my webspace (though I would prefer to upload it here to the forum so I stays here and my personal webspace is not involved ;-) ).
Link is provided in my previous post
Click to expand...
Nice one! I've downloaded that in case I need it later. I hope you don't mind but I've linked to your post from the OP as an alternative solution.
 

CMDR X

CMDR X
Alec Turner said:
FIXED

1) run a command prompt as Administrator (you can get an option to do this by finding the shortcut to Command Prompt in your start menu and right-clicking on it)
2) cd \windows\system32\drivers\etc
3) start wordpad hosts

That will edit your hosts file where you can specify IP addresses for specific host names (people often use this file to block spam sites).

4) Add the following line to the end of that file:


127.0.0.1 is a special IP address that refers to your local machine (often referred to as localhost)

5) Save the file and then reboot your PC.

JoystickCurves should now startup normally (it will try to access www.xedocproject.com, get no response and give up trying).
Click to expand...

Ninjad. (y)

Confirmed. Works
I used 0.0.0.0 but both address do the same. o7
 
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