Horizons Disabled Gamer Cant Play

[TheLastRebel]

A buddy of mine who is a disabled gamer was born with no arms, and plays with his feet.

Because of this he cannot really use either a keyboard or a standard controller setup. How he normally games is through a piece of software called Xpadder, which allows him to map any key to any bit of the joypad, including the analogue sticks. For example he can set the right stick to down being is sprint and up being aim, instead of using the right stick to look around.

This works fine on many games, however in Elite Dangerous the game automatically detects whether a controller is present, which clashes with the Xpadder setup and forces the controller to use the game's control setup instead, which doesn't offer the flexibility he needs.

All he needs to allow him to play is a way turn off this detection. In many games this is done by a manual choice between keyboard controls and using a controller, but just a simple toggle to turn the detection off would also do it.

It should hopefully only be a minor thing to patch in, but it would mean the world to gamers such as my friend who rely on this kind of remapping, and turn the game from completely unplayable to unplayable.

 

[Snooch leBooch]

Hmm, to be honest, I'm not sure i understood you correctly. I was having similar issues with the emulation software i used when starting out with Ed, i did use an elite preset though (control options - preset - gamepad with yaw) but after a lot of manual key setting i'm quite sure it's possible without elite rebinding/overwriting or plainly not accepting your settings or emulation software. Even with multiple controllers and/or emulation software you should be able to choose the 'manual bindings' (or similar) in the keybinds with the program loaded in the background. The key press would then be freely assignable. All pre 2.1 though

Here's a keybind (NOT mine so no guarantees) from github, maybe use this and then alter the keybinds in your settings or just to get the appropriate tab in the game settings to show up (Note where it tells you to copy over the xxxx.binds file, maybe that's missing?), https://github.com/cmdrdahkron/elite-binds
Hope it helps

 

[Ian Skippy]

I'm not entirely sure if I understand it correctly either. Do you mean that to ED Xpadder is just 'one big button', and you cant segment the pads the way you describe? I'm not sure what you mean with 'manual choice between keybord and controller', because ED has that. Can you give some more info on what you need precisely? Obviously we cant change how ED works as a community, but I'm thinking adding a virtual device between Xpadder and ED might be of some use here.

 

[TheLastRebel]

no he has to disable controller support to bind everything so he can play with his feet

 

[Ian Skippy]

no he has to disable controller support to bind everything so he can play with his feet

I'm sorry, but that is still not very clear. Why does the detection clash with anything? ED detects half a dozen controllers here, and it doesnt clash with anything I want to do, including combining different peripherals into the same bindinglist. Without Detection, Xpadder cant send anything to ED, as the game doesn't know to listen to that input. Being able to bind controllers is not dependent on default settings. I think there may be an issue if ED sees Xpadder as a gamepad (didn't that have limited binding options only in default mode?), but you can rebind that.

 

[Devari]

I think what the OP is saying is that his friend's Xpadder software isn't being recognized by Elite and any config/keybinds to the controller need to be done directly through Elite's menu. By "detection" I think he just means that Elite is not detecting the use of the Xpadder and recognizing it's config overrides, not that there is actually an issue with the game detecting the control inputs from the controller itself. Meaning if Xpadder gives him a unique option for axis/keybinds that Elite's config menu doesn't use then his friend is restricted to whatever Elite's menu allows him to bind.

The best example I can give is that many games (including Elite) often ignore numpad-specific numeric input from keyboards, i.e., if you have a command mapped to "1" and try to toggle numpad to press "1" on the numpad the game won't recognize the numpad toggle as being equivalent to "numeric" input. So for example if I want to bring up the Left MFD panel with "1" and have mapped it to the regular numeric "1" key I can only do this with the regular number key to which it was bound. Pressing the "numpad" toggle button on the keyboard and using the numpad's "1" button instead will only trigger whatever keybind I mapped the "numpad 1" key to (assuming I bound it at all). So Elite can't "detect" the context of the numpad input depending on the numpad toggle button and it will always use whatever the direct keybinds have been mapped to regardless of whether the numpad toggle is on or off. I think that's the issue here, i.e., the game can't recognize Xpadder's control schemes in the same way that it can't recognize a numpad toggle when detecting numeric "input". This is actually quite common behavior in many games, I use the numpad for most MMOs I play and usually a game will have no ability to detect "numpad toggle" on the keyboard and just treats the numpad as individually-bound, specific keys that have no relation at all to any type of numeric input.

I don't think there is any way to "fix" or "change" this behavior as FD's config menu seems to be hardwired to bind to direct keyboard input irrespective of keyboard toggles (like numpad) and I suspect this is why it doesn't work well with control "overlays" from third-party software. What I don't quite understand is why the OP's friend can't find a way to recreate anything that Xpadder can accomplish by using Elite's in-game config setup instead. Some more information would be helpful with what exactly the OP's friend can't achieve with his controls because we may have a workaround that achieves the same effect in-game and lets him use the control pad as desired. I have recently been mapping my configs to accommodate keyboard-only use for when I'm travelling with my laptop (and don't have access to a joystick) and I've found the in-game config options are more than adequate to accommodate almost any desired control layout even when using just the keyboard. The only real limitation I've run into is that you can't use single-button keys to truly simulate an "analog" flight axis, i.e., pressing a keyboard "button" that has been mapped to "pitch up" gives you the equivalent of "full deflection" joystick pitch input. This can make precise control difficult when using single buttons to replace analog flight controls but other than this I've found that I can play the game fairly well using only keyboard input so I think there should be a way to make the game playable without necessarily needing Xpadder.

 

[TheLastRebel]

what is is is the program xpadder conflicts with games with controller support and they clash with each other all he needs is a function of the gme to disable controller support and he can play no problems

 

[Devari]

So are you saying that by simply having Xpadder active that Elite somehow fails to recognize the controller correctly in-game at all? If so then can't he simply disable Xpadder prior to launching Elite and use Elite's config menu to set up the controller? Even if he has to kill the Xpadder process in Task Manager prior to launching Elite it should be possible to turn Xpadder "off" (i.e., disable it if necessary) if it conflicts with Elite in some way. That's a completely different issue from what you described in your original post, which was that your friend needed Xpadder's "flexibility" to set up a control scheme that he could use and the issue sounded like he couldn't get Xpadder to "work" with Elite, not that Xpadder prevented him from using the controller in Elite in the first place.

 

[Privata]

I would contact support about this.
They need to know about this and maybe there is a work-around

 

[Deleted member 115407]

I know nothing about controllers, and so am refraining from any kind of technical comment.

That being said, I hope that your friend is able to play and enjoy this game soon

 

[TheLastRebel]

ya i done sent in a support ticket about the issue i just cant explain it properly all he needs is a way to disable the games controller recognition and he will be able to play

 

[Devari]

ya i done sent in a support ticket about the issue i just cant explain it properly all he needs is a way to disable the games controller recognition and he will be able to play

I'm still not sure exactly what the problem is. If your friend disables Xpadder can he start the game and bind controls to his controller through the in-game options menu? If so then I'm not sure support will be able to help with this issue because as I said Elite tends to use their own config setup (which as I mentioned is generally extremely flexible) and there is minimal if any support for third-party controller setups. There might be a way for us to help your friend create an equivalent config setup using Elite's in-game configs to accomplish what he needs to be able to play the game but you need to clarify what exactly the problem is because it's still not clear to me.

 

[TheDayman]

Isn't there a way to override that via 3rd party software? I forget what it's called.... PS profiler.... PXP profiler... something like that. But it essentially allows you to override any and every control. Would that work?

 

[Casey Casem]

I'm suprised no one mentions VoiceAttack. With one foot on the throttle and the other on the stick AND voice activated macros, I think your friend can play the game to its maximum potential.

 

[subsy]

UPDATE: I have just tried xpadder with my xbox360 controller and I have got xpadder working with Elite Dangerous. Give me a few mins to write the steps that fixed it.


It could be possible to disable the xbox controller's or another controllers detection but still use it through xpadder. - HAVE TESTED AND IT WORKS.

*Not sure if this step is required* First go into the game and set your controls to classic keyboard and then exit the game.

If you go to control panel --> device manager --> Human interface devices

You should see HID-compliant game controller (the xbox controller) or your controller could be listed as something else:

http://i.imgur.com/JvgbtQP.png

Now right click on the HID-complaint game controller or another controller listed and click disable. Xpadder should still work and Elite Dangerous should not detect the controllers default controls and instead just respond to what you set on xpadder.

Good luck!

P.S. You will have to enable your controller again in human interface devices for other games.

good effort mate ..rep +