Random deleting/wiping of control bindings!

[FatzDomingo]

Parked the ship, went for a beer, came back........ CHFighterstick wouldn't work. I checked the controls and Lo and behold - no bindings.

This isn't the first time that this has happened (usually every 10 or so logins or so it seems)
I had some comments with one of the Dev Team (nice guy) some time ago about a similar issue, I've reached the following conclusion:-

Stop trying to be too clever about where and how many locations the game stashes the control script files. Have ONE obvious and easily found sub directory. Have in game save to (user defined location) and a select file and restore from same place. Now the aberration is no more than a temporary inconvenience and won't affect players as you try and track down why it happens.

 

[Aussiedroid]

Have you tried renaming the bindings file to something other than the default naming?

That should prevent it from being overridden with an update.

Although I agree, you shouldn't have to worry about such things.

 

[Thetele]

I think there is file witch contain all your bindings. I can´t remember its name anymore, but i used to have a copy of the key bindings because updates removed them, but since 1.3 i haven´t lost my bindings in update, so i have forget how to do it.

 

[Hammerhai]

Easily solved.

First, let me introduce you to a neat little tool you will be absolutely amazed at:
Everything search engine. Google it
Go to voidtools.net
install
wait a few secs for it to initialise on first run. Yes, seconds on multiple terabyte content. It is FAST.
type in custom.binds
back up that file.

Aaaaaand thank me later for introducing you to one of the most useful utilities on windows you can get! It will find any file for you on a windows system you could care to name, as long as you can at least partially get it right. Pro tip: Say you want to read a file by Arthur C Clarke, you do not know the name of the book.
The most important thing to remember about Everything is that hitting the space bar between words typed counts it as a logical "AND". So you type in "Clarke" <space>/<AND> ".pdf" and there are all the Clarke pdf's in your collection. Very easy to remember. If you need more power, it has Regular expressions too. (Searching for all books by Clarke or Heinlein would probably be Clarke | Heinlein, but check that)

For the future:
Also download a little utility called EDConfig.
It does a few things, but what we are interested in is this one:
You can back up and restore your .binds file directory's contents on the last tab.

What happens is this:
If you change the controllers plugged into your PC by unplugging even one used by ED, ED will HIDE the bindings of that particular controller from you.
IF you want to restore bindings:
DO NOT RE DO BINDINGS AND CLICK APPLY. This will lose your first .binds file for ever

INSTEAD

Simply restore the lost controller,
EXIT BOTH THE LAUNCHER AND THE GAME
RESTART THE LAUNCHER
aaaaand you should see your setup again. Why? Because Elite checks the attached controllers present in the launcher, not the game.

Note to the Devs: Bindings can be lost sporadically without good reason as well, leading to issues which do not follow the above pattern. I can confirm that. Either way this part of the game needs a re work.

Note to the OP: Your Stick may be faulty unless you use CH control software and forget to run the script. TM has the same issue. Check your stick.

 

[FatzDomingo]

Thanks mate.... I'm a retired programmer so I'm used to program Wobblies. The stick isn't faulty, CHStart is loaded, and CH software loaded properly. Your solution is well thought out and explained - thanks for that - my issue is the FD have over egged the pudding here in my opinion. KISS seems to have been abandoned for let's show them how clever we are and how complicated we can make things!

This is an issue that has been there since the beginning. It's annoying and time consuming to rectify. The solution, or a possible solution, is simple to implement - so why not? Come on Developers please fix this will you?

 

[Kristov]

I've seen other people also have the problem of their bindings not sticking, and I think they all run software for their devices, could be that that is the real culprit, 3rd party software.

I use a Thrustmaster HOTAS X, and I don't run it's specific software, I simply set it up ingame(use it in multiple games) and I've never had any issues with Elite losing it's settings, nor have I had problems with MOST games and the HOTAS X. Star Citizen would be the exception, but it's actually a known problem in SC.

 

[robbyp]

May not be your problem, but

When you start up Elite (the game, not the launcher) all the control devices mentioned in the bindings file need to bepresent. If not your back to the default.

You can simply quit out, get the devices working again, and go back in and select your custom binding file again.

The best solution is to rename custom.binds once set up to another name, and use that. Folder location is in your appdata frontier folder

 

[Thrace Fulton]

I too have had this issue in the past, and I discovered I was causing it.

Because I had setup my EDTracker in my custom.binds config file, anytime I did not have it plugged in (sometimes I play without a headset on) the custom.binds would not appear on the list. So as long as I leave it plugged in, the file can properly confirm that all control inputs are found for the configuration, and will load properly. I just simply don't hit the headlook "on" button and it works fine.

Not sure if you have a similar situation where you might have controls in use part of the time, but I figured I'd point it out.

 

[Monk]

This happened to my custom binding files recently. When I went back into the bindings folder, I noticed my two custom files (custpad.binds and custjoy.binds) had been duplicated with two new files (custpad.0.8.binds and custjoy.0.8.binds).

I proceeded to destroy the unwanted files (i peeked and saw they had no bindings). When I loaded ED back up, all was well as the controls menu was referencing the correct binds files again.

I also keep a set of backups saved to my Google Drive, just in case.