Playing Gemstone using a controller.

[Nylisk]

We tried this with some 1 or 2 mmorpgs: Vanguard (gag!) and my friends played Final Fantasy (gag!) for about 2 months and I think they tried it there too.

COMPLETELY UPDATED: See reply further down for updates

What I have is a Playstation 2 controller, hooked up to the computer using a USB connector from Radio Shack.

I play a rogue, a young one at that. So I do not have any where near the amount of skills to readily use that a caster or anybody high level would have. But even so I got the controller to work pretty well to go out for a hunt.

So far I've got the mouse and mouse1 as part of the controller so you really can just sit back and relax. I'm probably going take it out though since it's not really that big of a deal for me to grab the mouse. If I was chilling on the couch, this would certainly stay though.

I've divided the controller up into 3 sections, holding down Control, holding down Alt, and not holding anything down. I have room for more buttons if I were to add shift and start adding things like Shift + Alt + F1 = Spell Up Macro. If you try this, I recommend using Control as one of your toggle buttons so that you can use Psinet's Atlas feature.

UPDATED: I adjusted the sensitivity of the analog stick. The next paragraph is no longer an issue. It frees up the other directional buttons for use of more buttons.
\\\\One more thing to note, the left analog stick is set to 4-way diagonal. It ignores N,E,S,W. I tried it using all directions but it was way to sensitive. Writing this now though I bet I could adjust the sensitivity way down and make it usable for all directions.

Images:

[Asha]

Cool idea man. I love the layouts you've made too.
But I need my keys

[Fallen]

Hah. All you need now is a RP button and you're set. Cool idea for hunting, though. I can definitely see that working for a few classes.

[Jaimaltz]

I am so going to have to try that. Of course, I play with stormfront in a windows VM (linux is the host OS). Getting that hardware to work is going to be a bitch.

[Nylisk]

I just checked the software, you can adjust the sensitivity of the joystick. It's now much easier to go every direction using it. It's still kinda easy to go in an extra direction, but it's very usable. This actually frees up the directional buttons for more extra buttons to play with.

I'm really quite surprised how comfortably you can play gemstone on a controller. I'm not sure how long I will play like this. I mean part of gemstone is the strange things that happen during the game, and what you make of the experience yourself. Being totally disconnected from the gameplay (like every MMORPG out there) can be a bad thing. But it's cool to just sit back and kinda chill while you casually get your mind fried.

[Fallen]

For casual hunting I doubt there will be any issues. I dont see a stand button.

[Nylisk]

I forgot to put that in when I was setting it up last night. I was wondering how I ended up with a blank button.

I sent an email to Nyko, who makes a PS2 controller with a mini keyboard on it. They probably won't be able to tell me if it would work the way I need it to. I may buy it for like $15 or something to see.

Gotta head to work. If anybody is interested, I'll post the photoshop file (to make your own diagram), link to the software I used (xpadder) and the profile I created for Gemstone. So a lot of the work is already done for ya.

[Belnia]

That's pretty cool honestly. I could totally see this for lower level hunting or in totally safe areas (like wind wraiths). I might pick one of those up and try it out.

[cronuss]

I think that's pretty kickass.

I'm always looking for new, fun ways to spice up Gemstone. Things like psinet, lich, atlas, etc.

I think the main benefit of this idea is when hunting for flat out EXP and loot.

I don't do a lot of script-hunting, so I end up manually running around killing stuff by pressing the same few buttons anyways.

Obviously, if you are exploring, overhunting, with other people, or fighting certain complicated critters than this system may not work very well.

But for those situations where you just run around slaughtering the same critters over and over this could be really cool.

I'm going to have to dig up my PS2 controller and USB adapter. (Also, any PC compatible gamepad should work).

Nylisk, gimme that photoshop file sometime...

[Nylisk]

Here's the progress so far!


I spent a lot of time figuring out how to logically setup the controller to make an easy-to-use experience but can also do a lot. I'm mostly satisfied with the results but I still want to tweak it a little bit first. One of the things I did was used F1 to F12 but skipped F4 and F5 because these are default programmed to quit you out of gemstone when you mix them with Alt and Control. I figured I would make it so you can just supplement macros to gemstone instead of having to delete shit in order to make this work.

Some updates:
- okay so you can now move around COMPLETELY on the analog stick. It works great.

- The right analog stick is used for ambushing, head, neck, left arm, etc. That macro is something like \xaim neck\rambush\r

- Since my rogue is still really young, I'm reserving the directional pad for combat maneuvers and Voln stuff.

- the skinning button works like this: (right after a kill you're in offensive stance already) \xkneel\rskin target\rstance defensive\rstand\r The order I have this is important. Sometimes you get round time when you stand, and putting yourself into defensive might save you a deed.

- The search button works like this \xloot target\r

- The "mode2" button works when you hold it down, then every button switches over the next picture. Releasing the button brings it back up to mode1. You can customize the software for a toggle button, or even a 1-way switch where you can't get back unless you program another button.

- Mode 2 has some basic shit like health, exp, look. I used this as the macro \xlook\r{bufferBottom} so that if you ever somehow get your main window scrolled up, this will bring it back down to the present.

- mode 2 enables the psinet atlas feature. Because you have a mouse and the use of the control button, you can use atlas reasonably easily.

- mode 2 uses a simple script of .gohome which sends me to an Atlas room # so I can relax at town.

- Back in "combat mode", after you kill a creature and want to loot it, this is what you do. Press the "loot shit" button. This does multiple things.

- - First it does this macro \xstance defensive\ropen my cloak\r\xstore 2weapon\r which gets you ready to loot. (I use 2 weapons as a rogue.)
- - Second it sends you into "mode 4" which has the mouse mode activated on the right analog stick again, but this time (and this is really helpful) mouse1 is in a toggle mode. Which means its really easy to drag and drop stuff from the room window to your cloak. Click > drag > click again (never hold down the button)
- - If you want to bring up a dialog menu on something, you can either double click, or use the button on the left hand analog stick.

- To return to combat mode, click on the "loot shit" button again, this will close up your cloak and get your 2nd weapon back out: \xready 2weapon\r\xclose my cloak\r



Today, at Best Buy, I picked up a Mad Catz Thumbpad for the PS3. This device CLIPS onto the PS3 controller (and does a reasonable job fitting on the PS2 controller!!) and it connects to your computer via wireless and requires NO SOFTWARE to work.

This keyboard is the last piece of the puzzle to make playing gemstone while being lazy on the couch and drinking beer!!!!! This allows you to do those things that are just too complex to code into the gamepad. You can easily type in "go gate" or whatever. It's a little clumsy at first, but you get used to it fast. You can chat on the keyboard to. Just hit SYMB + J which creates the apostrophe.

This keyboard is also great if you aren't using a playstation controller. The keyboard functions perfectly on it's own without using the gamepad. You can take the clips off of it and use it by itself. You could even play gemstone on this device alone (all though it would be tough)

So if you're playing on another gamepad (perhaps the xbox controller) you can just put this keyboard next to you to keep it handy.