joystick for cycles & deadzones or sensitivity

[Divmontru]

This is regarding lightcycles:

I have a Saitek x52 with the separate, left (for me) hand throttle as well as the joystick for the right hand.

Throttle's fine, but for the joystick, no matter what combination of X axis Dead Zones (under Saitek's Control Panel) and Sensitivity (under SST programming software or Profile Editor), I can't get left & right to act in an acceptable manner. The closest thing I found was dead zones set to 1/2 and sensitivity set one click up from all the way low. That worked at first but still starts doing kookey stuff. Either experimental settings are too sensitive and the slightest twitch causes mini-circles (squares) and you crash into your own trail immediately, or other settings cause you to turn, say left, and then you can't turn right... or the center stick position causes a right turn after turning left, etc... I've tried combinations of these settings 'till I'm blue in the face (and not a cool-looking neon blue like the movie, heh). I installed & glanced at the Joystick2 ware mentioned in the FAQ's, but it didn't seem to be of any particular, extra use in this case, so I uninstalled it, but correct me if I'm wrong... it doesn't actually even see this X52, and all the Saitek programming tools are working correctly; the game just doesn't like any parameters I've tried.

I did notice Tron 2.0, itself, has both Fast and Normal "Turn Speed" categories you can turn up or down, but that will multiply possible combinations of all three or four variables even further and I'm already thoroughly pooped after hours of this.

Does anybody use the joystick for lightcycles effectively? Can you suggest dead zone + sensitivity (and/or Tron's Turn Speed) settings for this facet of the game? I mean, using keys for left and right turns with my right hand while having the throttle working fine in my left hand will still be a great improvement for me over purely buttons, if the stick's right out for cycles... but it would be great to set the stick to behave something like the arcade game (I'm 39 years old next month)

The throttle being programmed to "W" and "S" is sweet (though programming was initially counter-intuitive: 0-33% is fast, not slow, while higher numbers mean slow... middle or 33%-67% is fine left null for default speed; reversal was easy).

[TronFAQ]

Unfortunately, Tron 2.0's joystick support is pretty bad. In fact, I'd call it broken. It's never worked well for anyone.

If it's possible with the Saitek software: I'd map each axis extreme to a key on the keyboard for turning, like you've already done for acceleration on the throttle. Tron 2.0 doesn't use analog sensitivity with Lightcycles, except for when you look around using the 3rd person camera. Acceleration and turning are strictly digital affairs, and using an analog control for these provides no benefit. I'd turn off the joystick setting in the game altogether, and just use the Saitek software to translate the joystick movements to key presses.

P.S. Man, that Saitek X52 you have is sah-weet!

[Divmontru]

Thanks for the info., yeah that makes sense what you're saying about it not using analog joystick sensitivity for the lightcycle controls, just digital... and what I'd already done is map joystick X axis Left to "A" and Right to "D", but since it's just a generalized mapping and not farthest/extreme movement only, the analog stick sends multiple D's and A's like crazy all over the place, so my only other option, visible in what I've got , was to try and use the stick's programming software's sensitivity setting and deadzones to try and improve upon it, which it does to some degree but it's still not really playable that way. That would be sweet if I could just program the extremes, like you're saying. I might continue try using combinations of those available settings in conjunction with Tron's turn speed variables. But even if it doesn't work out, and I use keys to turn along with the working throttle (which did have actual percentage values of positions programmable), it's still a huge improvement for me over just using just keys for both, mental concentration-wise. I've already started doing much better that way. Thanks.

[Daddyo]

Welcome to the forums. Although a joystick sounds like a great idea, it'll surely put you behind those using the keyboard. There's guys who throw away keyboards for ones with a faster action (shorter throw) just to weave that much faster. You'll understand once you see these nuts in action.

[Divmontru]

Oh, haha, cool. I've got a gaming keyboard so perhaps it's somewhat well-suited. It's a Logitech G15 and seems to have less of a distance than some of my prior keyboards, perhaps more than some. Seems comfy enough. I have thrown disks in maps on a server doing derez but can't wait to practice up a bit more on cycles and do that in multiplayer, as it was in my top three favorite oldschool arcade games of all time. I remember burning beyond belief to get to Chuck E. Cheese's or Fuzzy Wuzzy's as a kid after watching the movie.