Key binding & joystick axis question

[printz]

I'm currently in the process of improving the gamepad/joystick menu in Eternity. This new page in the Mouse/Gamepad menu is going to appear:

 

 

It lets you control each axis of the joystick (either standalone flight stick or gamepad joystick) and whether it's reversed. It hasn't existed so far. All you could do was to change presets to some known controllers defined in eternity.pke, as in this pic:

 

The problem of course was that it would no longer be accurate if you had other kinds of controllers or joysticks.

 

But here's the question: as I'm adding the joystick (gamepad) axis customization menu, I'd also like to get rid of the (mis)feature where you can assign an entire axis to a single command in this example:

 

 

Basically this binding means that any movement along Axis 4, no matter if left or right, is going to bind to turning left. It's confusing to newcomers: they may only see the "Key bindings" menu, assign axes in this way, and think the gamepad support is broken. So I'm considering removing this capability of assigning axes to single commands. Still, is there any harm if I do this? Are there any gamepads (or game styles) I'm not aware of, where you'd want to assign an arbitrary axis movement to a single command?

 

[andrewj]

I think being able to use an axis for a button-like command can be useful, but it seems really odd that the whole axis becomes a single button.  I would expect that one end (like forward) becomes one button and the other end (like backward) becomes a different button, with names like "+AXIS4" and "-AXIS4" (for example).

 

Plus this behavior could be one of the options in the Axis Settings, e.g. you already have turn, look and move, but also have "fake key" (or so), and the key is not usable in the key binding menu unless setting is enabled for an axis.  So users who wanted this functionality would need to enable it in the axis settings menu first.

Edited May 29, 2020 by andrewj

[printz]

I see that the Descent port Rebirth has a comprehensive menu for joystick sensitivity adjustment. Maybe something similar would be useful for Eternity as well (the menu is much bigger than visible on screen):

Edited May 30, 2020 by printz

[printz]

Something weird I'm experiencing: I have a Thrustmaster Top Gun Afterburner Force Feedback HOTAS. The joystick part of this HOTAS requires external power for actuators to keep the stick upright. But what happens is that Eternity on Windows turns off these actuators, causing the joystick to go limp! And it does not happen with the macOS version of Eternity!