Posted January 20, 2013
Hi folks,
I just spent a few days tweaking various settings on a Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS X flight stick so that it actually works comfortably with WC1, and I thought I'd share what I did in case anyone else is trying to do the same. Much of this has been touched on in various other threads here and elsewhere, but I figured I'd put it all in one place for the benefit of anyone looking for a solution for this particular stick.
Getting the buttons working
By default, Wing Commander only recognizes the stick itself and buttons 1 and 2. Everything else has to be input by keyboard commands. However, by downloading and installing JoyToKey, you can map keyboard functions to the various buttons and stick positions, at which point they will (mostly) work the way you want them to. There aren't quite enough buttons to cover all the keyboard functions, but I don't mind having to reach over to the keyboard for a few rarely-used commands.
One minor issue is that the game sometimes isn't great about recognizing simultaneous input from multiple buttons - e.g. I might need to ease off the accelerator before the game will let me hit the comm button - but for the most part I haven't found this to be a big problem.
I even managed to get the throttle working sort-of properly - I mapped the up position to the "+" key and the down position to the "-" key, with the centre position being neutral, so I can at least use it to accelerate and decelerate. It's close enough to the way that it's "supposed" to work that I don't find it distracting. I haven't found a way to get the rocker button on the throttle working - Joy2Key seems to recognize that it's there, but I don't see anywhere were I can map functions to it.
Other things to note: you can map keys to the 'twist' positions on the main joystick (I use them to roll left and right), and you can map four different functions to the different positions on the POV hat (very handy - I use up and down to cycle my weapons and missiles, respectively, and left and right for targetting and target lock.) There may even be a way to map four more functions onto the diagonal POV-hat positions, but I don't trust my thumb to be that precise in a moment of crisis.
Fixing the sensitivity
The bigger problem with the HOTAS is that it is waaaaaaaaaay too sensitive for WC1 - you try to nudge your aim to the left and end up turning 30 degrees or more. To make matters worse, there's no way to adjust joystick sensitivity in-game. To fix this, I opened the "dosboxWC.conf" file in the Wing Commander folder using notepad. In this file you will see a setting called "sensitivity=100". This is for mouse sensitivity, but it also affects the joystick. Just type in a lower number to reduce sensitivity - I experimented with different numbers, but ended up turning it all the way down to 1, and now the joystick works great.
I just spent a few days tweaking various settings on a Thrustmaster T-Flight HOTAS X flight stick so that it actually works comfortably with WC1, and I thought I'd share what I did in case anyone else is trying to do the same. Much of this has been touched on in various other threads here and elsewhere, but I figured I'd put it all in one place for the benefit of anyone looking for a solution for this particular stick.
Getting the buttons working
By default, Wing Commander only recognizes the stick itself and buttons 1 and 2. Everything else has to be input by keyboard commands. However, by downloading and installing JoyToKey, you can map keyboard functions to the various buttons and stick positions, at which point they will (mostly) work the way you want them to. There aren't quite enough buttons to cover all the keyboard functions, but I don't mind having to reach over to the keyboard for a few rarely-used commands.
One minor issue is that the game sometimes isn't great about recognizing simultaneous input from multiple buttons - e.g. I might need to ease off the accelerator before the game will let me hit the comm button - but for the most part I haven't found this to be a big problem.
I even managed to get the throttle working sort-of properly - I mapped the up position to the "+" key and the down position to the "-" key, with the centre position being neutral, so I can at least use it to accelerate and decelerate. It's close enough to the way that it's "supposed" to work that I don't find it distracting. I haven't found a way to get the rocker button on the throttle working - Joy2Key seems to recognize that it's there, but I don't see anywhere were I can map functions to it.
Other things to note: you can map keys to the 'twist' positions on the main joystick (I use them to roll left and right), and you can map four different functions to the different positions on the POV hat (very handy - I use up and down to cycle my weapons and missiles, respectively, and left and right for targetting and target lock.) There may even be a way to map four more functions onto the diagonal POV-hat positions, but I don't trust my thumb to be that precise in a moment of crisis.
Fixing the sensitivity
The bigger problem with the HOTAS is that it is waaaaaaaaaay too sensitive for WC1 - you try to nudge your aim to the left and end up turning 30 degrees or more. To make matters worse, there's no way to adjust joystick sensitivity in-game. To fix this, I opened the "dosboxWC.conf" file in the Wing Commander folder using notepad. In this file you will see a setting called "sensitivity=100". This is for mouse sensitivity, but it also affects the joystick. Just type in a lower number to reduce sensitivity - I experimented with different numbers, but ended up turning it all the way down to 1, and now the joystick works great.
