The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Okay, it's acutally for StarScape that I finally tried this, but I'm starting to use a gamepad to play my games and on a gamepad having "joy 1 up" as thrust doesn't quite allow the finess I'm used to with the keyboard. So I re-mapped thrust to be a shoulder button.

Do any of you use a gamepad, and did you do anything similar, or does everyone use "up" for thrust and how's that work for you?

IIRC, SC1 on the Genesis used one of the fire buttons for thrust (in addition to the traditional "up"). Sounds like a good idea to me, if you're stuck with a gamepad (I never got the hang of gamepads myself).

Back when I played SC1 on my Genesis, it took some getting used to. I remember it felt very awkward at first and I would frequently bungle basic maneuvers like gravity whips and such. After a while though, it becomes second nature and you really don't mind using Up for Thrust.

Admittedly though, it helped that SC1 was very slow on the Genesis, so I didn't need as much precision then.

I get better finesse with the gas ..err.. thrust as a button then up on the d-pad. Pressing up and simultaneously trying to turn is something of a pain for me. I also map the keyboard the same way as arrow keys left and right respectively and enter key as thrust. For me it's all about the (star)"control" ;)

I briefly experimented with separating the thrust key back in 1994, but I find the good old cursor keys plus right control and shift to work best for me (or a similar layout on the left side of the keyboard for 2 player local games).

So it appears that I'm the only one trying to use a gamepad with Star Control. You know, guys, we have to figure this out if UQM is ever going to show up on XBLA.

I was under the impression that using gamepads in UQM isn't a problem any more with the new input configuration system, i.e. you can define thrust to be a button or a direction on any axis on a pad just as easily as you change keys. That said, I only have a broken old 2-button joystick I mostly use to test the robustness of joystick code (anything that's playable on that piece of scrap is going to be fine on any reasonable joystick or pad).

That said, I think adding button 2 on a joystick as an additional "up" key in the defaults would be a good idea. For compatibility with 2-button sticks and pads (which is pretty much the minimum on most platforms, at least PCs, anyway), I recommend we stick to using buttons 0 and 1 for primary and secondary fire respectively (by default). Button 3 could be mapped to "escape", which would essentially allow UQM to be played without a keyboard if you have a 4-button game controller.

I do use a gamepad most of the time(PSX gamepad via USB adapter). The only time I use a keyboard is when I'm playing over the internet. Thats how I ment that to come out in my last post.