GASPilot

QuadController Interface

Game Accessibility Suite

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Credits

QuadControl Interface

When I first got mine, I expected that many of the top-tier games would work pretty well with it. After all, most of these games have well designed fully configurable input systems where you can map pretty much everything to whatever you want. The QuadController is based off of a standard Xbox/360 controller - so it looks just like one under Windows, driver and all.

Boy, was I wrong!

The first thing I learned is that just because you can map an axis or a button to something doesn't mean it's usable. I've tried to solve the problems I've encountered with this controller specifically - many of the solutions would work for a variety of controllers if added to the basic configuration options.

• Inconsistent Interfaces - The first thing I encountered was that many games use a mouse for menu selections to start and/or configure a game - even if they never use a mouse again. This is great if they also support whatever controller is configured for movement within a game, but I ran into several that didn't - only the mouse was able to make selections. With the QuadController, it meant that I needed to create seperate modes for the joystick. Fortunately, it has the ability to address all three positional controls on an Xbox controller, so I made one used for ingame navigation, one for mouse, and the last for strafing and vehicle control.


• Digital vs. analog control - in many first-person games, the camera is controlled by the mouse. However, there are generally configurable keys to look up and down and turn. Unfortunately, it seems to be very popular to make these turn too darn fast - making using them to align a headshot completely impossible. Since the QuadController is based on an 8-position digital joystick, even using the joystick control features built in to many games had the exact same problem.
  I've tried to solve this in the current rev of GASPilot by implementing a simple 'attack' filter on camera movement controls, such that they start out moving slowly and accelerate the longer they are held down. It slows you down a bit on large turns, but at least it allows you to target the button you have to push to get through the door ;)


• Press-and-hold buttons - there are often buttons that must be held down in games to perform an action while manipulating other controls. Some examples would be 'c' in Doom 3 for crouch, the left Shift key in Half-Life 2 for sprint, and many others. For many gamers with various disabilities (including carpal tunnel, for you hackers), this can be difficult. For a mouth controller where you have to suck or blow on a tube, it's undoable for long periods of time and impossible to do while trying to shoot by blowing in another tube. My primary solution for this is to make such controls toggles. When the button is pressed (via sipping, puffing, etc.), it just toggles the state and frees the gamer to perform other actions.

Axis Mappings

The QuadController's center is an 8-way digital joystick. It may be used to control the normal joystick (lX and lY in DirectInput), the rotational control (lRx/lRy), or the point of view (rgdwPov[0]). To switch between the different controls, you adjust the Axis Toggle 1 and Axis Toggle 2 switches.

The Z Trigger 1 and Z Trigger 2 control the Z-Axis together. Both are analog trigger controls, and at rest they are centered. Pressing Z Trigger 1 lowers the Z-Axis from centered to min, pressing Z Trigger 2 raises the Z-Axis from centered to max.

Button Mappings

Pushbuttons

Each of the Sip/Puff switches has two buttons - one that is depressed while sipping, and another that is depressed while puffing.