Newbie trying to get started

[Jaxom]

I can't begin to tell you all how excited I am that I FINNALLY found a flight/combat type sim for space! I've always liked various flight sims, but I'd have to say my ultimate fun was the hours I spent way back when playing countless hours of Descent. Then later Desent 2 and Descent: Freespace. I never had the pleasuer of playing wingcommander or privateer back in those days. But got perty darn good in descent. It took a bit, but managed to get my thrustmaster 1, throttle and peddles to work quite well in that game as well. Many of my friends would turn green the way I flew through those tunnels and what not in Desecnt. I cannot wait to expiernce those thrilling times again with Vega Strike.

So here I am, eager to start a on a new adventure. But I need your help! While I generally make it my duty to first do form searches while lurking a bit before I ask questions of any forum I join, I am just to anxious to get going an playing VS. What I need is few pointers on how to set up my Saiktek X45 controllers. And as I promised, I did do a forum search on how to set these up. But, alas, I'm still somewhat confused. I followed this and that link until I found the /bindings for joysticks faq. And from reading this as well as any refrence I found on configuring the x45 in the forum, I'm aware that I can copy the suggested file to an editor, preferably edit ++. (I stil have to download this.)

When reading the joystick bindings faq.... Under the section for the x45 there's first what appears to me to be a description line for the x45. This I'm assuming it can be added to the joystick/mouse drop down seletion? Where withing the bindings section would this go then? Then there's a few lines of instructions that I sorta understand. (I was able to find the /binding section of the config.txt file) Following this is the bindings for the x45. Where in the /bindings file would this go? Like I said, I'm a bit rusty with scripts. Last time I was doing that I was going to school at Linuxgruven and learning about bash scriting in turbo linux. Until i get a hang for your scripts and scripting again, I'm afraid I might delete something important. It took me a while to down load, and install VS. Had a few issues while downloading, where it would get to about 28% then suddenly zip to the end, when I tried to install, said corrupt file. Once I did mange to get a complete download, when I installed same thing happend. Over all I must have downloaded and attempted to install like 7-8 times.

But it's working now!!! WOOOHOOO!!! Please help me get my x45 gear working! I can't wait to do some blasting!

Oh, I almost forgot During my reading on my stick and throttle I am aware of the issue with making sure it's calibrated properly. I would like to know however if any has modified the throttle feature yet. As I understand it, it doesn't matter where it's possitioned, it's either on or off. Or no real speed controll unless i use the keyboard numbers for speed.

Thanks,

Jax

[CLoneWolf]

Hi, and welcome to VS
Don't fear editing the config as long as you keep a backup copy somewhere safe
I see that the initial instructions are not repeated for every joystick, so take a look for example at the SideWinder Force Feedback Pro section.
You'll see that you need to:

- expand the "#cat Joystick" line, adding a tag for your joystick, like...
#cat Joystick no_joy joy_normal joy_throttle joy_axis joy_throttle_and_axis joy_t_a_rev joy_saitek_x45
(the tag you add is arbitrary, but it must be consistent in all the changes you'll make)

- add a line with the description, like...
#desc joy_saitek_x45 Saitek X45
(put it right after the other #desc joy_* lines)

- add the section from the wiki, the one that starts with <!-- #joy_saitek_x45 -->
(put it right after the other <!-- #joy_* sections)

Of course, once you get it working, you're free to change the button/hat bindings anyway you see fit.
The use of any editor with syntax highlight support is strongly advised, so you'll make sure not to paste a section inside a commented block or fall into any other syntax breaking trap Loki suggests Notepad++ for Windows users; for Linux users running Gnome, Gedit is fine.

[Jaxom]

Thanks for the heads-up! I'll go back and reread that entire section again. I really want to get the hang of modify things in this. Looks like you can come up with some really great things! Anyone fix that issue with the throttle only being in either the on or off positions yet?

[Jaxom]

Darn it all...guess I'm REALLY rusty. The directions that Clonewolf gave seem straight forward enough. But I'm just not getting I guess. I did download edit plus. The /bindings section in my version of VS 0.5.0 runs from line 89 through line through 348. I think part of it was that until just now, I hadn't realized that the #cat and #desc sections were not within the /bindings area. Using what was in the faq I would then insert these two lines in their appropriate sections.

edit this line from

#cat Joystick no_joy joy_normal joy_throttle joy_axis joy_throttle_and_axis joy_t_a_rev

to #cat Joystick no_joy joy_normal joy_throttle joy_axis joy_throttle_and_axis joy_t_a_rev joy_siatek_x45


incert this line after last joystick already listed

#desc 4-axis/7-button/4-hatswitch/2 rotary control, 2 mode switch (M1,M2,M3 and AUX0-1) stick/flight control system

then after the <!-- #end --> of the last <!--- joy section I add the entire section from the faq.

I hope I got that all right...'cause that's what I did...cross my fingers if it works!

[CLoneWolf]

Yup that should be it, just be careful about typos, like "joy_siatek_x45" you just wrote
If you make the same mistake everywhere, it will work, as tags are arbitrary as I was saying, but better double check that...
By the way, in your #desc line you forgot to ad that tag before the long description; it should read

#desc joy_saitek_x45 4-axis/7-button/4-hatswitch/2 rotary control, 2 mode switch (M1,M2,M3 and AUX0-1) stick/flight control system

or the system won't know which #cat setting matches that description.
Hopefully the throttle will work after correctly setting your config; if not, let us know.