Playing AS on Linux with a joystick

[Flyboy]

No, really, I'm not joking. It's done with a very simple, open source program called QJoyPad. QJoyPad simply operates at the X server level, and takes joystick events and fires mouse/keyboard events with them. This means that the user can use the joystick for a given task instead of the keyboard/mouse, without the applications in use supporting it.

So here's what I did:

I set up a new layout specifically for AS. Then, I mapped all of the most used keys to different buttons on the joystick. For instance, now instead of using the arrow pad to walk/control ship speed, I use the stick. The trigger button is mapped to the space bar, and of course I threw in afterburner and a few other things.

I made a video, which I will make available for download as soon as my site is back up. It's a fun new twist (sometimes literally) to the gameplay of AS.

Right now, only the source distribution is available on the QJoyPad site, but I have an x86_64 binary that I would be happy to email to anybody if wanted.
 

[VincentFirePony]

Thats cool. It would be cool if I could use a game pad to play ASCII sector? I run the ever evil Windows tho, so I doubt there will be a way me to do that.
_________________
There are only a few good things in life: AS, AS, beer and Hostile Takeover! A<0>V
 

[Cthulhu]

Man that's awesome!
THIS is why I love Linux, you can do anything!
Everything can be tweaked to fit your every desire.

EDIT: And unlike windows it's free, stable, cheap on system resources.
 

[BMatt]

[Flyboy]

[Cthulhu]

Funny, since yesterday, I both dabbled in virtualbox and then played around with my keyboard settings in xorg. (I got so happy when I managed to remap the curly brackets to be next to one another like they are on a regular US keyboard. On mine it's a third-choice key under "7" and "0" (?!), which is a pain when you're writing in LaTeX, since it uses these heavily. But then again, it's the price I have to pay to be blessed with three additional letters in my alphabet...)
OK.... that was under the category: "more information than I needed"

And regarding Virtualbox: USB is only supported in the non OSE version which is the one you can download from their site.
(I have DOS 6.2, which I plan to "install" in the machine and then run privateer on it.)

BTW, I remember seeing something in a computer store that looked like a joystick that you could place on top of your regular arrow-keys, like a "poor-mans-joystick", purely mechanical.
 

[Flyboy]

Crazy....

Huh, I didn't know that about VirtualBox & USB.

The problem with the "poor man's joystick" is that since it's purely on/off on the keys, so there isn't any ability to use slight movement to make small corrections. One wouldn't notice the difference in something like AS, but it would be verrrryyyy annoying in a flight/race simulator, etc.