Oolite Bulletins

In the Oolite Joystick config, there is the option to set roll, pitch, and yaw to an axis and thrust to axis OR button. Why are we limited to only axis for roll, pitch, and yaw? It's obviously not a impossibility due to the default keyboard controls being button based. I have a joystick with yaw/twist issues and it would be wonderful to be able to map the hat-stick on top to yaw, but Oolite doesn't allow that by default. Is there a real reason for this or has it simply always been overlooked? I know there are workarounds that map buttons to axis but I would love native support for this. I'm willing to contribute code if necessary (might take me a while to familiarize myself with the system)

Since no-one has answered so far: quite simply no developer felt the need for the kind of joystick setup you're talking about, so you could call it an oversight!

Most of us devs seem to be happier controlling Oolite with either keyboard or - apparently - their mouse. As a result joystick support across all platforms is a relatively recent addition to the codebase, and perhaps not as refined as it could be.

By all means, do code the the extra functionality. We shouldn't have any problems including your contribution (beyond actually borrowing a joystick for testing purposes, of course! )

captain122 wrote:

In the Oolite Joystick config, there is the option to set roll, pitch, and yaw to an axis and thrust to axis OR button. Why are we limited to only axis for roll, pitch, and yaw? It's obviously not a impossibility due to the default keyboard controls being button based. I have a joystick with yaw/twist issues and it would be wonderful to be able to map the hat-stick on top to yaw, but Oolite doesn't allow that by default. Is there a real reason for this or has it simply always been overlooked? I know there are workarounds that map buttons to axis but I would love native support for this. I'm willing to contribute code if necessary (might take me a while to familiarize myself with the system)

In the meantime, you might want to take a look at Xpadder. It can pretty much map anything to anything. It's not free, but at just $10 it's not expensive either, and it can do a lot of other fancy tricks as well. I discuss some of the features here, and will do a write-up on it soon, now that I'm back on the board.