Please share your controller setup and why you chose it.

[Swarthy]

In the early days of Descent, I was all keyboard. Left hand was for movement while right hand keypad was aim and shoot. I did this for quite a while and got fairly good at it but felt it was limiting my accuracy and range of motion. I moved to joystick thinking well, it's a flight game...duh. Unfortunately I had to move some keys to left hand like forward and reverse as well as a few others and it became a game of memory and coordination and muscle flexibility which, at my age, is not consistent anymore. So I have trained myself to do this on a mouse now and I find it more precise and intuitive however I still question the efficiency of my left hand. So I would like to ask the forum to share their respective control set-ups and why they chose what they chose.

I currently use a roccat LUA mouse with this Logitech G15 keyboard setup:

Forward = D
Reverse = Spacebar
Bank left = F
Bank right = S
Slide left = A
Slide Right = G
Slide up = W
Slide Down = X or C (the claw)

Mouse is set-up for primary & secondary firing with middle button scrolling weapons/bombs and pressing mid button drops bombs.

The reason I chose the D forward/Spacebar back set-up is for comfort and intuitiveness. If you lay your hands on your keyboard with left mid finger on D and thumb on spacebar you'll see what I mean. For me its kind of a visual sphere. The outside keys A & G controlling the big movements of sliding "away" and the inner S & F controlling the tight banking "inner" movements. Doing this it feels like a rocking back and forth / side to side motion. My problem lies in finding comfortable tri-cording. For me it is ALMOST comfortable but lacks that finger memory lock that you just can't think about...you hand needs to just go there.

Besides actually flying during game I also use keyboard for talking on mumble, flares, 1-0 specific weapon/missle choice, rearview and map so the fingers they can be busy. I am hoping that myself or someone else will gleen a different perspective or find a more efficient controller setup that works without thought. There are just too many finger combinations for tri-chording with this setup and I need another perspective please.

[roncli]

My keyboard only setup:

Left hand:

Afterburner - Caps Lock
Forward/backward - A/S&D (I use both S and D for flexibility)
Bank left/Bank Right - Q/E
Primaries - LeftCtrl
Secondaries - LeftAlt
Headlight - V
Use - W
Flare - F
Rearview - R
Alternate Fire Mode - X (Sol Contingency & Sublevel Zero only)
Countermeasure - B
Automap - T

Right Hand:

Heading and Pitch - Arrows
Strafing - Keypad 2/4/6/8

Non-critical:

Taunts - Y/U/I/O
Switch tool - [/]

Only difference on mouse is right hand moves entirely to the mouse:

Heading & Pitch - Mouse movement
Strafe Left/Right - Mouse buttons
Strafe Up/Down - Side switch mapped to Keypad 2/8 through Steelseries software.

[Rooster61]

Stickmouser here.


Left Hand Stick:

Accel/Reverse - Stick Y axis
Horiz Slide - Redundancy between left/right on hat and stick X axis
Vert Slide - Up/down on hat
Roll - Buttons to either side of hat
Vulcan hotkey - Trigger
D3 Afterburner - Trigger


Right Hand Mouse:

Pitch/Yaw - Y/X
Fire Primary - Left mouse
Fire Secondary - Right mouse
Proxies - Middle mouse
Right side button 1 - Spread
Right side button 2 - Lasers



This setup makes tri-chording a breeze, and is pretty comfortable. You can easily trichord while rolling, which makes for a good dogfighting maneuver. Downside is the time it takes to move the stick to its opposite position. Not quite as fast as keyboard, but pretty close.

[Morfod]

Mouse Setup:

Off-Hand
WASD - Directional slides
SPACE - Accel
LSHIFT - Reverse
QE - Roll
F - Rear View
B - Plant Bomb
LALT - Afterburner

On-Hand
X/Y - Yaw/Pitch
M1 - Primary Fire
M2 - Secondary Fire
M4 - Flare
M5 - Push to Talk
MWheelUp - Cycle Secondaries
MWheelDown - Cycle Primaries


Joystick Setup:

Off-Hand
WASD - Directional slides
SPACE - Accel
LSHIFT - Reverse

On-Hand
X/Y/Z - Yaw/Pitch/Roll
B1 - Primary Fire
B4 - Secondary Fire
B3 - Flare
B2 - Push to Talk
Hat RIGHT - Cycle Secondaries
Hat LEFT - Cycle Primaries
Hat UP - Plant Bomb
Hat DOWN - Rear View

Descent 2:
Hat DOWN - Plant Bomb
Hat UP - Afterburner
Rear View on Dash

This arrangement allows me to switch from joystick to mouse with minimal difficulty, and allows for evasion entirely with one hand so I can take a sip of beer while playing.

[Wats]

Why? Because that's what I learned 20 years ago somehow. I've gone through short phases of joystick and mouse, but always just end up back on keys.

[sdfgeoff]

Mouse:
X/Y turn like you'd expect
Mouse scroll up: flares
Mouse scroll down: bombs
Mouse push wheel left: cycle secondary (mouse 4 and 5 for me are pushing the wheel sideways)
Mouse push wheel right: cycle primary
Mouse middle click: rear view

Keys:
Space: forwards
Shift: backwards
S/F: left/right
E/D: up/down
W/R: bank

This setup offers most trichords easily, as well as some trichord-banks (which I have started to learn recently). You can switch to WSAD if you have smaller hands than me.

[The@$$Man!]

[Lady Silver]

Keyboard + Joystick

Left hand - Keyboard (A cheap AULA "gamers" keyboard, ugh) - Numberpad

8/5 - forward/reverse
4/6 - roll
enter - fire secondary
+ - fire flare

(coincidentally, the keys I use for reverse and fire secondary have the paint worn off of them. )

Right hand - Joystick, MS Sidewinder Precision Pro

hat switch - all direction slide
trigger - fire primary
2 buttons on either side of hat to cycle primary and secondary

This was my brother Sergeant Thorne's configuration ages ago when he introduced me to the game.

The only thing I've changed is the flare button. You can fire flares in rapid succession when you use a button on the keyboard rather than a button on the stick. Very important.

[PFunk]

Here is all the slothy goodness!



I ordered some Frag Pedals, so we'll see how that changes things.
http://www.amazon.com/Fragpedal-Quad-PC ... B005GVWTS4

[Lady Silver]

Sloth mode, Pray