Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[tutasmaster]

Background

 Summer is being way too hot for me, so just typing all day with a keyboard with my forearm against a table is just too hot. So i got my old Playstation 2 era dual stick controller to play some games more confortably.
 Problem is, while many modern games are compatible with a controller, Dwarf Fortress wouldn't be the first thing you would probably think about when i say "controller compatible". After a bit of googling i came across "Draewa's General-Purpose DF Bindings" on steamcontrollerdb. Problem is, it was made for a steam controller so the lack of a trackpad was a problem.
 Still, i had an idea of how it was done and tried my best to make a functional system for a normal gamepad, like the PS4 controller, XBONE or anyone "standard" controller.

Setup

^{This will require you to have steam, and probably say goodbye to tools like Dwarf Therapist, because it's way too hard to get that to work. I mostly played it in Dwarf mode just because i am not an Adventure Mode enthusiast, but i belive it's playable that way aswell.}

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• You have to add your DwarfFortress.exe as a non-steam game. This will give you access to the steam GUI while playing which is based on how this method works. (If you wish to use the LNP, you can always just prepare your configuration and open any applications through it, and then open the DwarfFortress.exe through steam. )
• Open Steam Big Picture mode. It's the icon on the top-right of your steam client on PC.
• Make sure to configure your controller now. Go to options, controller settings, enable your gamepad, and configure it normally. (What this is doing allowing this configuration file to use everyone's controllers as if they are the same type.)
• Go back, and find in the games tab, the non-steam version of Dwarf Fortress. Don't run it yet, instead go to the configuration tab.
• Now you have to create a configuration, and save it under any name you want it to be. Make sure to make a local configuration. (This will create the folders needed for the next step)
• Now you need to open your folder. "<steam folder>/userdata/<your user number>/241100/remote/controller_config/<random letters>/<name of config>" (it's easy to figure out the letters since usually you only have that one folder to pick)
• Now, you will replace your configuration with the one provided as an attachment to this post.
• Finally, reopen Big Picture mode, load a configuration (chances are, you don't have an old Playstation 2 controller, so make sure to "Show Unsuported"). And open the game. (Also recommended you set it to fullscreen without a console, just makes it more seamless)

Gameplay

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Controls

Now you may look at that picture and wonder. "How am i supposed to magically pop out all keyboard keys?". Glad you asked.
Your left stick is a sort of selector to all types of keys and a numpad.
Your right stick picks which key you want to use by pressing the stick.

Example

Keys like, alt, shift and ctrl are active until you press them again.

Is it perfect?

If you are looking for perfection, first of all, welcome to Dwarf Fortress you are going to have good time here.
Second, no this is not a perfect solution by any means. The change from 1 page to another is really jittery. It doesn't look very good.
But is it functional? I'd like to say it is. About half an hour into using it i got into the habit just like i got used to press b-w-r to build a craftdwarf's workshop.
I highly encourage you guys to try to improve setup to suit your needs in any way and post it here. Controlling your dwarfs from a couch probably can become a mere breeze with some tweaking.

(no idea how to add attachments yet, so here's a download link from my google drive file. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S83PdKkSd2k-Y3IPD2KwLKjkilwhccp7/view?usp=sharing )

[Steedat]

This is impressive! I've got and old PS2 controller I'd like to use for some games. How did you connect yours to your PC?

[Dwarf_Fever]

Summer is being way too hot for me, so just typing all day with a keyboard with my forearm against a table is just too hot. So

Recommend an industrial type floor fan and a mesh chair. Place fan near by. For best results, remove pants and destroy power bills.

[mikekchar]

Wrap a damp towel over your head when sitting next to the floor fan.  That should do the trick.  If it's stupidly hot, then wet your t-shirt too, but even when it's over 40 degrees here (104 F), that's too cold for me.  Evaporative cooling next to a fan should pull the temp down to around 20 C (68 F).  The trick is to stay damp.

Uh... you might want to invest in GFCI breakers too ;-)

[Saiko Kila]

This will require you to have steam, and probably say goodbye to tools like Dwarf Therapist,

No method for me, because Steam is saying goodbye to all XP and Vista users (since January 1st, 2019). I have hundreds of games on Steam (and have been using it for 10+ years), but after learning this I stopped buying there and I'm trying to wean off...

[chevil]

Why do you still have XP or Vista?

[Saiko Kila]

Why do you still have XP or Vista?

Because of three reasons
1. Vista has no advanced spying, which was introduced in Win7, and thankfully not ported back to Vista.
2. Upgrading from Vista Ultimate (which I have) to Windows 7 Pro (for which I have a licence) is impossible without reinstalling, because it is officially recognised as a downgrade. And I have way over 500+ programs and fine tuned, nice environment. Not all of these programs play well with Win7+, and for some I don't even have ability to activate them anymore (because dead server or something).
3. Every new version of Windows introduces limits on what the users can do. Vista for example went away with networking over FireWire (which was very nice for debugging programs). In Windows 7 there were a couple of functionalities offed, which I still use. Newer versions are even more restrictive.

Vista is mostly the same as Win7, Microsoft ported most of features back to Vista over years, with main exception being some kernel functions, and driver model (for certain classes of drivers). XP is much different, but still faster and less resource hungry even than Vista/Win7, which has its pluses, and it still has functions which were removed later (I mentioned the most important one).


By the way, on topic, one of the programs I have installed is Pinnacle Game Profiler. I have bought it back when I was a fan of gamepad playing (I'm not anymore, for certain reasons). This basically allows customise gamepad any way I want, including emulating mouse and keyboard. Though I haven't seen any profile for Dwarf Fortress.

[tutasmaster]

This is impressive! I've got and old PS2 controller I'd like to use for some games. How did you connect yours to your PC?

It's a third party one. But either way I am pretty sure there are adapters.

[tutasmaster]

Wrap a damp towel over your head when sitting next to the floor fan.  That should do the trick.  If it's stupidly hot, then wet your t-shirt too, but even when it's over 40 degrees here (104 F), that's too cold for me.  Evaporative cooling next to a fan should pull the temp down to around 20 C (68 F).  The trick is to stay damp.

Uh... you might want to invest in GFCI breakers too ;-)

lol, didn't expect to get actual advice on how to get cold during the summer xD will keep the tips anyway. thanks

[HellTiger]

for the autohotkey scripting language there are some nice things, https://autohotkey.com/docs/scripts/JoystickMouse.htm

[tutasmaster]

for the autohotkey scripting language there are some nice things, https://autohotkey.com/docs/scripts/JoystickMouse.htm

Oh wow, i had no idea Autohotkey had an API for it. I knew it was powerful for a long time, but i didn't realize it was THAT good. Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention.