[Guide] How to use and optimize your settings with any game controller

[dreadlordnaf 6]

Hello fellow DayZ’ers!

 

If you are like me and love playing DayZ in front of a 60 inch screen while relaxed on your couch then you will notice that while there have been helpful posts like this one from Mucwa here on how to setup a game controller, there really hasn’t been much on how to actually optimize your controller settings after getting it working so that you can have a competitive experience in DayZ.

 

While I understand there is a precision and accuracy that comes with using a keyboard and mouse which you won’t get from a game controller, if you are one of the people who can’t comprehend why on earth anyone would want to play with a game controller, then please post your confused comments elsewhere. But if you enjoy playing with a PS3 or Xbox style game controller in front of a big screen and want to maximize your skill and competitiveness then read on.

 

Number one reason game controllers suck compared to keyboard and mouse: aiming speed and accuracy

 

The biggest problem with playing a game designed for keyboard and mouse with a gamepad is aiming speed and accuracy. Basically: how accurate you can aim, how quickly you can turn to where you need to face and how effectively you can combine those two actions to accurately lock your cross hairs on a target and keep it on them as they move. With a keyboard and mouse you can do very accurate pinpoint mouse movements and then when needed flick your wrist and do very fast turning or scanning motions which you can also get as equally accurate with after some practice. This is the hardest thing to replicate on a game controller but if you have ever played a console FPS you will notice that they do replicate it somewhat. On a console FPS you can get very accurate pinpoint aiming and then move or aim quickly when you press the analog stick to it’s maximum in one direction. This is due to analog stick acceleration that consoles use so that the speed it registers your movement at changes based on how far the stick is pressed in one direction. This is very hard to replicate effectively on PC’s since most games do not support this function or do it badly. But there is a very effective fix: JoyToKey

 

JoyTokey is free program (you can download it here) similar to xpadder that lets you map any keyboard or mouse function to your game controller. I find JoyToKey superior to xpadder mainly because xpadder does not support the single-most important function for a game controller in my opinion - analog stick acceleration. I am really surprised xpadder doesn’t have this functionality given you have to pay for it while JoyToKey is free. If newer versions do have this (I’ve only tried an old version of xpadder) then I take my statement back.

 

Optimize analog stick acceleration

 

Most PC games which have game controller support (or if you use xpadder) usually only allow you to map the analog stick to mimic the mouse at one constant speed. This puts most players in a dilemma because the thumb motion with an analog stick is just not as accurate as a mouse and you now face a tough choice. You can map your analog stick to a slower mouse speed which allows you to achieve accurate aiming and precise movements with your thumb, but then it’s too slow to turn effectively and you die easily due to your cumbersome, staypuffed marshmellow man-like navigating ability. Or you map it to a fast mouse speed which allows you to turn and move quickly but then you can’t aim worth crap because your mouse stick aim “jumps everywhere” making you a very bad aimer and receiving a lot of “noob” accusations tossed your way. Unfortunately most players trying to map a game controller to a PC FPS game choose a sad middle ground solution. They map their right analog stick to a mouse speed that is in between the two options above with the end result being that their aiming is neither good for accuracy or for quick turning. Basically the worst of both worlds... This choice here is the primary reason why mapping a game controller to a game designed for keyboard and mouse ends up gimping you so much. We’ll now proceed to fix that.

 

Let’s examine the analog acceleration function on JoyToKey, the one setting that has had the single biggest impact on my playing experience using a game controller for PC games. What this allows you to do is to map two different speed settings to the same analog stick to achieve a more “console-like” FPS experience which is more accurate and quicker when needed. Notice the picture below from JoyToKey.

 

 

On it I have mapped the movement of pressing the analog stick to a mouse speed of 10, but then I have enabled acceleration to multiply that speed by 4 when the analog stick is pressed to its maximum in any direction. What this means is that when I am using my right analog stick to mimic the mouse to aim and look around it does this rather slowly but accurately, and then the mouse speed gets quadrupled when I press the stick to its maximum in any direction, allowing me to move and turn and scan the area quickly when needed. This is the closest equivalent I have been able to achieve to a keyboard and mouse player who can get precision aiming with a mouse and then flick his wrist to do quick movements and turns.  In the end your main key setup should look something like this:

 

 

(Note: When you do your own setup don’t necessarily copy my speed settings since they are designed to work with my windows default mouse pointer speed set to max and with my DayZ/Arma2 mouse speed settings toned down one notch from default.)

 

I suggest you spend some time and really find the optimal speed + analog acceleration that works for you. I recommend you find a slow precision speed that allows you to aim your right analog stick with excellent precision and accuracy and follow a slow or medium speed target and then pick an analog acceleration multiplier of somewhere between 3 to 5 when you max press the stick. I use a multiplier of 4 on DayZ but 3 on other games, just depends what works for you. 

 

I want to stress this point again – you NEED to optimize your analog stick speed + acceleration multiplier like this. It will help your game play immensely and help game pad users become competitive since going with a single constant speed for an analog stick is the main reason game controller players on PCs tend to have poor aim and turning response, and otherwise suck. If you had to take one thing away from my post it is this….

 

Additional enhanced aiming optimization (optional)

 

Enable a sniper mode for more precise aiming. The great thing about the analog stick acceleration on JoyToKey is it doesn’t require any other function or button to activate, it’s just a normal part of your analog stick movement like it is with console games. But if you want you can also combo functions and buttons on JoyToKey so that when you press for example your bottom left or right trigger, it makes the other buttons or analog sticks do different things. What this means is you can make it so that holding down either of those lower triggers causes your right analog stick which is mapped to the mouse to move at an even slower speed, say half of your non-accelerated movement speed. This allows you to achieve extremely precise movements and is ideal if you like sniping. You can run around as normal and then when you quickly need it hold the trigger you are using for combos and all of a sudden you go into “sniper mode” with very slow and accurate movement and aiming. Many keyboard and mouse players have a function like this where they toggle a key to slow down their mouse speed for a type of “sniper mode.” No reason you can’t have the same.

 

Do the opposite and enable a quick turn combo. I don’t do this or necessarily recommend it, but it might benefit some players depending on your style. If you want to be able to do a 180 turn on the drop of a dime you can also setup a second combo that makes the speed multiplier on the analog stick you use for the mouse/aiming go up astronomically. For example if you have a combo that sets your analog stick multiplier to 20 you can do a 360 turn with your char in a fraction of a second with a quick press on your combo trigger and tap of your analog stick. I would be curious people’s results with this if they try it out and what settings worked.

 

For the love of god optimize your dead zone! The dead zone settings are also important to set properly in order to have an optimal game controller experience. The dead zone is the buffer between the analog stick registering different actions, or basically how far off from a given movement on the analog stick you need to move it to register a separate action. For example if you map your left analog stick to the keyboard forward/back/left/right movements, try using a dead zone of zero, especially when driving a vehicle. You will notice it’s nearly impossible to go straight very long without accidentally turning. A dead zone setting will fix this so you can “slip” slightly with your movements yet stay moving in the same direction until you purposely move the analog stick further in the direction you actually want to go. JoyToKey lets you adjust the dead zone for each analog stick and I suggest a dead zone setting of around 50% on JoyToKey for your left analog stick (give or take 10%) assuming you have it mapped for movement, and a much smaller, say 0 or 10% dead zone on your right stick which is mapped to the mouse. Experiment with it some and pick settings that work for you. FPS’s on consoles have their dead zones optimized already and this is important to do on a PC game controller in order to have that same “smooth” movement and response.

 

Some technical aspects to consider when setting your dead zone. Note that there are three zones of movement when you press your analog sticks on a game controller: 1) the dead zone which registers no action; 2) the middle or main zone which starts tracking movement immediately after the dead zone and registers it at a gradually increasing speed up to the maximum set for it; and 3) maximum press when you push the stick all the way in one direction.  See the crude illustration I made below:

 

Note that the dead zone and the middle zone share the same area so increasing one will lower the other as seen in the additional picture below:

 

What this means is that if you increase the dead zone by a lot your middle zone shrinks and becomes less practical to use. In a case where you set a large dead zone your analog stick movement will typically either be in the dead zone registering no movement, or you will simply be at maximum press because it will be very difficult to get fine movement with your thumb in that small middle zone. This is why for your mouse aiming analog stick you should keep the dead zone very small or non-existent.

 

Buttons and example layout:

 

I am not going to get into the buttons too much but do want to counter all those who say there aren’t enough on a game controller to play DayZ because of how many commands Arma2 uses. There are more than enough buttons because of multi-functional button settings and button combo’ing.

 

Rant starting on theoretical number of button functions --- ignore starting here if you don’t care --- [Most PS3/Xbox style game controllers for the PC have a total of 4 triggers (2 left/2 right), 4 main buttons by the right analog stick, 4 more counting the dpad directionals, 2 on the top part of the console between the analog sticks. and 2 more when you press down the analog sticks, for a total of 16 buttons. Now given that on JoytoKey you can map each button so that it does one function when you tap it and another when you do a “long press “, you have effectively doubled your buttons to 32. Considering Arma2 lets you map keys so that they do another function if you tap twice quickly, you have now just tripled your effective buttons to 48 since each button can now do three functions. BUT you can also combo the buttons so that they do a totally different series of things when pressed in this combo. For example you can hold down the right lower trigger + button 1 for an entirely new series of actions. So if you take 2 of your 16 buttons away to serve as combo buttons then you have 14 buttons which can do 3 functions each for a total of 42 functions. Then each combo button allows each of those 14 to do an entirely different series of press/long press/double tap actions, adding another 42 functions when holding down combo trigger 1, and another 42 for holding down combo trigger 2. In this scenario your theoretical max of game pad functions on Amra2 is equal to 126 button functions. While this 126 function game pad isn’t actually practical for playing I just wanted to highlight the power of multi-functional buttons and button combo’ing.] --- Rant ends here.

 

Below is what I use but I suggest you tweak it some for your own play style. It is important the buttons feel intuitive to you and that you can access the most highly used buttons the easiest and quickest while having lesser used buttons which don’t need activation as often (compass etc) as part of the secondary or tertiary combos.

 

I use an oldie but goodie reliable PC game controller, my Logitech Rumblepad 2.

 

 

 

My setup:

 

Left analog stick: map to movements (A/D/W/S) with 50% dead zone

Right analog stick: map to mouse with analog stick acceleration enabled at 4x and a 0 to 10% dead zone

Dpad left/right: lean left/right

Dpad up/down: map to mouse wheel scroll up/down

 

Right upper trigger: left mouse button (primary fire)

Left upper trigger: right mouse button (aim/zoom)

Left lower trigger (LLT): map to enable joystick 2 button template (allows you to combo buttons)

Right lower trigger (RLT): map to enable joystick 3 button template (additional combos)

 

Button 1: reload

Button 2: tap once to crouch, long press to go prone, double tap to stand

Button 3: walk/run toggle

Button 4: select/interact (map to enter button)

 

Center left panel button: map to escape key (to quickly cancel or close actions)

Center right panel button: climb over

Left analog stick button: sprint

Right analog stick button: free look toggle

 

Button 1 + LLT: weapon function (map to F key)

Button 2 + LLT: gear

Button 3 + LLT: binoculars

Button 4 + LLT: toggle compass

 

Right analog stick + LLT: mapped to mouse movement with a speed of 50% my normal mouse speed with no acceleration enabled (sniper mode)

 

Dpad left/right + LLT – lean left/right (I kept these the same on purposely so when I have LLT held down for my sniper mode precision aiming I can still lean in either direction)

Dpad up/down +LLT – adjust range up/down (compliments my sniper mode when holding down LLT)

 

Button 1 + RLT – toggle watch

Button 2 + RLT – flashlight

Button 3 + RLT – diary/crafting (J)

Button 4 + RLT – salute

 

Unused:

 

Left analog stick + LLT/RLT: same as base function , map to movement, so I can move and access all my other combo button functions while on the run from zombies

 

Center left panel button + LLT: unused or same as base button function

Center right panel button + LLT: unused or same as base button function

Left analog stick button + LLT: unused or same as base button function

Right analog stick button +LLT: unused or same as base button function

 

Center left panel button + RLT: unused or same as base button function

Center right panel button + RLT: unused or same as base button function

Left analog stick button + RLT: unused or same as base button function

Right analog stick button +RLT: unused or same as base button function

 

Dpad up + RLT: unused

Dpad down + RLT: unused

Dpad left + RLT: unused

Dpad right + RLT: unused

 

As you can see I still have spare RLT combo buttons unused on the Dpad and I haven’t even used most of the current buttons in my setup to their fullest with press/long press/double tap functions. So plenty of room still to map more things like push-to-talk, other view/zoom options, chat/squad functions, etc.

 

Helicopter/vehicle – I won’t go into detail here except to say that you can set one of your unused keys to load a different configuration file in JoyToKey so you can switch to an entirely different profile with all your analog sticks and buttons mapped to controls and keys better suited for helicopter or vehicle driving. Just setup an unused key to switch between the profiles and you can easily manage this.

 

Final thoughts on using a game controller in a mouse and keyboard world

 

I would still be using a mouse and keyboard for gaming if I hadn’t screwed up my hands real bad at work with repetitive-strain-injury (RSI) which for those of you who don’t know is carpel-tunnel’esq types problems in the hands and wrists. A game controller is much more ergonomic so I started finding ways to use it for everything when I was on my computer at home. And if you really want to get good with a game controller in an FPS then I suggest to use it as your mouse for EVERYTHING. I have multiple games and MMOs setup to play with my game pad and I always try to use a similar setup for primary actions, accessing inventory etc, so that it gets you use to the setup and it becomes second nature. Additionally I am now so comfortable using the game pad that I use it as my main mouse when I am web browsing while sitting on my couch and even playing some slower paced RTS games. This helps since the additional practice with the right analog stick mouse clicking on windows or small units and dragging things etc. then helps you improve your accuracy even more when you play a FPS like DayZ.

 

Otherwise hope this has been helpful to my fellow DayZ’er game controller users. Kill some zeds for me….

Edited October 21, 2013 by dreadlordnaf

[kevsta545 451]

Interesting... But I love my keyboard n mouse and can't see switching, but if you have a 60inch tv monitor in the living room its understandable for casual gameing. Cool post and great info/facts above. Nice!

[dreadlordnaf 6]

Interesting... But I love my keyboard n mouse and can't see switching, but if you have a 60inch tv monitor in the living room its understandable for casual gameing. Cool post and great info/facts above. Nice!

 

Thanks.   My goal wasnt necessarily to convince anyone using a KB+M to switch, but to help those who have already decided to use a game controller for various reasons. It took me years to figure this all out on various games through trial and error and overall my main point is that many players like myself can be quite competitive with a game controller, but only if you take the time to really optimize your settings for it.  Otherwise just using a game controller without taking the time to optimize your analog stick settings, button layout etc. for a FPS designed with KB+M in mind, will just end up gimping you.   

Edited October 22, 2013 by dreadlordnaf

[SteelKnife 25]

Can we get this pinned?

[Mos1ey 6301]

Can we get this pinned?

 

Only timeless topics that are useful to the majority of the community get stickied I'm afraid.

[dreadlordnaf 6]

Only timeless topics that are useful to the majority of the community get stickied I'm afraid.

 

Perhaps the nice gentleman who made an index of useful threads might add me to his post which is already stickied. http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/10051-index-of-helpful-threads/

[Mos1ey 6301]

Perhaps the nice gentleman who made an index of useful threads might add me to his post which is already stickied. http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/10051-index-of-helpful-threads/

 

Griff isn't on that much at the minute due to various IRL things that he has going on, but I'll shoot him a PM regardless and see what he says.