[Jeevesmeister]

Hey guys! Caught word of your work through a retweet by Mike Tipul, the Enemy Starfighter dev, and am finally sinking my teeth into Freespace 2 for the first time. Just a couple small questions regarding a couple newb-related matters.

1) Cockpits

So I'm weird and trying to get a 3D cockpit of some sort working, I've started both the Blue Planet update of the Freespace 2 campaign and the Age of Aquarius campaign so far - both of which are lacking cockpits. I downloaded a mod digging through these forums but I don't think it came out right, feel free to inform me if I'm wrong...



Should they be blacked out like that? I'm trying to get something like what I saw in this video:

 

Do you think that this might be possible with the AoA and Freespace 2 campaigns?

2) Did you guys ever implement a drift i.e. Diaspora or Tachyon: The Fringe?

3) Has anyone had any luck getting an Xbox 360 controller to work with this game, after all the updates over the years? I'm willing to drop money on a joystick if need be, but I'd like to avoid it if possible.

[FrikgFeek]

Any cockpits for Freespace would obviously have to come from 3rd party mods. If you're having a problem getting it to work then maybe the mod is simply out-dated or you set it up wrong. Have you tried asking the maker of that cockpit mod for help or at least posting the description of your problem along with a log in the mod release thread?

As for drifting Diaspora-like movement it wouldn't fit in with Freespace gameplay. There are a few ships that can "glide" though, pressing a button to retain their path of travel while being able to freely turn around(think starfuries).
Practically all the Shivan ships can and will do this to you, along with circle-strafing manoeuvres, especially on the higher difficulties.

[Aesaar]

The way the cockpits were done in the video is by adding the "show ship" flag to the ship tables.  This requires that the ship in question have a modeled cockpit, and the cockpit itself will only be ornamental.  The displays won't work, and the standard HUD will still be used.  If you're ok with that, you can edit bp-shp.tbm with notepad and add "show ship" to the flags section of every ship on which you want a cockpit.

Be advised the eyepoints may not line up perfectly, and while Steve-O's new ship models (the Uhlan, Kentauroi, Uriel, and Durga) have excellent cockpits, the same isn't necessarily true for others.  Some don't have modeled cockpits at all.  None of them will look as good as those in Diaspora.


As for Diaspora-style gliding, it's not commonplace.  Some ships have it, like the Ainsarii and a few Shivan ships, but most don't.  Glide is a bit overpowered if you don't build your gameplay around it, which we didn't.

Most of us play with a mouse (or keyboard-only).  I've never tried getting a 360 controller working with FSO.  You might try asking in the FSO technical support subforum.

[FrikgFeek]

I happen to play on a Logitech F310 gamepad which has a dinput mode but you can get a workaround for xinput pads in FSO. Pretty much everything aside from your triggers should work just fine simply by selecting your pad in the audio/joystick section of the 5.5g launcher(or wherever it is in wxlauncher, look up the readme or a FAQ if you have trouble finding it).

If you want to use your triggers as buttons simply use software that translates gamepad input to keyboard input. Xpadder or joy2key should work fine. Map your triggers to whatever on your keyboard and then remap the controls in-game to reflect that. If you want to use them for shooting then CTRL is for your guns while SPACEBAR is for your missiles by default.

If you want to use your triggers as an axis for whatever reason you're going to have to go through a bit more trouble. Download virtualjoy and UJR(Universal joystick remapper), read through the setup instructions on the UJR page and set up your 360 pad as a virtual pad and select it in the launcher.

[Vidmaster]

Playing with the Numkeys :-) No joke, I am keyboard only for FS2. Every other game, a HOTAS but for FS2, it will always be the Keyboard.

Have fun playing!