[catzer]

Dear support-team,

I have some gameplay trouble. It appears to be the same problem this user had
(http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=62189.msg1227518#msg1227518).

I start up FS via "fs2_open_3_6_12_INF_r" executables for Linux (I am using 11.04 Kubuntu).
Everything works fine until I enter outer space.
When I try to play the tutorials the ship stars to rotate to the bottom left.

It appears to be a mouse problem. It actually works and when I am fast enough can counter the movement by steering to the upper right. But that is not an option.
As soon as I disable the mouse in the controls, the turnings stops and I can fly using the numpad.

I tried a diffrent mouse, but that had no effect.

Changing the sensitivity during gameplay changed nothing either.

As proposed in the thread mentioned above, I purged all the joystick-dependent controls.
That way everything works fine except mouse movement, which does not work either. Joystick and mouse appaer to be connected somehow.

I suspect with a joystick the same problem would occur.

Can you help me to fix this?

[MatthTheGeek]

Do you have several mouses plugged on your computer ? Maybe a mouse and a touchpad ? I've had similar issues when several mouses are in use.

[catzer]

Nope. There is just one mouse plugged in and I am using an desktop computer. Even KDE is sure that there is no touchpad.

[jr2]

Try flipping the joystick off in the options, just in case?  Doesn't really fix the problem, but maybe works around it.

[Herra Tohtori]

Also, just to narrow things down, try disabling mouse control on F2 game menu.

If it's still moving, then there is a device on your system that is being read as joystick sending continuous zero input for X/Y axes, which means the ship pitches down and turns left and maybe (depending on how complex the issue is) even rolls left.

If this is the case... is there a launcher for Linux that can turn off joystick for the whole game...?

[catzer]

Good morning everyone,

The ship is not rolling by itself.
If I disable the mouse by entering the control config in-game, the turning did not stop.
Completely banishing the joystick-entries from the controls does stop the turning.

The problem there is, that removing the movement control in the x-y-axes removes the mouse control as well.
The entry says "Joystick/Mouse", not as in different cases "Joystick, Mouse".
As soon as I want to enter the "Mouse" by selcting it and moving the mouse along the associated axis, the entry "Joystick/Mouse" appears and the turning starts over.

I checked upon any Linux launchers.
The YAL launcher appears to be working for Linux-OS.
I will give it a try.

Thanks for youer help so far!

[Herra Tohtori]

Good morning everyone,

The ship is not rolling by itself.
If I disable the mouse by entering the control config in-game, the turning did not stop.
Completely banishing the joystick-entries from the controls does stop the turning.

Yep, I suspected that was the case. This doth suggest that there is a device interpreted as a game controller, except instead of being centered, it's sending null input which puts X axis to the extreme left and Y axis to extreme top, this causes the ship to pitch down and turn left.

The problem there is, that removing the movement control in the x-y-axes removes the mouse control as well.
The entry says "Joystick/Mouse", not as in different cases "Joystick, Mouse".
As soon as I want to enter the "Mouse" by selcting it and moving the mouse along the associated axis, the entry "Joystick/Mouse" appears and the turning starts over.

Yeah, that's a... problem of sorts. Apparently, this is the first time someone has had a ghost joystick device on their system this way.

I checked upon any Linux launchers.
The YAL launcher appears to be working for Linux-OS.
I will give it a try.

Thanks for youer help so far!

Ok. Well, technically we have established that it's a local system issue (unknown device acting as a joystick).

A debug log might be able to help in narrowing down what device is causing this.

[jr2]

To get a debug log, run the debug build and then find the fs2_open.log   ... I'm not sure where it's put in linux.  I think in the home dir under freespace   

Searched and got it:

On Linux, the log is saved in ~/.fs2_open/data.

[catzer]

Alright.
Some interesting news for you:
The YAL-launcher works flawless.
I had a little fight with the perquisites for it (QT4-dev libs, SDL and OpenAL, which were mentionen in the readme, and after the natty upgrade I had to install the build-essential) but a little command-line-shredding later it started up like a charm.

It disabled the joystick by default and it worked. No turning issues any longer.

I applied some configuration BEFORE I ran the debug-run, so I decided to reanable it to check if it was the problem.
I could choose from a list of possible joystick which I wanted to activate (the two options are "No Joystick" and "Microsoft wired Keyboard 600").
After activating the keyboard the turning started all over again.

The buttons still work with the "joystick" disabled.

If you are interested I could still try to make a proper debug run.

Otherwise I thank you very much for time, advice and help!

[Herra Tohtori]

Most likely the debug would only have told that the game was reading the keyboard as a joystick, and considering it's not one, it was probably reading the null input from it via joystick interface and caused the continuous pitch/turn problem.

This is good information for future troubleshooting, though. Also makes me wonder why the game reads a keyboard as a game controller device in the first place.

[catzer]

The only reasons I could think of are:
a) connected via USB
b) media-buttons