New Project

[jurann]

Hi LJ, long time no use. But I'm not sure where else folks post blog stuff these days, and I have this old LJ account, so why not use it.

So I've been getting more and more into space sim games in the last 8 months or so, and specifically following and playtesting the Star Citizen alpha. They are adding more and more features, which require more

Comments

[terrycloth]

Sounds neat! I usually use mouse+keyboard for flight sims, which has its own issues (like, sucking completely) but not 'not enough buttons' at least.

[jurann]

Fortunately the MFD unit I'm building helps anyone with any sims, not just Star Citizen and regardless of which other input devices you use. =)

Personally I'm a big fan of a stick and throttle setup, though a lot of space sim jockeys like dual-stick setups instead. They can pull off some wicked maneuvering and shooting, but it's a bit too complex for me. Stick and throttle gets you 80% of the way there, makes things really accurate to control, and offers really fine control over all kinds of things right at your hands. But no matter how you make your ship move and shoot, an MFD lets you manage all of the fine little flight parameter details (like power and shield balancing) with a button press or two. The shield and power re-balancing in both SC and E:D is really hard using the UI so having another 60+ buttons on one little console is mo' betta'. =)

[jurann]

Oh, I also have the problem with keyboard bindings in flight sims of not remember what each button does. =P The fact that T turns on my headlamps for instance is one of the only bindings I can ever remember. ;D The MFD helps by actually reminding you what the buttons do with the screen. ;) Next to each button is a text reminder, pretty hard to go wrong there.

[jaffa_tamarin]

Would this work to replace keyboard bindings for games (e.g. RPGs) that aren't specifically programmed to use a joystick?

[jurann]

Well, there's no reason I couldn't write a program to do that - the USB HID emulation stack for Arduino can emulate a number of generic USB devices such as mice, keyboards, gamepads and joysticks. I had already been thinking about some RPG tools for the project which wouldn't even require being connected to a PC, such as a dice-rolling app. =) Use the buttons to select how many dice of each type you want to roll, then hit the green button to toss the dice and see the results on the screen. Would be great for Warhammer where you can have 50+ d6 you need to throw at once sometimes.