Many like myself use flight/game controllers to play wt, and also like me you have customised the settings to 'improve' the experience.
All controllers have drivers which from time to time get updated, this is done to 'ensure you have the best performance of your controller for the games of today' according to the manufacturers. However; They don't warn you that sometimes these 'updates' can be a complete re-wright of the code which affects how games will read your controller and the way the settings you have will be performing. This is what has just happened to me, I use the Saitek X52 flight controller because I like the feel of it in my hand and find the combination of HOTAS controls with plenty of switches and toggles to be very useful in many games.
I spent weeks getting things the way I like them in WT when I first started playing, experimenting in the Test drive/fly mode, then in the custom battle mode and finally in the RB mode. Today my controller driver was updated and it threw the custom settings off and things were not the way I like them. So I started to tweak things again, and after a couple of adjustments I decided I had taken things the wrong way and decided to reload the settings I had saved so I could try something else - BIG MISTAKE. Or rather I had previously made a big mistake.
What I discovered was that the saved settings I had were in fact not the same as I had been using. It seems that I had continued to experiment and tweak the settings after I had last saved them and forgotten to save the final setup. So now I had loaded a setup that simply was not right at all and I was in an even worse position. Buttons and toggles did different things to how I'd gotten used to having them, sensitivities were all 'weirded out', and I couldn't even get a tank to stand still once I'd moved it - and don't even mention the troubles trying to fly!
It was then I had a flash of brilliance, "If only I had written down the buttons, toggles, HOTAS axis, and whether or not an axis should be set to 'Relative' I would have my controls all sorted." Actually in a nerdy sort of way I had written much of it down while experimenting and hadn't thrown my notes away. Although my notes were incomplete it did save me a lot of time and effort.
What can we all learn from this?
- Save your settings every time you change them
- Backup your settings file before each new save
- Write down how you have set things up
- Don't forget to include dates on all your files and notes
- Note down axis settings carefully, keeping every detail you can in your notes
- Be prepared to have to start again from scratch
- And when you think you noted everything you need, look again
I have just spent the last 3 hours rebuilding my setup for my controller, (A process made easier by the fact that I had done it before and knew how I wanted it to be when I was done.), BUT this means that I have effectively lost today's game time. So I will have to kill twice as many tomorrow :evil:
