Figured I should get this out as fast as I could now that I've had a chance to play around with the Beta. I really LOVE this game so far, it's such a different kind of MMO from the standard. Can't wait to see how it evolves from now until release, and I'm really looking forward to that! I highly recommend this game
NOTE: The BETA is ongoing at the time of this post, but it will END by 7/22/2012 @ 11:59PM, so if you'd like to test out GW2 with the Hydra then make sure you get your pre-order in soon! Probably not worth it unless you already have the Beta installed, but just thought I should forewarn anyone who isn't aware of how GW2's Betas have been operating. GW2 is slated to be released 8/28 if memory serves.
Last edited by Ajores; 07-21-2012 at 06:08 PM.
Reason: There was an error in the 3rd F3 Skill assignment, submitted the new fix
After giving it some thought, I really wanted to rework some of my button layout for GW2 to accommodate more of the key-binds that GW2 has to offer. My design goal is to keep the buttons the player *needs* as accessible as possible, while also allowing for as much functionality as possible. I was really hesitant to apply point-gesture commands to the hot-bar buttons, because I felt that it wouldn't allow for rapid use of some play styles, but at the same time I wanted abilities to be grouped sensibly on the controller and to not take up too much space. In the end I've decided to give it a shot with this last stress test, and though I couldn't test it out as much as I liked I was able to get it working very reliably. I'm going to upload it here for now if anyone would like to try it in another upcoming stress test (or post release of course: less than 3 weeks to go!)
A break down of what you can expect from this setup -
Right trigger is used to control all of your weapon skills, with pressing the trigger to use 1 and holding the trigger and then motioning with the right controller to use the other 4. Similarly, you use the right bumper to use your healing skill and holding it and motioning with the right controller to use your utility and epic skills. This might sound strange since the right controller also controls your mouse and camera movement, but in play-testing I found that my screen was never jerky nor my aim with my AoE abilities ever lacking. In the end I found that after getting used to the setup it worked very smoothly.
When exploring, you use the left joystick to move and to rotate your screen you click the 1 button on the right controller and drag the screen. I'm pretty proud of this design, because it was a challenge for me to figure out how to get this functionality working because the setup is in "wand mode" by default. Simply emulating the right click in this mode would cause your camera to shoot uncontrollably in some direction. To fix this I learned how to turn on mouselook for the controller only while either PR1 buttons 3 or 1 are pressed.
I also encourage that you disable double tap as dodging, since left bumper is now your go-to dodge button. I did this because I found myself accidentally dodging when I didn't intend to dodge by just moving around and switching directions. Could just be me, or just my controller, but regardless I found using the bumper to dodge to be easy to pickup (and easier to use overall).
FYI, there are some abilities (such as swim down) that are mapped to the hydra that are not actually mapped by default to the game. You will have to set those abilities yourself under options and then keybindings, which you can easily do by using the commands mapped to the hydra when you set your keybinds in the game. To make it easy for you to identify which abilities I'm talking about, I've marked them with **. NOTE: My bad, the .jpgs don't have the ** by their names because I hadn't actually gotten around to adding the ** to the names until after the picture was taken, but I did mark them in the file itself. Just pull it up in the MC and view the layout and you'll see the ** before the names. Sorry for the derp!
I really am open to suggestions here btw, but I'd really appreciate it if anyone could test out the setup and let me know how it's working for them. I'm pretty sure they'll be trying to do another stress test before launch since basically all they're focusing on now is making the launch as smooth as possible, so hopefully there will be more opportunities before release to further fine-tune this setup. If not, then I guess I'll have to release a new setup in a thread that's not labled "beta" anymore
BIG THANKS TO DANNY for his editor that is coming along very nicely. I was able to make 100% of these edits very quickly and easily thanks to his tool
Drop your MCEs into this folder if you're using Win7. Open the MC and hit the rescan button in the bottom right corner, and you should be good to go.
I should've said earlier, this isn't a finished file by any means. While I'm happy with how it is right now, I may want to tweak a few settings after I get more play time with the controller and after more feedback as well The goal isn't to change the layout completely every time, but to alternate whatever isn't working so well or as smoothly as I'd like. Would eventually like to add some basic chat commands so that players can communicate with their party / world about immediate threats or changes in combat etc (Aggro, Add, Healing, Downed, that sorta thing).
EDIT: I should also note that you should make sure that both of these files aren't ticked at the same time when you launch the game. You can have both in your configs folder, just make sure you untick the one you're not going to use or just double tick the one you want to use (that will untick all other MCEs using the same .exe I believe). I should've added the alternative game config property to the MCEs, but I haven't been able to figure out how that's supposed to work as of yet... If they're both ticked it's probably not going to work correctly!
Think I got it, should find out during the stress test today. I was originally playing these betas with a gamepad and will probably end up making a similar layout:
There's a standard in designing action adventure games that pretty much mimics that xbox setup you have there. That said, there's a huge advantage to having motion controls mixed in with the normal setup. It just lets you do more than you could do before... it's a win-win situation!
So another stress test down, a week and a half left until the early start... can't wait! Got a bit of playtime in with the new setup, and I think it's almost at the level that I want. I didn't have too much trouble utilizing the point gestures, but having them assigned to the right controller was a bit rough for me. I'd had put them on the left, but my left trigger doesn't decompress all the way and gets stuck some of the time, and since I can't set a threshold for a trigger in the point gesture settings I can't rely on it for such (which is a huge bummer for me :\). That said, I think I can be clever about getting around the issue perhaps, and regardless I'm at least thinking about using P1R bumper for weapon skills and P1L bumper as abilities.
I'm really not sure if I like the tilt gestures to target enemies either. I found myself more than once accidentally switching to the wrong target, and that adds a level of unwanted chaos to the mix that is just not appreciated when you're trying to learn a new control layout lol. At this junction I'm thinking of just removing it entirely and using attacks to auto target the closest enemy and mouse clicks to manually select them.
So my current thoughts are to reassign the weapon skills to P1L, using P1R Trigger to dodge instead, and maybe using P1L for all the gesturing rather than using P1R. I also might change it to use the face buttons on P1R in conjunction with either holding P1L bumper or P1R bumper to use weapon skills 2-5 and utility and epic skills respectively. Would like to add chat commands at some point somewhere, just don't know where or what yet lol. Then there's the targeting, which I found myself not really using aside from hitting WS1 to auto target the closest enemy or using the mouse to manually select the enemy I want to attack. Not sure yet...
First time trying a custom setup - not as comfortable as the gamepad by the time the test ended, will definitely have to work on this more. The motion controls were finicky, probably due to my inexperience, and mouselook was pretty awkward at times as well. Initially mouselook was toggled, but the jerky camera didn't satisfy. However after removing the toggle the mouse had centering issues.
Planning to add a modifier key, also need a jump button because the tilt wasn't cutting it.
Thanks Ajores for the the MCE. I played the second one you posted on here last night during the Headstart launch and it worked really well. The only issue I'm having is that using ground-target skills, such as Weapon Skill 5 slot or a Grenade kit with the Engineer, I find it very hard to aim and activate the skill as moving the right controller activates the other skills as well. I'm thinking that the P1R Joystick may be worth trying as the Weapon skill activation method, which would allow more of a mouselook style while moving the P1R. Have you tried another option?
Here's my second shot at this. The secondary functions are set ingame to activate when the left trigger ALT is held.
Something I'd like help with: I want holding left trigger and pressing left joystick to simulate doubleclicking the left mouse button. Is there a way to do this?
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