Overview

Some background

There are a couple of things to be said about using WingMan® game controllers and Profiler to play First Person Shooter (FPS) type games.  

For the most part, FPS,  strategy, role-playing, and golf type games are mostly designed with a  mouse & keyboard in mind for the game's controls.   A small amount of these genres of games do  allow for joystick/gamepad input, but the way to enable them varies from game to  game.  Even when it is possible to use a joystick/gamepad in these type of  games, the overall performance may not be as good as with a mouse & keyboard  combination.  Also, the instructions may not be easy/clear for the typical  gamer.

To be able to use a game controller in these games requires a good understanding of the following items :-

1. The type, or level, of support for a game controller in the game. For example Diablo has *no* support for a game controller,  Unreal Tournament has some level of game controller support that can be configured via editing of an .INI text file, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast has some in game configuration capabilities...etc... Check with the game documentation to determine the type and level of the support.

2. You must have a good knowledge of how WingMan® Profiler works.  The key elements to understand are:

• How WingMan® Profiler works (i.e. generating keystrokes from button presses and axis movement, using axis mappings, and how a game polls a device for input.

• How to use mouse emulation.

• How to import a profile.

The WingMan® Profiler FAQ has information on each of these topics.  To verify your understanding of these items it is recommended to create a profile for NOTEPAD.EXE.

General Steps

If the game has documented steps for supporting a game controller it is best to use these steps.

Otherwise, this is the general sequence of steps that could be used for most FPS games that has little or no documented support for use of a game controller.

A. Use the FPS starter profile.  We have created a general FPS game profile template that makes use of the "W, A, S, D" movement keys that are used quite often in FPS games and linked them to the left mini joystick/D-Pad.  We have also assigned the right mini joystick to "mouse look" on the devices that support it, as well as mouse buttons to the first three buttons on the gamepad.  This profile also makes use of the "persistent profile" feature of WingMan® Profiler, so this game profile should be able to be used with most of your FPS games.

To make use of this profile...

• Download fps_template.wgp.

• Import the fps_template.wgp file into WingMan® Profiler.  For detailed instructions on how to do this, please refer to the WingMan® Profiler FAQ "Tutorials" section.

• Make the adjustments that are necessary for your specific game.  This includes selecting the proper executable during the import step, and creating commands that are specific to the game (i.e. open, next weapon, jump, etc).

B. Select this profile as the "Persistent Profile" (instructions also found in the WingMan® Profiler FAQ).  Run NOTEPAD.EXE and verify the correct operation of the WingMan® Profiler ( i.e. when running NOTEPAD.EXE you can see the keystroke playback, observe the mouse cursor movement ...etc).

C. Start the game, the profile should now allow you to use the gamepad in the game.