Friday, December 30, 2011

Peeps' Updated Profile: Explained

After recent discussions motivated me to look over my profiles again, I decided to update them to remove some of the redundancies I'd created that were already covered by my keypad, and take advantage of some of the tweaks offered by Pinnacle Game Profiler.

I also felt it's time to better explain some of my settings, as a lot of the features I utilize are unbound by default.

I've created an XPadder version that's essentially identical to the PGP version (after jamesyfy showed me what I was doing wrong).  My older profiles are still available via previous posts, and I'll create a download page soon with all of this stuff in a single location.  Links and details after the jump.

Peeps' New PGP Profile
New XPadder Imperial Agent/Smuggler Profile
New XPadder Jedi Consular/Sith Inquisitor Profile
XPadder PS3 Controller Profile 

Here's an image for my Jedi Consular/Sith Inquisitor profile (below). The biggest difference between this and the IA/Smuggler profile is the latter has the Knockback ability (basically I bound a crowd control ability to Ctrl-= on my right quicktab, which is otherwise empty) replaced with cover.

The image is sized so you can scale it to fit on an 8.5x11 paper (landscaped):

This is essentially the same profile for both XPadder and Pinnacle Game Profiler.  I tried to use default keybinds wherever possible.  A lot of the quickslot and targeting commands are unbound by default, however, and I had to configure my own mappings for those.  I switched from using the right quickslot to the bottom-center quickslot because I'm a moron and this should've occurred to me sooner.  I moved my companion's quickslot to the left side of the screen.

You'll note I've removed Jump from my hotkeys.  That's because my keypad has a spacebar, and it seemed stupidly redundant to dedicate a controller button to it.  The other advantage is my face buttons and D-Pad now have identical configurations: square controls quickslot 1, left D-Pad controls bottom-center quickslot 1.

So how do all these quickslots work in practice?  Well, I organize my abilities by groups of 4 related ones.  For example, in my IA/Smuggler's default mapping, my face buttons control ranged attack abilities, and my D-Pad controls AoE and buff/debuff abilities (such as thermal detonator, stun grenade, escape, etc).  If I hold down R2, my face buttons swap to melee attacks (and whatever ranged abilities are left over), and my D-Pad swaps to additional buffs/debuffs or heals (depending on my AC).

The biggest change between this and my previous profiles is the addition of a map swap to the R1 button that covers all targeting options in the game.  This was heavily inspired by Errol's SWTOR PGP profile.  It goes a little something like this:
  • D-Pad: Targets party members 1-4
  • L3/R3: Targets party companions 1 & 2, respectively
  • Select: Target self
  • Start: Follow target
  • L1: Clears target (using the ESC key...if you hit this with no target, it'll pull up the options menu)
  • PS3 button: Target nearest friend (as opposed to its default function of targeting nearest enemy)
  • Square: Sets/Swaps Focus Target
  • Triangle: Acquire target's target
  • Circle: Target your companion
  • Cross: Target center screen
  • L2/R2: Focus target modifier/self-target modifier, respectively
 So there you go.  Enjoy!

8 comments:

  1. Peeps Smiley has made an Xpadder tester profile with many many features for use with making complex commands. I've been looking at this newer profile for Xpadder and some of the shift commands you've made although its working its not correct. Let me explain your profile with SWTORAgent; right shoulder, Back and Start button will work but the real itty gritty commands which is supposed to be there is not. I'm placing a link for you to download and look at smiley's Tester Profile and do a little analyzing to those commands to match your with his and it will be a perfect profile for Xpadder. Take it from me I know what I'm telling you. I've released this Tester Profile and the previous SWTOR for Xpadder on another download site so as others can get it. Here's the direct link to Smiley's Tester profile;
    http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?nojw5b1ja68iwjl

    And here's the direct link to Smiley's SWTOR Profile;
    http://www.mediafire.com/?jgxb6298mf7zl0t

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  2. Ah, I see what he did. I was looking for a way to do the swap and still use it as a target button. I abandoned the idea when I realized I couldn't set an "if held for x, then swap." But his configuration makes sense. The swap would only be temporary when you tap the button anyway.

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  3. I should also probably enable these turbo modes of his...it'd resolve a lot of issues with delayed responses in SWTOR.

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  4. Okay, I replaced the links with updated versions. The PGP and XPadder profiles are essentially the same now. I left the L2 and R2 toggles open, as I haven't decided what I want to map to those on top of the hotswaps. Thanks for your help, james!

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  5. I'm pretty ignorant of this whole thing, but couldn't you just bind the shoulder buttons you're currently using for map swap to modifier keys (ie one as shift, one as alt, and the other as ctrl)?

    The mechanical difference being you'd have to hold down the shoulder button at the same time as the modified face button, but you'd be less at the mercy of software "hiccups" and would always know exactly what a button press will result in (ie, you forgot which map you are on in the middle of combat and accidentally fire off the wrong ability). Or is that a non-issue?

    I dunno, it's what DCUO ends up doing for their native controller support and I think it works pretty well.

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  6. Drop, it's definitely a viable option, and I'd considered such a setup before, but the bottom line is it limits the versatility of the profiles you're seeing here. For example, you need your right analog stick to simultaneously right-click and rotate, but there are scenarios where you want free mouse movement, and having a config to swap to allows you to simultaneously switch analog control and pull up additional abilities. And I've never encountered difficulties remembering where my hotkeys are mapped; quite the opposite, in fact.

    There are folks that use the type of setup you're suggesting, and use it well, but the bottom line is swapped mappings will always offer more options because they don't focus exclusively on the quickslots. As for software glitches, that's definitely a viable concern, but the only glitch I ever encountered with XPadder was a swapped mapping getting stuck when accidentally activated two mapping simultaneously, and I've never had any glitches with PGP.

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  7. (also, using hot-swapping means you can use the default hotkeys for all your commands, which is useful for those moments when you feel inclined to switch back to keyboard-mouse)

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  8. @Errol: Sorry, for some reason I completely overlooked your Dec 31st comment. To clarify, the only post of his I deleted was at his request. Message received, though!

    I agree on both products being so awesome that it's user preference that this point. For pure ease of use, I definitely prefer XPadder. Sometimes I feel like PGP is trying to do too much. But I haven't had any in-game problems with PGP, so it's the one I begrudgingly go with.

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