Learning can be fun
Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2014 9:06 pm
This is mostly a show-and-tell type thing. I wanna brag
I've always been kinda intimidated by programming. The closest I've gotten to programming is building very complex things in LittleBigPlanet 2 (Not sure how close it actually is, but I really made some very complex things, involving hundreds (Not exaggerating) of connections between if, not, and, or, xor gates, timers, emitters, sensors, which I'm sure at least can translate to programming... Am I optimistic about the level of my achievement in LittleBigPlanet btw?), and even there, the frustration of the thing simply not working and having to look for the problem has given me many headaches, and I'm sure it's much worse if it's all text based...
Anyway, where I was going with this, despite my lack of programming knowledge, I consider myself great at making things work on a PC.
A week ago, I moved into a new house. In my old house, we used my TV as the TV (I won a TV once...). Now we moved in with my gran, who has a TV. So now I can put my TV in my room. It's right infront of my bed, which is really nice. But, I decided, screw keyboard and mouse.
A while ago, I wanted to use my PS3 controller with my PC for the purpose of gaming. It probably worked about 4 times, before the program I used to do it, motioninjoy, started giving problems. I kinda just left it at that, keyboard and mouse was fine. Now I was here and resumed my quest to use the PS3 controller
It's probably worth mentioning, most things these days can't really use PS3 controllers, or any generic USB controller, and only really recognise Xbox controllers. Had to get an emulator. A simple google search, most things point to motioninjoy, which simply didn't work for me. Even downloading a fresh installer, trying 3 different versions, nothing worked. Eventually I googled "using PS3 controller with PC no motioninjoy", I stumbled upon a thread where people actually said how rubish motioninjoy is, and gave me an alternative
This new program is a looot simpler, install and it works. One thing motioninjoy had, that this new program didn't have (Just searched for the name of the program... Every exe is simply SCP, which I know is also a site people write scary stories in, so I dono... If anyone is really interested, I can attempt to find out more), is the ability to map the buttons to specific other buttons, which is really unnecessary. I just want Windows to treat it like an xbox controller, which is what SCP does
So, now that I had that set up, I thought I could just go play a game. So I opened one of my favourite games, which I vaguely remembered had controller support, The binding of isaac. Upon closer inspection, it, in fact, simply pointed to a program used to make a controller do keyboard keys, namely JoyToKey. Installed it, and set it up to play the game. Was fun. But that program I found had a lot more potential than playing binding of isaac
I started setting up the program to play an Goat Simulator, and found out that it can translate how far you push the analog stick into a number (-265 to 265 for both x and y value), and can use that to tell how fast to move the mouse. I was very impressed, previously expecting it to only do up, down, left or right
So I finished setting up this profile, only to learn that goat simulator doesn't require it to be played with a controller. I then edited that profile to be for general desktop use, but I kept the name "goat mode" xD
After that, well, set up that profile with a lot of possibilities, such as:
-switching to a blank profile for when I go into games, using select. This blank profile only has one command, namely select, which goes back into goat mode
-switching tabs in chrome, and closing them
-scrolling up, down, left and right, using the right analog stick
-left click, right click, middle mouse button
-zooming in and out (Very useful while laying back in bed)
After that, I was getting comfortable. Laying back in bed, browsing FB and Zafur using a PS3 controller, listening to music, when it started irratating me that I need to switch to my media player to skip songs. My keyboard has multimedia keys after all...
After some searching, I found a program called "AutoHotKey", which I could use to make any button do what a multimedia key does. Sadly, it involved coding. So today, I wrote my first four keys of code:
"Joy9::Send {Media_Prev}
Joy10::Send {Media_Next}
2Joy9::Send {Media_Prev}
2Joy10::Send {Media_Next} "
(Note: 2 controllers. And the one on charge is usually number one, a problem I've worked around instead of trying to fix)
So now I can lay back in bed, doing most things with my playstaytion controller. Only time I have to get up is to type something, or make the occasional edit to the things I have set up (and even that I've done a few time wirelessly).
In the last week, I spent more time making things work than actually doing things. Not just all that up there, had to set up a network too (Been to many lans, so I'm not bad with that, but making it wireless and setting up my stepdad's "Firewall", as he calls it (Basically a mini PC thing. He worked for baracuda networking, so I assume that things main purpose is networking), was a challenge), Set up two sound systems (One that ended up missing a cable I need to find now, so I'm on headphones for the time being), and did a lot of studying (matric preparatory exams). But I have to say... After all the effort, laying back, gaming, browsing, everything with my PS3 controller is all the more sweet. It has been a lot of effort, but I truly enjoyed it
On a final point, I now have to open 3 programs every time I turn on my computer (1 for xbox controller emulation, one for keyboard keys, one for the two media keys), so... Is there a way to start them up on startup? I read online something about a "Start Menu" folder, which I'm supposed to put shortcuts in, but access is denied. How can I start them on startup?
I just realised how much I typed... If you read all of it, thanks a lot ^^ I really had fun doing all this, and feel a sense of achievement. And it'd be nice if someone other than myself could see this as somewhat cool
I've always been kinda intimidated by programming. The closest I've gotten to programming is building very complex things in LittleBigPlanet 2 (Not sure how close it actually is, but I really made some very complex things, involving hundreds (Not exaggerating) of connections between if, not, and, or, xor gates, timers, emitters, sensors, which I'm sure at least can translate to programming... Am I optimistic about the level of my achievement in LittleBigPlanet btw?), and even there, the frustration of the thing simply not working and having to look for the problem has given me many headaches, and I'm sure it's much worse if it's all text based...
Anyway, where I was going with this, despite my lack of programming knowledge, I consider myself great at making things work on a PC.
A week ago, I moved into a new house. In my old house, we used my TV as the TV (I won a TV once...). Now we moved in with my gran, who has a TV. So now I can put my TV in my room. It's right infront of my bed, which is really nice. But, I decided, screw keyboard and mouse.
A while ago, I wanted to use my PS3 controller with my PC for the purpose of gaming. It probably worked about 4 times, before the program I used to do it, motioninjoy, started giving problems. I kinda just left it at that, keyboard and mouse was fine. Now I was here and resumed my quest to use the PS3 controller
It's probably worth mentioning, most things these days can't really use PS3 controllers, or any generic USB controller, and only really recognise Xbox controllers. Had to get an emulator. A simple google search, most things point to motioninjoy, which simply didn't work for me. Even downloading a fresh installer, trying 3 different versions, nothing worked. Eventually I googled "using PS3 controller with PC no motioninjoy", I stumbled upon a thread where people actually said how rubish motioninjoy is, and gave me an alternative
This new program is a looot simpler, install and it works. One thing motioninjoy had, that this new program didn't have (Just searched for the name of the program... Every exe is simply SCP, which I know is also a site people write scary stories in, so I dono... If anyone is really interested, I can attempt to find out more), is the ability to map the buttons to specific other buttons, which is really unnecessary. I just want Windows to treat it like an xbox controller, which is what SCP does
So, now that I had that set up, I thought I could just go play a game. So I opened one of my favourite games, which I vaguely remembered had controller support, The binding of isaac. Upon closer inspection, it, in fact, simply pointed to a program used to make a controller do keyboard keys, namely JoyToKey. Installed it, and set it up to play the game. Was fun. But that program I found had a lot more potential than playing binding of isaac
I started setting up the program to play an Goat Simulator, and found out that it can translate how far you push the analog stick into a number (-265 to 265 for both x and y value), and can use that to tell how fast to move the mouse. I was very impressed, previously expecting it to only do up, down, left or right
So I finished setting up this profile, only to learn that goat simulator doesn't require it to be played with a controller. I then edited that profile to be for general desktop use, but I kept the name "goat mode" xD
After that, well, set up that profile with a lot of possibilities, such as:
-switching to a blank profile for when I go into games, using select. This blank profile only has one command, namely select, which goes back into goat mode
-switching tabs in chrome, and closing them
-scrolling up, down, left and right, using the right analog stick
-left click, right click, middle mouse button
-zooming in and out (Very useful while laying back in bed)
After that, I was getting comfortable. Laying back in bed, browsing FB and Zafur using a PS3 controller, listening to music, when it started irratating me that I need to switch to my media player to skip songs. My keyboard has multimedia keys after all...
After some searching, I found a program called "AutoHotKey", which I could use to make any button do what a multimedia key does. Sadly, it involved coding. So today, I wrote my first four keys of code:
"Joy9::Send {Media_Prev}
Joy10::Send {Media_Next}
2Joy9::Send {Media_Prev}
2Joy10::Send {Media_Next} "
(Note: 2 controllers. And the one on charge is usually number one, a problem I've worked around instead of trying to fix)
So now I can lay back in bed, doing most things with my playstaytion controller. Only time I have to get up is to type something, or make the occasional edit to the things I have set up (and even that I've done a few time wirelessly).
In the last week, I spent more time making things work than actually doing things. Not just all that up there, had to set up a network too (Been to many lans, so I'm not bad with that, but making it wireless and setting up my stepdad's "Firewall", as he calls it (Basically a mini PC thing. He worked for baracuda networking, so I assume that things main purpose is networking), was a challenge), Set up two sound systems (One that ended up missing a cable I need to find now, so I'm on headphones for the time being), and did a lot of studying (matric preparatory exams). But I have to say... After all the effort, laying back, gaming, browsing, everything with my PS3 controller is all the more sweet. It has been a lot of effort, but I truly enjoyed it
On a final point, I now have to open 3 programs every time I turn on my computer (1 for xbox controller emulation, one for keyboard keys, one for the two media keys), so... Is there a way to start them up on startup? I read online something about a "Start Menu" folder, which I'm supposed to put shortcuts in, but access is denied. How can I start them on startup?
I just realised how much I typed... If you read all of it, thanks a lot ^^ I really had fun doing all this, and feel a sense of achievement. And it'd be nice if someone other than myself could see this as somewhat cool