CONTEST: Xbox Chatpad Driver Challenge

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Originally Posted by GAFBlizzard

I would like to release it soon, but it has taken me longer than I expected to learn everything, I guess. I would also like it to be perfect, but I'd like to warn everyone now -- it will almost certainly have bugs, and I may have to save trying to fix some things until after release. If you hammer keys really quickly, I may not be as good as the XBox 360 at catching them all, for instance.

In short, I want to get it in a good (but not perfect) state and then release it for testing. Presumably then I could fix bugs and add extra features if I have time, along with researching the wireless controller.

I don't want to make any promises especially since I have a daytime job that takes most of my time, but I would like to think that at the very latest, I should have something out by Christmas. I would hopefully release something earlier. I need to finish off the basic keyboard configurable mapping stuff (I think this is nearly done, maybe 1-2 more days), mess with some controller/mouse stuff (technically not required but I want to do it, maybe 1-3 days work?), and make an installer (maybe 1-3 days). So I'd guess 1-2 weeks? Just remember, no promises. I'm like HL2: Episode 3, or Duke Nukem Forever. :whistle:

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cool hope its out soon xD

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Originally Posted by GAFBlizzard

I would like to release it soon, but it has taken me longer than I expected to learn everything, I guess. I would also like it to be perfect, but I'd like to warn everyone now -- it will almost certainly have bugs, and I may have to save trying to fix some things until after release. If you hammer keys really quickly, I may not be as good as the XBox 360 at catching them all, for instance.

In short, I want to get it in a good (but not perfect) state and then release it for testing. Presumably then I could fix bugs and add extra features if I have time, along with researching the wireless controller.

I don't want to make any promises especially since I have a daytime job that takes most of my time, but I would like to think that at the very latest, I should have something out by Christmas. I would hopefully release something earlier. I need to finish off the basic keyboard configurable mapping stuff (I think this is nearly done, maybe 1-2 more days), mess with some controller/mouse stuff (technically not required but I want to do it, maybe 1-3 days work?), and make an installer (maybe 1-3 days). So I'd guess 1-2 weeks? Just remember, no promises. I'm like HL2: Episode 3, or Duke Nukem Forever. :whistle:

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Noooooo not like Duke Nukem Forever :) j/k

I can't wait to see this thing finally working in windows! keep it up man! TONS of respect!

I think it was a fairly productive evening. I fixed some items I had marked TODO or to test. I am still not happy that it looks like I will not handle rapid keypresses perfectly, but I am going to do the best I can for now. Maybe eventually I or someone else will figure out a solution to that problem too. :)

For now, I think I have fixed all of the immediate problems I had noticed with ctrl/alt/orange/shift etc. bindings. I seem to have even fixed a weird issue where Windows apparently needed a slight delay so that alt-tab would consistently work. Hopefully this stuff works in Windows XP or Windows 7, but hey, that's why I have you guys to test, haha.

From testing, it seems I now have modifiers set up properly so that you can use control, alt, shift, orange, green, etc. as either sticky keys or normal keys if you configure them properly. If you make the shift button a sticky ("latched") shift key, for instance, then you can press shift and release it, and the shift light will stay lit until you press a normal key like a, which will then type a capital A instead of a lowercase a. The shift light will then go off. Shift-1, shift-2, ..., can be bound to F1, F2, ... if you want. The people button can act like the Windows key if you want.

Remaining chatpad keyboard-specific things to do before I move on to the mouse and controller stuff:

* Change how I handle some of the chatpad data so that my code should handle rapidly repeated keypresses better, though probably not perfectly.
* Test the chatpad to play some of a Mirror's Edge level, making sure the key bindings seem to work properly. Eventually I will want to repeat this test when the mouse is controlled by the thumbsticks. Yes, it's a really silly use for the controller and chatpad, but it lets me prove it works and make sure the original controller buttons and controls work while my driver also works.
* Add some code to make the shift button light stay on when caps lock is activated from the chatpad.
* Finish up some internal virtual keyboard device stuff, mostly having to do with enabling/disabling the device and starting up/shutting down things cleanly.

Hopefully that's all, and testing doesn't reveal any new bugs. :roll:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GAFBlizzard

I think it was a fairly productive evening. I fixed some items I had marked TODO or to test. I am still not happy that it looks like I will not handle rapid keypresses perfectly, but I am going to do the best I can for now. Maybe eventually I or someone else will figure out a solution to that problem too. :)

For now, I think I have fixed all of the immediate problems I had noticed with ctrl/alt/orange/shift etc. bindings. I seem to have even fixed a weird issue where Windows apparently needed a slight delay so that alt-tab would consistently work. Hopefully this stuff works in Windows XP or Windows 7, but hey, that's why I have you guys to test, haha.

From testing, it seems I now have modifiers set up properly so that you can use control, alt, shift, orange, green, etc. as either sticky keys or normal keys if you configure them properly. If you make the shift button a sticky ("latched") shift key, for instance, then you can press shift and release it, and the shift light will stay lit until you press a normal key like a, which will then type a capital A instead of a lowercase a. The shift light will then go off. Shift-1, shift-2, ..., can be bound to F1, F2, ... if you want. The people button can act like the Windows key if you want.

Remaining chatpad keyboard-specific things to do before I move on to the mouse and controller stuff:

* Change how I handle some of the chatpad data so that my code should handle rapidly repeated keypresses better, though probably not perfectly.
* Test the chatpad to play some of a Mirror's Edge level, making sure the key bindings seem to work properly. Eventually I will want to repeat this test when the mouse is controlled by the thumbsticks. Yes, it's a really silly use for the controller and chatpad, but it lets me prove it works and make sure the original controller buttons and controls work while my driver also works.
* Add some code to make the shift button light stay on when caps lock is activated from the chatpad.
* Finish up some internal virtual keyboard device stuff, mostly having to do with enabling/disabling the device and starting up/shutting down things cleanly.

Hopefully that's all, and testing doesn't reveal any new bugs. :roll:

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Great news! Would it be possible, so that when the shift key is "latched", it can still be used in the hold down manner.

GAFBlizzard do you have a Steam account?

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Originally Posted by WazzaJB

Great news! Would it be possible, so that when the shift key is "latched", it can still be used in the hold down manner.

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That's exactly what it does now. That's probably one of the tricky things I was having to deal with since I wanted both behaviors. If all works properly, this is what it currently does if shift is mapped to the "latched" version:

*press shift, release shift* *press j, release j* *press j, release j* --> types "Jj"
*press shift* *press j, release j* *press j, release j* *release shift* *press j, release j* --> types "JJj". The latch stops taking effect as soon as you press a normal key, but as long as you hold shift down you will still get the modifier. The same should go for the orange and green latched versions.

And I do have a Steam account, but I would prefer people just PM me on here or email me instead, no offense. :happy:

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Originally Posted by GAFBlizzard

That's exactly what it does now. That's probably one of the tricky things I was having to deal with since I wanted both behaviors. If all works properly, this is what it currently does if shift is mapped to the "latched" version:

*press shift, release shift* *press j, release j* *press j, release j* --> types "Jj"
*press shift* *press j, release j* *press j, release j* *release shift* *press j, release j* --> types "JJj". The latch stops taking effect as soon as you press a normal key, but as long as you hold shift down you will still get the modifier. The same should go for the orange and green latched versions.

And I do have a Steam account, but I would prefer people just PM me on here or email me instead, no offense. :happy:

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Nice one mate, you've thought this through really well :D

Well I was thinking it's almost Christmas and I'm sure everyone wants to give you a present especially since you're giving us such a cool one. :)

Would it be okay to let us test the driver before you implement the mouse/joystick part? Since the joysticks aren't actually part of the chatpad, so we could test out the actual keyboard end of it. :)

I cant wait either, dying to have a keyboard as well :)