Mouse-Auto-Center Defeated!!!

[madrussian 347]

It's official...

Mouse-Auto-Center has gone the way of the Dodo.

As I mentioned earlier on the development thread, I recently spent over ten minutes straight just driving around an empty Rahmadi with nothing but me and my Humvee.  And let me tell you, it was everything I thought it could be.  Smooth as silk, with no back-talk from my mouse what-so-ever.  You really do have to see it to believe it.  And now you can!

For those interested in some background information you can read about it here.  Ladies and gentlemen, after much blood, sweat, and tears, I proudly present you with:

MadRussian's Eliminate Mouse-Auto-Center v1.0

Here are some highlights from the readme:

Summary:

This modification provides a means to eliminate the unwanted mouse-auto-center "feature" while mouse driving that has been plaguing many members of the ArmA community since vanilla ArmA was released.  (Installation instructions are in the contained full readme.)

Requirements:

PPJoy version 0.82 (or greater)

http://www.geocities.com/deonvdw/Docs/PPJoyMain.htm

GlovePIE version 0.30 (or greater)

http://carl.kenner.googlepages.com/glovepie_download

Usage:

Always ensure the GlovePIE script provided is running.

Just toggle it on and off using the keystroke defined in the GlovePIE script.  (I defaulted it to the TAB key, but feel free to reassign it.  Do a find on "Tab" and change it there if you like.)

Note that there are plenty of cases where you will want to toggle it off and regain x-axis control of your joystick.

Known Issues:

During mouse-auto-center elimination, Mouse-Look steers the vehicle, and it should not.  This is at the top of the list for fixing.  Already have an idea on how to fix that for a future release.

Due to the necessity of sensitivity tuning (see Installation step 10 in the full readme), during mouse-auto-center elimination, the maximum allowable resulting steering sensitivity in-game is a bit lower than I'd like it.  It's far from intolerable...  Anything to eliminate the mouse-auto-center!

Setup is a little bit painful.  If anyone sees a way to streamline it, please, I'm all ears.

edit: The more I think about it, I'd really consider this release both an addon (because it contains scripting), but perhaps more importantly a guide, because everyone's setups are a bit different.  You will see what I mean when you check out the full readme.  In the mean time I kind of view it as a race to see which one of you will get everything up and running properly first... smooth as silk with no back-talk from your mouse.  Just got to get it set up properly once and you are good to go.

Credits:

This addon is dedicated to all of our ArmA community members afflicted by this dreaded hardship of mouse-auto-centering for so long.  This addon would not have been possible without all of you.

First of all, can't forget to thank BIS for this wonderfully modifiable game.  Lets get a toggle for this mouse-auto-center thing next time!  My social life needn't suffer any more than it already has making this.

Many thanks to Blazin, Average Joe, layne-suhr, madine75, alef, sparks50, nuxil, Q, 4 IN 1, Kremator, ck-claw, MehMan, and zGuba for your support and ideas.  You guys gave me the energy to finish this.

Particular thanks to alef for pointing me in the right direction by mentioning PPJoy and GlovePIE.  Ironically, he laid out the roadmap over 2 months before I saw the light!

Finally, thanks to my longtime friend and roommate Lito.  Time and time again, she has put up with my binge programming sessions.  She even chips in an idea and sometimes sits down to help me squash a bug every now and again. Sometimes it helps to have a Java programmer around.

If I happened to have missed anyone, please let me know.

Link

And without further adieu, here's the link for v1.0 on rapidshare.

I should be around to help out with the setup (it takes a bit to get it up and running), but I'm getting called downstairs for dinner (and movie).  I'll check back up after a couple of hours.  Happy unafflicted mouse driving!!!

[big 0]

Armaholic mirror and news:

- Eliminate Mouse-Auto-Center v1.0

[Deadeye 1]

ArmedAssault.info Mirror :

http://www.armedassault.info/index.p....lang=en

[MehMan 0]

very nice, first thing i'll check out when I get enuogh time to run arma.

[Average Joe 0]

They said it couldnt be done Nicejob mate, will give it a good ol' test when im home  

[rundll.exe 12]

I was excited by this addon but...

Im having troubles installing PPjoy

When I install it It says It cant install the driver and I need to do it manually. But when I manually try to install the drivers (the infs) it just says "Installation failed". Not verry descriptive eh.

And adding them via the add hardware wizzard gives the error: Windows cannot find the file specified.

I have windows XP and no real Joystick.

Anyone have this problem and know how to fix? I want to try this!

[4 IN 1 0]

ok i installed ppjoy and it work without problem

but i cant quite unstand how to map the axis

can anyone teach me?

[DaKa 0]

"They said it couldnt be done Nicejob mate, will give it a good ol' test when im home "

Hehe, with this addon, I know that anything is possible in ArmA. Great work, downloading now.

[kuIoodporny 45]

That's what BIS headquarters should have turned on right now

<span style='font-size:7pt;line-height:100%'>The fact that people don't complain much about the auto-centering doesn't mean it's edible.</span>

[MehMan 0]

One question, how does this work? Does it continue to turn the wheels, or is it like OFP where you point the cursor and the vehicle turns to it?

[kuIoodporny 45]

One question, how does this work? Does it continue to turn the wheels, or is it like OFP where you point the cursor and the vehicle turns to it?

It seems to be less complicated than I thought before. Main difference in how ArmA treats joysticks and mouse is that ArmA does not reset the position of Your joystick after a while.

MadRussian's brilliant idea is to watch your mouse carefully and set the virtual joystick to the value You moved Your mouse

To cut potential gossips that could resurrect out of my post in pre-release thread - BattleEye shouldn't complain about it as it's not a dll hook as I expected it to be

THANK YOU MADRUSSIAN

[madrussian 347]

Thanks for all the interest!

I was excited by this addon but...

Im having troubles installing PPjoy

When I install it It says It cant install the driver and I need to do it manually. But when I manually try to install the drivers (the infs) it just says "Installation failed". Not verry descriptive eh.

And adding them via the add hardware wizzard gives the error: Windows cannot find the file specified.

I have windows XP and no real Joystick.

Anyone have this problem and know how to fix? I want to try this!

Sorry to hear this trouble, mate.  PPjoy installed for me just fine.  (I'm using Vista.)  First off, I'm assuming you are logged in as Administrator?  I recall something in the readme about needing to allow installation of unsigned drivers (for XP?).  I'll bet you that is the problem.  Because I'm running Vista, I got a prompt on that.  IIRC, with XP you had to go into your Windows settings and tell it to prompt you.  Anyone else get it working for XP specifically yet?

If you are still having a problem with this after I get off work (just got here) I'll try and install PPjoy tonight on my XP partition.

ok i installed ppjoy and it work without problem

but i cant quite unstand how to map the axis

can anyone teach me?

Sounds like either you are not sure what to do in the PPjoy mapping settings or the step where you modify the mapping section of my script.

Here are a few quick pointers for both:

First of all the reason this part can be challenging is that there are many different types of joysticks out there, so it's not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing (if you are even using a real joystick, that is).  Believe me, I wish it were... that would make installing this addon a snap.  But I know everyone can get it set up, with a little patience, that is.

For your virtual PPjoy mapping, the first question to ask yourself is if you have a real joystick.  If you don't, then you really only need the x-axis.  If you do have a real joystick, then for your virtual PPjoy mapping, just make sure you've covered every function that your real joystick posesses.  To do so, bring up your real joystick in the Game Controllers from the Windows Control Panel.  For each axis, throttle, nob, hat, etc, create a mapping for it in PPjoy mapping.  Extra mappings should not hurt anything, as long as you do the next part correctly.

Then in the readme step where you modify the mapping section of my script (which you only perform if you are using a real joystick), use those 15 or so lines of code I've got as a starting point, and create your own one-to-one mapping of all of the remaining joystick functions.  Remove any excess lines of code I used for my joystick.  Note that I covered the X-axis for you in the if statement above the comment.  So your job is to cover everything EXCEPT the X-axis. (I should probably add that part to the readme.)

I hope this helps!

edit:

One question, how does this work? Does it continue to turn the wheels, or is it like OFP where you point the cursor and the vehicle turns to it?

Thank you zGuba for the excellent explanation of what is going on.  Sometimes I get long-winded and probably confusing.

@all

Again, thanks all for the praise!  Hopefully BIS will add a toggle now for ArmA2, heck even ArmA1 in the final patch, now that there is no denying it can be done.

As far as this addon goes, hopefully once we get a few folks up and running we will have acheived a critical-mass and then there will be plenty of different people helping everyone through.  Mark my words:

We will eradicate mouse-auto-center for you and your mates, if you want it eradicated.

Stick with it guys, you will get there and I promise you that.

[Stavanger 0]

Mirror by ePrison.de

Eliminate Mouse-Auto-Center v1.0 MadRussian

Regards,

Stavanger

[madrussian 347]

Curious, I just noted that this thread is no longer coming up when I click on New Posts (but it still shows up in ArmA - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE).  I just saw it in New Posts a minute ago, and there are still tons of topics that I am still seeing that were listed afterwards before.  There's a blue envelope indicator with a white star on in, which does not appear in the forum legend below (where all the other envelope symbols and the lock symbols are).

Anyone have any idea what might be going on?  I'd really like to get the word out about this addon, but if people do not see it when they click on New Topics...  

edit:

Just clicked New Posts again and it shows up... hmmm.

Anyhow, anyone have any idea what the blue envelope with the star on it means?

edit: Also I saw/see no other topics anywhere I look with white stars on them. Interesting...

[Namikaze 0]

It means that you've responded to a non-"hot" (cool, I suppose) topic, but that there aren't any new posts in that thread.

[Yoma 0]

Now please please please BIS don't screw the car controls in Arma2.

PS: I love you!

[paragraphic l 2]

Curious, I just noted that this thread is no longer coming up when I click on New Posts (but it still shows up in ArmA - ADDONS & MODS: COMPLETE).  I just saw it in New Posts a minute ago, and there are still tons of topics that I am still seeing that were listed afterwards before.  There's a blue envelope indicator with a white star on in, which does not appear in the forum legend below (where all the other envelope symbols and the lock symbols are).

Anyone have any idea what might be going on?  I'd really like to get the word out about this addon, but if people do not see it when they click on New Topics...  

edit:

Just clicked New Posts again and it shows up... hmmm.

Anyhow, anyone have any idea what the blue envelope with the star on it means?

edit: Also I saw/see no other topics anywhere I look with white stars on them.  Interesting...

Go check the index page off any of the sub-forums and look at the end of that page you'll see an index with information about the icons... the star means you've posted in it or you've started that topic.

[madrussian 347]

@paragraphic and Namikaze

Thanks for the info.

@Yoma

np, matey.

btw-

Anyone got it working yet?

By working I mean fine tuned with all mouse-auto-center eliminated?

[rundll.exe 12]

Thanks for all the interest!

I was excited by this addon but...

Im having troubles installing PPjoy

When I install it It says It cant install the driver and I need to do it manually. But when I manually try to install the drivers (the infs) it just says "Installation failed". Not verry descriptive eh.

And adding them via the add hardware wizzard gives the error: Windows cannot find the file specified.

I have windows XP and no real Joystick.

Anyone have this problem and know how to fix? I want to try this!

Sorry to hear this trouble, mate.  PPjoy installed for me just fine.  (I'm using Vista.)  First off, I'm assuming you are logged in as Administrator?  I recall something in the readme about needing to allow installation of unsigned drivers (for XP?).  I'll bet you that is the problem.  Because I'm running Vista, I got a prompt on that.  IIRC, with XP you had to go into your Windows settings and tell it to prompt you.  Anyone else get it working for XP specifically yet?

If you are still having a problem with this after I get off work (just got here) I'll try and install PPjoy tonight on my XP partition.

Yes im administrator, and I checked the driver signing thingy, stated in the ppjoy manual. Its all good. In fact, after copying the files, I get the warning about the undigned driver, and directly after clicking "continue anyway" it says that it failed.

I tried it on my laptop (XP SP3 also) and it worked flawlessly, but ArmA on laptop is just...

[madrussian 347]

@rundll.exe

I just installed it on my XP partition without any problems.  Just an outside shot here, but seeing as though PPjoy is emulating a Parallel Port Joystick, maybe it needs other drivers in place to support its operation.  Is it possible your chipset drivers are not installed, hence no parallel port support?

Anyone have any other ideas that might help out rundll.exe?

@all

I'm getting the sense that some of you are probably finding the setup a little daunting... here a quick suggestion for you:

Even if you have a real joystick, trying it first with no real joystick should be a snap.  Simply:

1. Create a PPjoy virtual joystick (using #8). When you go to map it in PPJoy just accept all defaults!  That should make it easy.  (will add to the readme)

2. Ensure ArmA is not running.  Then from the Windows control panel, bring up Game Controllers, then unplug all your joysticks and game controllers from your computer.  You should have only one item still listed (your virtual joystick).

3. Now bring up my script in GlovePIE, make sure var.usingJoy=0, and run the script.

4. Fire up ArmA, open the editor, jump into your favorite wheeled vehicle.  Drive around a bit, observing crappy default mouse-auto-center.

5. Press TAB key.  You should immediately notice at least a partial defeat of mouse-auto-center.

6. Tune the var.range value in the GlovePIE script until mouse-auto-center is eliminated for good!  (You can have ArmA running while you alt-TAB in and out to make your GlovePIE edits.)

After freeing yourselves from the bonds of mouse-auto-center even for a few minutes, I am confident those of you with real joysticks will be highly motivated to tackle the somewhat more complex step of mapping your real joystick.

Any questions, comments, etc, please don't hesitate!

[kuIoodporny 45]

Now please please please BIS don't screw the car controls in Arma2.

GC preview version doesn't seem to have any progress in this case.

C'mon BIS, You've freed the weapon aiming, now free the steering similar way xD

[ArmaVidz 0]

Some motherboards have the paralell port disabled in the BIOS. I'm not familiar with the program but the software may need to bind with the paralell port address...

Perhaps check the "Onboard Devices" area of your motherboards BIOS and try to reinstall-if you're having issues?

[rundll.exe 12]

I think thats odd, because my laptop doesnt even have a parralel port and it installed w/o problems, but ill look into it soon

[4 IN 1 0]

still cant managed to get it work, but i am sure that i follow every things in the read me

[madrussian 347]

@rundll.exe

I did a few quick google searches on PPjoy, and there seems to be a ton of info out there on people having trouble getting it to install.  I'm headed to work right now or I would reasearch it a little more for you.  In any event I do hope you are able to get it running.

I will not give up on you rundll.exe.  No one should have to endure mouse-auto-center.

Is anyone else having rundll.exe's problem trying to install PPjoy?

@4 IN 1

We'll eliminate the possibilities one at a time and get this working for you.

Few questions for you:

1. By not working, I'm assuming you mean after setting everything up, you are pressing the TAB key in ArmA, and nothing is happening?

2. Are you using XP or Vista?

3. Are you trying the setup first with no real joystick (even though you have may have a real one)?

4. Is "Parallel Port Joystick 1" the only item in your Game Controllers window when you start ArmA?

5. Probably a silly question, but is GlovePIE actually running?

6. Do a favor and post your GlovePIE script.

7. Do a favor and from PPjoy, post your "PPJoy Virtual joystick 8" mapping.

With all that info (and maybe a bit more based on the answers), I'm sure we'll get you up and running.

@all

Thanks to all who are trying this.  How are the rest of you doing?  Based on what I'm seeing at Armaholic and ArmedAssault.info (btw, thanks for the mirrors guys), over 250 of you are attempting to free yourself from mouse-auto-center and have downloaded this.

How it coming?  How far are you getting?  What particular steps are giving any trouble?

Good luck getting this working.  I am here to help you.