Linux users: control TDM any *any* game with a gamepad like this.

[lost_soul]

It has always seemed dumb to have to configure a gamepad/joystick for every single game you want to play. Why not make the right-stick control your mouse, and the left control WASD? You can also assign other keys on the joypad to whatever keys/mouse buttons you like. I accomplished this by installing the xserver-xorg-input-joystick package.

 

You'll get a default configuration that is less than optimal, so we'll customize it. Do not customize /etc/X11/xorg.conf! If you have a section in there that references /dev/input/js0 and your joystick is not plugged in when X starts, it will fail to start. Instead, look to /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-joystick.conf. This file stores the configuration for the driver. Setting it up isn't as easy as it could be. You need to know the keycodes for the events you want to bind, along with the names of the buttons on your gamepad. You can find the names of the keys on your keyboard by looking in the keycode at /usr/share/X11/xkb/keycodes. To get the name of a given button when you press it on the gamepad, install and use jstest.

 

What follows is my /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-joystick.conf file.

 

Section "InputClass"

Identifier "joystick catchall"

MatchIsJoystick "on"

MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"

Driver "joystick"

Option "MapAxis1" "mode=accelerated keylow=38 keyhigh=40"

Option "MapAxis2" "mode=accelerated keylow=25 keyhigh=39"

Option "MapAxis3" "mode=relative axis=+1x deadzone=5000"

Option "MapAxis4" "mode=relative axis=+1y deadzone=5000"

Option "MapAxis5" "mode=accelerated keylow=34 keyhigh=35"

Option "MapAxis6" "mode=accelerated keylow=52 keyhigh=53"

Option "MapButton6" "button=1"

Option "MapButton8" "key=37"

Option "MapButton7" "key=41"

Option "MapButton5" "button=2"

Option "MapButton2" "key=26"

Option "MapButton1" "key=54"

Option "MapButton4" "button=3"

Option "MapButton11" "key=24"

Option "MapButton12" "key=27"

Option "MapButton9" "key=23"

Option "MapButton10" "key=9"

Option "MapButton3" "key=29"

EndSection

 

With this configuration: Your left stick is WASD, your D-pad is ,. and []. Your face buttons are mouse 1,2,c and e (I think). Your L3 and R3 are q and r for leaning. Your L1/2/R1/2 buttons are Control, F, Mouse 1, and something which I forgot. Your start and select are escape and tab, for showing the objectives and pausing the game.

 

It took me a few hours to get all this crap working well, so perhaps it will help someone.Now we have a tiny driver that runs in the background and enables all of this on the fly. No bloated software required!

Edited September 13, 2010 by lost_soul