Configuration: Flying Controls

Flying controls add an extra layer of commands for the user to execute successfully. Here is the Flying profile for Aion Online. This is a simple configuration, where the left foot raises and lowers your character, and the right foot opens and holds wings.

Flying in Aion is a beautiful experience, but can be difficult

See the rest of the new Aion Online configuration in our Game Support and Macro Library

Some previous uses of the Tap / Press / Hold button behavior

Duke Nukem Forever. View the profile

Tap: Melee / Press: Reload

Dragon Age Origins. View the profile

Triple-Action: Quickbar Abilities. Tap: 8 / Press: 9 / Hold: 0

Triple-Action: Quickbar Abilities. Tap: 5 / Press: 6/ Hold: 7

Crysis 2. View the profile

Switch Suit Mode. Tap: Stealth / Press: Armor

Dead Space 2. View the profile

Tap: Stomp / Press: Run

Tap: Weapon 1 / Press: Weapon 2

As you can see, Tap / Press / Hold buttons are a great way to double (or even triple) your command ability on a single button. The behavior assigned to tap will trigger instantly upon button release, and the Press and Hold functions will trigger as soon as the button is held for the specified length of time (in milliseconds). Fortunately, since most button clicks occur very rapidly, the “Press” minimum time can be set as low as 150milliseconds (or 1/7 of a second) and still work reliably.

For more information on some of the other Smart Button types, I strongly recommend visiting the IDI Smart Button page. What kind of uses can you imagine for a Tap / Press / Hold button?

Here at the Good Work Matters Research Institute*, we never stop looking for new ways to improve your game. The subject of key-mapping strategy came up at our morning meeting today, and we wanted to shed some light on how to optimally map your in-game controls. As you can see, all the prime real estate on the keyboard is centered around “wasd” and any key east of “h” is just about unreachable without forcing you to stop doing important stuff, like moving. Use this guide to look at your game commands, and ask yourself if you’re leaving any prime real estate vacant, or with low-priority actions.

*although not an official research institute, I always work with a dual-monitor system.

Is there anything else you’d like to see on this site?

Just In case that didn’t convince you…

I’m introducing some game support for the Fragpedal to get you going on Duke Nukem. I added a tap/press macro for melee and reload. Release the press before 150ms elapses for a melee, or a reload will kick in at 150ms. There’s also an aim toggle macro. This is useful in most games, and although Duke Nukem isn’t really big on accuracy, it’s still a good addition. Rather than having to hold right-click to aim, you can toggle it with your foot pedal. Relieve some tension in your hand so you can aim better.

The Fragpedal isn't doing a great job of censoring this image

Go to the files page for a happy ending to this post (download the macros!)

Three Actions on One Button: Tap / Press / Hold macros

I made these macros to demonstrate how complex smart buttons help you out in tactical games like Dragon Age: Origins. The triple-action smart button used here is deceptively easy to use. Once the assigned button is pressed, the IDI tech processor in your Fragpedal starts a timer. If the button pops up before the timer reach 150 milliseconds, the action is considered a “tap.” If the timer reads between 150 milliseconds and 700 milliseconds, IDI tech registers a “press.” If the button is lifted after 700 milliseconds, you’ve got a “hold.”

If you like, the timing thresholds for the tap, press, and hold can be changed to any value you like. If you’ve got a real fast foot, you could reduce the minimum for a press to 100ms, for example — or, drag it out to 250 or even 500ms if you like to click slowly. You can also configure a command to after pressing for a specific length of time. This way

Dragon Age Origins: The Commander

Fire off myriad orders to your minions

These can be configured easily in the IDI software for any game. And, if you can’t quite get it to work, e-mail us! Expect more in-depth macro content coming soon! In the mean time, what other games would you like to see in-depth macros for?

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Get the macros used here for your Fragpedal

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The Handyman

Button 1 – Left Shift (crouch/sneak)
Button 2 – Mouse wheel click (Switch to the block currently looked at, as long as it is in the quickbar)
Button 3 – Left Click (Destroy blocks/Attack/Toggle Switches and Doors)
Button 4 – Right Click (Place Blocks/Use objects)

The first profile, the Handyman, gives easy access to the crouch function, which I find myself holding down a lot. I find it helpful to assign that job to an extra appendage. The block selection also comes in handy for tedious building projects. I also chose to use simple mouse clicks for the right pedal to save on finger stress, since placing blocks can be a big culprit of requiring excessive clicking.

The Industrial Miner

Button 1 – 8 (select quickbar item #8)
Button 2 – W (Move Forward)
Button 3 – Left Click (Destroy blocks/Attack/Toggle Switches and Doors)
Button 4 – 9 (select quickbar item #9)

I designed this profile, the Industrial Miner, around large mining projects. While branch mining, a majority of the work is just walking and breaking blocks. Using one button as a “gas pedal” and another to constantly mine, you can sit back and just steer with your mouse. The quickbar selection buttons were added to make switching between a shovel and pick even simpler, thus allowing an even more mindless mining trek

This last profile is designed for miners playing without a scroll mouse, particularly laptop users. This way, they can conveniently use the Fragpedal to cycle through the quickbar items. I also thought it would be fun to bring in the Crouch button, as well as throwing in the jump for good measure.

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Build your way over to the DLC page for the images and Minecraft control file used by Greg.

The left footpedal changes for each class to let you play differently. The right footpedal stays the same for every profile and executes ‘zoom’ and ‘sprint.’ Oyvind: “Zooming would also work well, because in a stressed situation, right clicking the mouse to aim while keeping focused on the target, makes me slower locking on.” So, with your left foot, you can zoom and run, freeing up your hands when you most need them: you’re shooting someone, or trying to get the hell out of there!

This profile boasts a new press-release macro for easy use of gadgets.  You can see this on button 1. This makes it easy to throw “motion sensor” if I play Recon, to revive when playing Medic, and to supply ammo when playing Assault.

For easy use of both your gadgets, another smart button is set to grab and use your second gadget, too. True, hands-free gadgets! If only I could say the same for my iPhone.

Throwing grenades is quicker and easier than ever, too! A new press-release smart button grabs your grenade with a press, and throws it upon release. See this on button 2 in the Recon profile below.

Games like Battlefield that offer different classes and corresponding play styles offer a huge unlocked potential to Fragpedal users. What would you like to see in class-specific profiles to change your game?

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Make 4 new friends: the assault, recon, engineer, and medic profiles. Plus, get all the pictures, macros and the control file.

The Fragpedal saves the full set of button and device settings made by the user for a specific game in an onboard memory space called a configuration. Equipped with 8Mbits of flash memory, the Fragpedal can save 30 complete configurations internally, for use with as many different games or applications.

What you save for each Configuration

There is no fussing to change configurations; no scripts to run, no unplugging, flipping switches, reloading drivers, or rebooting. The swapping of settings in the Fragpedal is automatic; Application Awareness technology identifies the active program and switches to the appropriate Fragpedal configuration within 30ms of entering the program. You can even change configurations from within a game from a button press, handy for games with different game play modes or player classes.

But what if 30 configurations aren’t enough? Using the pedals with both applications and games, it’s possible over time for the Fragpedal, like any other device with memory, to “run out of room.”

For this circumstance and for general ease of use, the Fragpedal supports full device memory saves. This feature allows the complete set of configurations in the device to be saved to disk as a single file. The saved file can then be reloaded back to the Fragpedal and the configurations it contains instantly restored and ready to use. The memory file created by the “Save Memory to Disk” command will have no file extension, and should be saved in the /IDI Device/ folder where IDIConfig.exe is located.

Going from 30 Configurations to Unlimited

While discussed elsewhere for the purposes of backup, there are some tricks to using memory save files to make using your Fragpedal even more efficient. But first it’s helpful to understand how on disk “memory saves” over write the Fragpedal memory.
Unless you have cleared the memory in your Fragpedal, you will have some Configurations in Fragpedal memory when the “Write Memory to Disk” command is used. (If you are reloading a memory file due to a memory glitch in the Fragpedal, in this case it is recommended that you “Clear” the Fragpedal memory before loading the memory file from disk.)
The rule of thumb is that saved “empty” configurations will not overwrite existing configurations with content. Put another way, saved empty configurations will not write over configurations in memory with content. If there are 8 configurations with content in the device, and you load a memory load with 5 configurations, the last 3 configurations will remain unchanged, only the first 5 will be overwritten.

Tips:
1. No need to delete configurations in Fragpedal memory before reloading a memory save. (Assuming you are loading configurations to change them, not because the Fragpedal memory has become corrupted.) The memory save will simply overwrite the configurations that it contains.
2. If you use different programs in different settings or for different purposes, you might want to keep these configurations together in memory saves that you can alternately swap out.
a. For instance, a simple distinction might be work related configurations vs game configurations. When you need to work, load the “Programs” memory save. When you want to game, load your “Games” memory save.
b. As you get more games/apps, you can further define memory loads for sub categories like “RPG games” or “FPS/Combat” “Old Games” or whatever categories that make sense to you.
3. Get in the habit of saving your configurations as sets (see above) in various memory saves. If a memory error occurs, and your configurations in memory become corrupted, its more helpful to reload the specific set of configurations needed than to be “back to square 1” with a single memory save reloaded that contains every configuration you’ve ever created in no particular order.
4. Warning: do not attempt to open, edit, or view any memory save files saved to disk. They contain a unique file structure not intended for editing, and this will almost certainly result in a corrupted, unusable memory file.
5. The memory files are swappable to other Fragpedals. Since some of the configuration information includes file names, be aware the referenced files must be present on the other Fragpedal host machine in the correct support folders for full functionality.

Following these tips will enable you to create multiple swappable Fragpedal memory saves to extend the 30 configurations limit and allow the Fragpedal to support an unlimited number of applications and games.

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Crysis 2 is a great game and I’m happy to cover it for the Innovation Squad. I’ve got five macros that make Crysis 2 less troublesome and more fun to play, so make sure to check them out. Below are two button configurations that I recommend you use them with.

Stealth Shot

To use this macro you must start out in stealth mode. When you press the button, it takes you out of stealth mode, fires a single shot then enables stealth mode again. This is extremely helpful when sniping from a distance. It is harder to see someone cloaked from a distance and even harder when they only appear for a split second to fire that deadly headshot.

Toggle Aim (Multi-Press)

This is a basic macro that when used it holds the right mouse button down. I use it when sniping. It allows me to hold the aim and not have to focus on staying zoomed in. I usually follow this one up with a Stealth Shot.  This button is set up as a toggle.

First press:  It holds right click so you can aim.

Second press: It releases the right click and you are no longer zoomed in

Binoculars (Press/Release)

While you are holding the button down it holds the binoculars out. When you release the button it puts the binoculars away. The binoculars are used to find enemies, ammo caches, and slain enemy weapons on the ground. This macro allows you to use the binoculars and continue to stay on the move to avoid being ambushed by the enemy.

Un-toggle Crouch (Multi-Press)

This is a must-have button assignment no matter what game you play, Crysis 2 is no different. Not having to hold down the crouch key constantly allows your fingers to focus on the move important things like quick movement. While the button is down you stay crouched. Release it and you will stand up.

Switch Suit mode (Timed Press: Tap/Press)

This macro is used to easily switch between Stealth and Armor mode. On a button tap, it enables the suit’s stealth mode. On a long press of the button it enables the suit’s armor mode. I use this macro a couple of different ways. First, while I am tiptoe-ing around in stealth mode I will quickly enable armor mode right before I attack. A second way I use this macro is that when I need to quickly hide from an enemy, I can easily enable stealth. This macro is really just a good way to enable the different suit modes and not have to worry about what your fingers are doing on the keyboard.

Primary Layout:

Button 1: Stealth Shot

Button 2: Toggle Aim (Multi-Press)

Button 3: Easy Binoculars (Press/release)

Button 4: Crouch (multi-press)

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Infiltrate the DLC page to appropriate Kimo’s Crysis 2 macros, file and images