Thief 1/Gold/2: Analogue movement. Reversed speed toggle?

piln on 17/9/2009 at 11:45

I'm replaying Thief (actually my first time on Thief Gold), tis a fine thing. I'm using one of (http://www.saitek.com/uk/prod/cyborgcommand.htm) these for my 'keyboard' hand - generally I prefer (http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=164714) Belkin's device which I've been using for years, but the Saitek has one thing going for it: an analogue thumbstick which is wonderful for movement in Thief.

It generally works really well. The analogue stick gives the full range of movement from almost-stop to full run. It's only a teeny tiny stick though, with a short range of travel, so it still helps to have speed toggle bound. With this depressed, a full throw of the stick now gives me walking speed, and slow creeps are easier to achieve.

One slight drawback: I spend the vast majority of my time walking and creeping; running is relatively rare. This means I'm spending a lot of my time with a finger pressing down on the speed toggle key, releasing it when I want to go fast, and I'd rather it was the other way round. I'm poking around in ThiefG's various cfg files and can't see a way to reverse "+creepon" behaviour or alter movement rates, and I don't know of any alternate bind commands.

iirr my binds are all defaults, just with some extra joystick buttons here and there (I'm not using a keymapping profile for the Saitek, I'm just using it as a standard gamepad).

In dark.bnd:

Code:

bind joy_axisx +joyxaxis
bind joy_axisy +joyforward

In my user.bnd:

Code:

bind joy11 +creepon

Any ideas? :confused: I'm stumped

Queue on 17/9/2009 at 12:24

What the hell is that thing?

I see your problem, there's no <SHIFT> key.

piln on 17/9/2009 at 12:55

Why you... (shakes fist) :)

Regardless of controller: by default, your unmodified movement is "fast" and speed toggle makes you go slower; I want my unmodified movement to be slow and for speed toggle to make me go faster. That's all.

on reading back, my response sounds kinda grumpy. Sorry, not intentional

Volca on 17/9/2009 at 13:55

I think you could try removing the + from the creepon line. It should make the binding work as toggle instead of hold-to-enable. I'm not 100% sure if it will work though, didn't test it.
Edit: You can also try putting in - instead. If I remember correctly it reverses the effect of button press/depress events

piln on 17/9/2009 at 14:25

:::Nnnnngggg::: thanks for the suggestions, I'm dying to try them out, but notepad, wordpad and MS Word all ruin the formatting of my .bnd files :mad:

I'm sure I saw mention of a text editor that won't do that in a TTLG post *somewhere* ...searching but can't find it.

Incidentally, while searching, I saw a post from someone saying they used the mousewheel to increase/decrease movement speed, can anyone shed any light on this?

Brian The Dog on 17/9/2009 at 14:49

(http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm) Notepad++, or alternatively, (http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/Getting-Emacs.html#Getting-Emacs) emacs (although that might be a bit overkill).

The mouse-wheel in Thief 1 has to be added by a program that emulates key presses when the mouse wheel is moved. Can't remember of the top of my head what it is, but it definitely works. Someone will know what it is shortly :)

piln on 17/9/2009 at 15:34

Thanks guys.

Brian, I used to have a dog, poochy poochy poooooo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiRrWJ6uaKU) etc. Notepad++ edits my binds without knackering the formatting. Incidentally, you might be thinking of autohotkey? I've just downloaded (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121948&highlight=taffinmouse) Taffinmouse from here, haven't used it yet, that's another option. I've got a Logitech mouse so I could also use uberoptions (used it in the past, very good). Seems to be a few ways to achieve the same thing. Uberoptions would probably be best for me - as well as the wheel, the mouse has 10 buttons I could program - between that and my left-hand-keyboard-gamepad thingy, I should have everything covered, even for a Looking Glass game! :p

The gist I got from another thread* was that someone was using the mousewheel as a kind of speed 'multiplier' ie spinning it controls the speed you move at with WASD or whatever your movement keys are - instead of using a shift key modifier or an extra key for running forward, etc. I believe this is the way Splinter Cell played. If I've got it right, there must be binds that I don't know of to increase & decrease a movement speed multiplier, but I may have got the wrong end of the stick completely. It's just idle geekery on my part anyway - I already have full analogue movement, so I wouldn't use it (other than out of curiosity). But IF I was using keys for movement I reckon I'd like it.

* I was reading it this afternoon, but can I find the damn thing now? Can I heck

Volca, you solved both parts of my movement issue, cheers. Removing the + prefix turns it into a toggle, as you said; using - instead of + keeps it as a 'hold' key and reverses the function. At first, it doesn't appear to alter the unmodified movement via joystick; but after pressing it once, unmodified movement becomes limited to walk speed. After that, pressing it gives me my run speed.

That's what I wanted. I'll have to rearrange my buttons a bit, as I currently can't press run and jump at the same time. Hadn't thought about that :o

For those of you who've never tried Thief with analogue movement, I highly recommend it, it feels just right for the game.

Luthien on 17/9/2009 at 16:08

This is all described in detail in the (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47423) Thief Console Guide. Unfortunately it was never linked anywhere, but I still find it invaluable.

ZylonBane on 17/9/2009 at 16:12

Wait... classic Thief supports analog speed control?

I had no idea.

piln on 17/9/2009 at 17:17

Yeah... you need to add joystick_enable to the bottom of Dark.cfg (don't know why, but I was told it has to be at the bottom with a blank line after). Then in-game, your X/Y axes control sidestep/forward&back - full analogue movement up to max running speed. You don't need to add any binds for that, only for buttons. I've no idea what happens if you have more than one joystick connected.

Is that what you meant? I may have been misleading with my scroll-wheel splinter cell-style ramblings, I can't find the thread I read it in now & may have got it all wrong - I'm looking over the command list (thanks Luthien, saved it in my big box o' Thief things) to see if it's possible. But yeah, analogue joystick support was there right from the start. I recall seeing it mentioned somewhere when I first bought TDP but never used it then. More recently, I picked up TDS on Xbox... I'd played it on PC, and my PC spends a lot of time out of action with its guts hanging out, so I wanted to have a Thief game handy in the living room, with a save at the start of every level, to pick up & play on a whim. After playing through that with the gamepad & seeing how much analogue movement adds to the experience, I won't go back to keys now.

Any decent-quality gamepad thumbstick will be big enough to give you everything from a barely-noticeable creep to a full run, without needing modifier keys at all. The only reason I'm using a modifier key is because the thumbstick on this Saitek unit is tiny - I find it too fiddly to rely on for the full range of speeds.