Using a mouse as a controller

[Rekrul]

(06-25-2018 10:34 PM)LunaMoo Wrote:  Sensitivity and smoothing settings of the PPSSPP will NOT affect how it behaves in game, however it does alters how PPSSPP itself maps values

I discovered that you can increase the sensitivity beyond 1.0 in the INI file, which does make the mouse more responsive, but it doesn't really improve the handling though.

(06-25-2018 10:34 PM)LunaMoo Wrote:  to obtain what you have by using external program to simply map one to another you have to set smoothing to 0.0 and sensitivity to 1.0.

Setting the smoothing to 0.0 makes mouse control COMPLETELY unusable in the Syphon Filter games. Moving the mouse barely registers in the game at all.

(06-25-2018 10:34 PM)LunaMoo Wrote:  Personally I find default values better for cases where I would actually want to use mouse like games which uses thumbstick as real analog, definitely wouldn't have fun trying to use mouse to simulating a press of 4 face buttons as that just sucks to anyone which actually is used to real PC shooters.

While using the mouse to simulate pressing the face buttons isn't ideal, it's a lot better and more intuitive than using four separate buttons to control the camera/aim. No, it's not the same as having true mouselook, but with a properly configured program, it can come pretty close.

After more experimenting, I still can't find any settings I really like for the internal mouse control. It seems that no matter what the sensitivity is set to, PPSSPP ignores small mouse movements. So you need larger mouse movements for it to register and then it seems to buffer the movements so that it keeps pressing the button for another half-second or so after you stop moving the mouse. The result is that small camera adjustments are very hard to do and it always moves further than you wanted, then stops like it hit some kind of limit. Reducing the smoothing setting makes PPSSPP ignore the mouse even more.

Using the external program GlovePIE, it registers as a button press at the slightest mouse movement and immediately stops as soon as you stop moving the mouse. If you open a copy of Notepad so you can see it generate the key presses, you can move the mouse by such a small amount so as to generate a single key press, or make a big movement and it will generate multiple presses.

In Syphon Filter, this translates to much smoother, albeit it slower, movement than with the internal mouse support. You can easily make fine adjustments to the aim. The downside being that it takes larger mouse movements to make larger camera moves. That and being constantly distracted by the mouse pointer. Seriously, the pointer serves absolutely no purpose while a game is running fullscreen, why isn't it permanently hidden?

To be clear, when playing the Syphon Filter games (Dark Mirror and Logan's Shadow) it's possible to move the camera in tiny increments by tapping the face buttons/keys. A quick tap will only move the camera a few pixels. This is what happens when using GlovePIE, if you only move the mouse a tiny amount, it only sends one or two presses of the button to the system/PPSSPP, and the camera moves a tiny amount. When you use the internal mouse controls, tiny movements of the mouse are ignored. Then you move it more and it seems to send a whole batch of button presses to the game, causing it to continue moving a little AFTER you've stopped using the mouse.

It's hard to accurately describe the difference I'm seeing. Why don't you try it for yourself?

Just Google for GlovePIE, It comes as a Zip archive, so there's nothing to install, just unpack and run it. Copy my script above, paste it into the window and click the Run button. Moving the mouse up will send "s", right will send "x" and so on. These are PPSSPP's defaults for the face buttons. I suggest running PPSSPP first and then running the game as moving the mouse around in the GUI will send those keys and may inadvertently select something you didn't want, then you can swpa out, click the Run button and switch back to the game. If you want to test the same game I did, try Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror. Just start a game, and go into the first training mission.

Please try it and you'll see what I mean. GlovePIE feels smoother, but slower. The internal mouse control can be faster, but is jerkier.