I first posted this in the "Steel Battalions: genius or madness?" thread, where it was slighly off topic. It occurred to me that perhaps it deserves a thread of it''s own. What I would like to see in games is better support for controller customization. What I mean is, say you buy a fancy stick/throttle/pedals set. Most of those sets come with some sort of button assignment software, but generally speaking they are forced to emulate the keyboard. Unfortunately though, game functions that work well on the keyboard don''t always map well to the buttons/wheels/sliders/mind-reading gizmos/etc found on the controller. This creates situations where you really can''t use your expensive controller to it''s fullest potential. But wouldn''t it be cool if the entire control system of the game was somehow data-driven or scripted. That way, you could really dig in to the configuration and set it up exactly the way you want it, and take full advantage of whatever controller you have. So instead of simply reassigning a key for a given game function, you actually redefine the way that function works. For example, a game might ship with a function to cycle through several radar ranges with a single button assignment to cycle forward. But as a player you may prefer to be able to cycle forwards and backwards, so you redefine that function to use two buttons. Alternatively, you may prefer to assign hotkeys for each of the available ranges. Maybe you want to get really fancy and assign multiple functions to a single button, so you define that button to perform one function when pressed and released, another when held down for two seconds, another if it is double-pressed, etc. None of this is particularly hard to achieve, and in fact I am working on implementing a system like this in my own game right now. I just wish they would do it for the next Mechwarrior game There is often talk in game graphics circles about making sure the player gets the full benefit of the hardware that they spend so much money on. After all, nobody likes to shell out for a top-of-the-line graphics card and then never see the cool effects that it can produce. I''d like to see a similar attitude applied to controllers. If the player buys an expensive controller, let them make the most of it. Thoughts anyone?

Very cool. Add to that some voice recognition software.

I think for a game like UT2K3, which is so heavily moddable, this is already possible without any support from Epic.

I''m trying to get that level of input customization in my space sim. I hope it works well.

1 500 error