I tried but it wont let me change the d pad. like I had the down key set to change targets, but when I booted up the game all it did was still switch to rear view mode

In-game bindings will generally override external controller programs. If all else fails you can completely disable a game's in-game controller support and only use the controller program, setting the main axes to the mouse or whatever, but this is certainly not ideal.

Unfortunately I cannot provide help regarding this issue as I haven't had the chance to play WC3/WC4 again since their release. However, I just wrapped up WC1/WC2 this month. I used the Logitech F710 Controller and it worked wonderfully. If you're getting back into PC gaming and looking to jump into many of the older titles, it may be worthwhile to check out to avoid these issues.

thanks foxworks and arkose. i prob will look into it eventually. im slowly easing back into pc gaming. most of the games I played when I was younger were point and click adventures so no real need for a controller there. Im eyeing the quest for glory series soon.

I will look for game pads for the pc when a game called star citizen gets closer

Definitely won't be needing a controller for those :) Star Citizen, much like the newer games, should work well with the 360 controller. I don't see a need for another controller for that title. I'm looking forward to their dogfight module to be released soon :D

Controller support is really only a problem for older games due to various technical limitations; any reasonably recent game (say 2008 onwards) will usually have proper XInput support built in and so will work flawlessly with all the buttons and inputs of the Xbox 360 Controller (or compatible models) as expected.

Note that the one and only difference for legacy games is how the triggers are handled; Logitech's F310/F510/F710 have a hardware switch for an alternate mode where the trigger axis is turned into two standard buttons since many older games don't allow using axes as buttons. Alternate software like Xpadder can be used to bind keyboard functions to the triggers so this can be resolved while using Microsoft's controller.

Apart from the trigger axis issue all controllers are subject to the technical limitations of legacy games--e.g. if a particular game can only see a certain number of buttons/axes that's just the way it is and changing controllers won't make any difference.

The last time I tried to override controller behavior, I tried a couple different programs. It's been so long that I can't remember which one worked the best, and I don't know what's changed since then. Look up x360ce and xinputemu. There are a couple other similar programs available. One of those should include the ability to adjust the stick sensitivity and deadzone, which is what you need if the stick is drifting. They can also remap axes. If the game is getting the inputs completely jumbled, it may be beyond the scope of what these programs can override. In those cases, assigning keyboard controls to the gamepad is the best alternative.

The Wing Commander games don't use XInput so won't be affected by x360ce and the like.

The Wing Commander games have hard-coded input settings and in the newer ones the POV hat/d-pad is already set to the look commands.

For games using DOSBox the controls can be overridden using the DOSBox Mapper (Ctrl+F1) so the Windows games are more troublesome.

thanks yall and arkose is right the d pad is hard coded except the up button. does anyone know how to test deadzones with joy to key or can I configure dead zones thru windows config for the gamepad