well I didn't get anything back from them ... but I didn't exactly expect to after calling them a collective of fucktards.

Gosh, and I wonder why nobody takes our concerns serious anymore ...

Exactly.

By the year 2024 we will all be forced to play Street Fighter using M$ flight sticks, mastering the Hyru-Ken with the hat switch, all the while in fear and dread that our PCBoxes could Red Ring at any second.

Well, first of all it enables vibration effects which are way easier to write than the things offered by DirectInput; it's also way easier to write against compared to DI and doesn't make that stupid assumption that device axes are centered when there is no user interaction with the device.

Now, I do give you that it supports 4 axes as opposed to 8, and a maximum of 10 buttons, 2 trigers and 8-direction dpad, but do you honestly need 128 buttons on your gamepad?

And the most amusing thing? The whole point is moot as you can very well use both DirectInput and XInput side by side if the developer isn't a lazy piece of crap, it only takes around 40 lines of code to check if a device is marked as legacy or not and to select the appropriate input method.

No! Thank You!

As long as I'm not jumping around flailing my arms and legs about like an idiot in front of a camera or waving around some sort of "magic wand" I'll be slightly happy.

Easier to write but much more limiting in what you can do with the vibration.

Also, I'm not sure what was wrong with centring the axis when there's no input. Various flight sticks with sliders and throttles as well as controllers with analogue triggers have all worked fine for me. The axis moves from 0 to whatever the maximum is without entering negative numbers.

It only became a problem when they decided to assign 360 controller's triggers to the same axis, which is a monumentally stupid bit of design meaning that both triggers pressed = no triggers pressed.

You certainly don't need 128, but the point of such a ridiculously high number is to avoid limiting things. 32 would have been more reasonable and still plenty high enough to avoid limiting anyone, even 16 would have been much better than 10.

I agree, I wish developers would continue to use directinput but it doesn't help that Microsoft keep telling people not to.

do a search for "speedpad"

also, you may ask do we need 128 button controllers but my question is why do weartificialifical limits that prevent 128 button gamepads?

I love this topic! Four pages of posts chock full of people complaining that everything in the universe doesn't happen exactly in the way that they think that it should. God forbid that a developer who doesn't know you, or likely care what your opinion is, should build their game the way that they want to. How dare they! I think from now on that every game developer in the world.... nay, the galaxy.... should be required under penalty of death to personally consult with every game player in said galaxy about every single element of game design, and then implement every idea into their game. Xbox controller, you got it. MS Sidewinder joystick from 1995, no problem. Japanese language keyboard in an English version game, absolutely. Voice recognition software so you can tell the game what you want to do, it's in there. Now everyone will be happy.

Or, alternatively, we could all grow up a bit and realize that not everything happens the way the we'd like and live with it.

It's not that the developer failed to include support for my game pad.
Since I can map to keyboard I don't need support.
It is when they go out of their way to defeat mapping to the keyboard.

I'm not saying that it was a good idea for them to do that. I'm just saying that it's their decision to make and no one is forcing you to give them your money. If you don't like it, don't buy it. I don't like constant internet connection drm, so I vote with my wallet and I don't buy games that require it. Sure, I'd love to play Diablo 3, but I won't. It's Blizzard's choice to include constant internet requirements in their game and it's my choice not to buy it. So if you feel passionately about companies allowing you to map out your keys to your liking, or use whatever controller that you like or whatever, then don't buy games that don't let you do that. But expecting companies to do whatever you want them to do is unrealistic. No offense, but who the hell are you? And who the hell am I for the matter? What if I think that developers should do something completely opposite than what you think? Should the developers listen to me and forget about you? Should they listen to you instead? No. They should do whatever they think is best, even if you and I don't agree, and let us decide whether or not to buy their game.

There's the issue of the game not announcing that it does not support keyboard mapping in system requirements listings.

Most times you buy a PC game, you're stuck with it.

I think they are going to have start listing:

- Compatible with 360 Game Pad ONLY

and in instances like DarkSiders

-Comatible with 360 Game Pad ONLY
-Can not be played with mouse and keyboard

Very true. I've certainly bought games that I wasn't happy with, but that because I didn't do my homework first and research the games. My fault! That's what these forums are for. I now know not to buy Serious Sam: Double D and I haven't spent any money on it. And thanks to you and others in this thread, I probably won't. The developers don't owe me anything and I've given them nothing. That seems fair, right? Shop smart. Shop S-mart.

And I played Darksiders for a few hours with a mouse and keyboard until I decided that my 360 controller was more comfortable. I didn't have any problems with it, so maybe there's something unique about your problem with that game. I can't speak about using a non-360 controller, but using a keyboard and mouse is definitely an option.

...if you don't have a game pad plugged in, otherwise it disables the mouse and key board.

But really, I'm getting more bent out of shape than I should - it's not like the software is impossible to find, download and trial first even if there isn't a demo and I have the patience to wander through a field of decoys.

And only about 4% of the games I've tried have not been mappable to non 360 game pads.

And although it takes a week, GamersGate does offer refunds.

I guess the whole point of the thread was the "Playing Fair" bit - I was trying to clear my conscience but as I now realize no one actually is so no worries.

I'm off to go toss thirty cents at the new bundle - I was initially going to invest four but that's quite a bit for a handful of indie games that might not be mappable.