Good day,

i wrote a AUTOHOTKEY script and was able to successfully test each button's remap of my xbox360 controller in some other games and programs (such as notepad.exe ;) ).
Sadly I did not find a way to get it to work in gog's TIE1998 or my old copy of XWAlliance.

Has anyone ever got some success in getting a autohotkey script or something similar to work with XW, TIE or XWA?

Any help would be much appreciated!

*you can download the attached image and rename the extension from "jpg" to "ahk" to execute my script with an installed autohotkey.
(Or just rename it to "txt" to be able to read it, if you dont trust me or the file.)
(Drop the ahk to TIE95.EXE's installdir in order to run it correctly.)

Why do you need to use a key remapper for the 360 controller for the 98 version of TIE Fighter? The GOG version of the game reads the controller fine and you can remap the buttons in the options menu.

The issue I had with the 360 controller was due to drift from the analog sticks. I managed to fix that by using vJoy to install a virtual joystick driver, and then using Universal Joystick Remapper (which is an AutoHotKey executable) to take the input from my 360 controller (which has controller ID #2) and send them to vJoy (which has controller ID #1). This allowed me to switch the axes on the right stick so that roll left/right works fine, and also places a deadzone on the sticks to eliminate the drift I had been getting. Then I used the TIE Fighter launcher to select vJoy as my chosen controller and started the game. Works great. And it works for X-Wing Alliance too.

I tried to watch some Youtube videos about how to set this up and I'm stumped. God help me.

I'll assume you are using the Windows version of TIE Fighter so that you don't have to calibrate the stick every time you load the game.

Firstly, with no game running and with all controllers unplugged, install the vJoy driver software. Once done this should then be the only controller device that your computer can see, so it will be device 1. You might need to restart after the driver install, too.

Next, plug in your 360 controller. This should then be controller device 2.

In your control panel, use the game controllers options to set vJoy as your preferred controller. Do this by using the advanced option on the dialog that lists all connected controllers.

You must first configure vJoy. Run the configuration program and set up how many axes and buttons you have. The D-Pad should be set as a continuous type.

Once this is done, start up Universal Joystick Remapper. The archive must be extracted to a folder as it has other files alongside the AHK .exe file. You can use a shortcut to it if you want to place one on the desktop, for instance.

When the UJR window pops up, change the Virtual Axis 1 (X) to Physical Stick ID 2. Wait a moment then try moving the left stick on your 360 controller. It should move the virtual X axis. If this works then you have confirmed that the 360 controller is device 2, so change the Auto Configure Stick ID value to 2 and press the button. This will set up all the axes and you can then add in deadzone and sensitivity changes. You can also change the physical axes against each virtual axis should you wish to remap them. The other tabs should set themselves up but feel free to test them. You would be interested in Buttons 1 and Hats. No need to worry about the rest.

Don't know if you need to do this next step, but in the GOG TIE Fighter installation there is a TIESTART.EXE. Run this and select configure joystick. Ensure that vJoy is the selected controller. You can test that it is all working by going to the test page to check your inputs.

Then with UJR left open, start the game and play.

Once you are finished with the game and back in windows simply close the UJR window. Next time, all you have to do is connect your 360 controller, load up UJR (it remembers the previous settings for you) and start the game.


EDIT: Just added a screenshot showing my UJR settings.

Thanks alot for the vjoy tip! It's deadzone feature works great!

But I am still trying to remapp buttons with one button as modifier:
*let's say, holding and then pushing [LB] should switch 'weapon systems' and pushing [LB] alone should switch 'weapon firing configurations' instead.

I want to be able to map as many commands to the xb360pad as possible, since the x-wing series uses a lot of them and I really don't like to put the pad down and push buttons on the keyboard^^

Normally this could be easily done with autohotkey by intercepting the jostick input and sending keyboard commands instead, but the X-wing series seems to read the joystick input before it can be intercepted.
I also tried JoyToKey but the result was the same.

Strange that, as if vJoy is working correctly then the 360 input messages shouldn't be read by the game as the game uses the vJoy controller.

I did get the same issue myself for some time, whereby the right stick (where I swapped the two axes to allow correct rolling in X-Wing Alliance - due to an XInput/DirectInput difference) was still picking up the 360 input. To get it to fix, I had to unplug the 360 controller, set up vJoy, the plug in the 360 controller, set up the Windows game controllers control panel to set vJoy as the preferred controller, then set up UJR to add the deadzone and other settings.

You should find that when using UJR, that vJoy is set as controller device #1 and the 360 controller is device #2 (or some other number if you have multiple controllers or other similar devices).

If you can take a screenshot of your UJR settings we'll be able to see if vJoy and the 360 controller are on different device numbers.


EDIT: Oh, and once you have it working correctly, you can use something like Xpadder or Joy2Key to map 360 controller buttons to keyboard input on top of the vJoy and URJ. You'll need to disable the controller buttons in game though else they'll trigger two functions instead, but it should be do-able.

Sadly, its not UJR - everything works perfectly when using the gamepad to send keystrokes to a txt file but TIE Fighter refuses to respond to those inputs.
UJR has vjoy device 1 bound to device 2 (x360) and ingame I assigned NoFunction to the joystick buttons.

the NoFunctions work ;), but the keyinputs from JoyToKey and autohotkey wont...
(but as I said they do work with ujr outside of TIE Fighter...)


edit: sorry for my late responses - in my job and life, access to the interent is sometimes not available for days...

I use Xpadder myself. Just been using vJoy+UJR along with Xpadder for classic Wing Commander 1.

Definitely seems odd that it isn't working for you, though. Joy2Key is reading from the real 360 controller isn't it, and not the vJoy controller? Also, are the controller buttons set up in vJoy?

Well the configuration works fine in other programs ([LB] sends "X" which is 'weapon firing configurations' and [LB] + sends "W" which is ''weapon systems'...)
it's just the x-wing series which will not accept any input from joyToKey, autohotkey and the like...