The game's overall working fine for me, except that every time I fire it up, the D-pad on my gamepad keeps moving to the right and I have to recalibrate it.

Does anyone know how to fix it so that I only have to calibrate it once and have it STAY calibrated when I come back to it later? The Earthworm Jim games don't give me this problem.

Thanks!
Ulp, I spoke too soon. Earthworm Jim 1 is even worse in this regard. Earthworm Jim 2 still isn't giving me any trouble, though.

As weird as it sounds, I would actually recommend using a mouse instead of controller. It works surprisingly well.
About the actual problem - I assume your gamepad also has an analog stick? It may be a problem with a dead zone setting. If you can (not all gamepads allow it) - set it to something other than zero in the settings.

My controller doesn't have an analog stick.

Then unfortunately I don't know how to help you. (But I still recommend using a mouse :)).

I wasn't able to get my gamepad (PS2 -> USB converter) to work properly using the game's standard implementation. Even after tinkering with the DOSBox settings. In the end, I just set: joysticktype=none (line 151 in "C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\Tyrian 2000\dosboxT2K.conf") to disable native support entirely and used a joystick keyboard emulator.

These programs "catch" the input from a joystick/gamepad and "replace" it with whatever keyboard/mouse/etc event you like. Examples:

JoyToKey (English Version) - FREE
Xpadder.com/ - $9.50 / £5.99
Pinnacle Game Profiler - $19.95 / £12.50

The last one is my personal favourite. You get what you pay for, really. But for something as simple as this, all you need is JoyToKey to assign the appropriate keystrokes to their respective gamepad event. E.g.:


D-Pad Up = UP_ARROW
D-Pad Down = DOWN_ARROW
D-Pad Left = LEFT_ARROW
D-Pad Right = RIGHT_ARROW
Etc... Etc...

:)

I hope that's helpful to someone or I've just spent a whole bunch of time typing up useless garbage. :D

I got the same problem, even with Xpadder and using the keys as controllers in the joystick, it happens all the time...

What is the solution? Well with Xpadder i solved it when i enlarge the "dead" zone of all the sticks and triggers to 99% (with xpadder for the xbox360 controller ) also i mapped the keyboard to several buttons and for movements i use the Direction Pad and now the game works perfect!

Just wanted to throw in my experience.

I had no problem with the game at all on my old Win XP installation but since upgrading to Win 7 I've encountered this problem. I've tried both an Xbox 360 controller and my Logitech F710. Both are x input devices so maybe that has something to do with too as x input is of a different version on Win 7.

The easiest solution I've found is just to unplug the controller and play with either keys or mouse. I have to agree with previous sentiments mentioned in this post in that the game plays really well with the mouse once one is acclimatised to the input. In fact, I feel like the game was probably designed around the mouse. :)

I have this problem with mouse and keyboard.
lol, I blame windows 8.

In fact, here is the most proper solution(as i see it), but it will require an Xpadder or something similar.
The steps are:
1) Мар your d-pad to arrow keys and/or analog stick to mouse (calibrate dead zones and mouse sensivities at your flavour), map the keyboard keys to whatever you like
2) Unplug/disable your controller
3) Launch Tyrian 2k
4) Make sure that the game doesn't see any controller attached (you can tell if the in-game controller calibration option is disabled)
5) Plug in your controller
6) Enjoy

P.S.:I found it pretty enjoyable to play tyrian 2k with analog stick mapped as a mouse.

You don't need XPadder at all actually; change the joystick type from "auto" to "fcs" in DOSBox then either set-up the controls accordingly in the game or press Ctrl+F1 to bring up DOSBox's Keymapper to bind the keyboard buttons to your controller (or for games like Abuse, change the keys around) without XPadder or similar programs.