Hello all. This is my first post here. As someone who played Wing Commander when it first came out almost 25 years ago, I was thrilled when I received an email from GOG saying that the games had been re-released, and just as thrilled when I found this site and discovered that there is an active and vibrant community dedicated to these games that, in my opinion, are as to computer games what Star Wars is to movies.
I am trying to figure out as much as I can on my own regarding the WC games I have purchased on GOG. I've learned about and played around with DosBox in the last few days and have somewhat figured out the mapper.map program to make keyboard/joystick configurations.............and here is my issue.
I purchased both a Thrustmaster T16000M and a Logitech Extreme 3d Pro and have played them both with Wing Commander 1, GOG version. Without a doubt, the Thrustmaster is better as far as accuracy of the stick goes. The Logitech joystick just has a larger dead spot and more play in the center and the difference while playing WC1 is very noticible to me. However, it seems that I cannot get the hat switch programmed on the Thrustmaster. I was able to get everything mapped with the Extreme 3D Pro, and I would have gone with that joystick if not for the dead zone/accuracy issues. As much as I have tried, I cannot make the hat switch on the Thrustmaster function while playing in-game. When pressing Control-F1 and setting up the Thrustmaster in DosBox, everything seems to go ok, just like setting up the Extreme 3D Pro. But once I get in the game, none of the hat switch functions on the Thrustmaster will work. But they do on the 3D Pro.
Has anyone else had this problem? Both joysticks have been calibrated in Win 7 64 bit Ultimate, also have tried the Control-J calibration for both joysticks at the WC1 options screen.
Note: I also have a Logitech Trackball USB plugged in. Could this be causing problems? Again......no function problems at all with the 3D Extreme Pro, only the accuracy/dead zone issue, and just the hat switch problem with the Thrustmaster. Would love to use the Thrustmaster, but need to find solution first.
Also, any mapper.map configuration tips would be appreciated...........I'm not trying to get someone else to do my homework for me, but I've Googled and Yahooed and just can't find a fix for this problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated and again it's awesome to see this WC community here. Who woulda' thought!

I have finally solved the problem. Apparently DosBox has joystick settings specifically for Thrustmaster sticks, and in the DosBox.conf file it is necesary to set the joystick type to "fcs" from "auto". The Extreme 3D Pro was not negatively affected by the "auto" configuration. This solved the hat switch problem and I can now completly configure the joystick how I want it. I am now disconnecting the usb trackball when I go to play games so as to avoid any potential conflicts. To anyone who reads this post that is considering buying the WC series and a joystick, in my case the T16000m makes a huge difference in playability. I'm not trying to sound like a commercial for Thrustmaster, but maybe this info will help someone who is trying to decide what stick to buy for these games.

I remember watching my dad play Wing Commander back in 1991-1992. I was much, much too young to go out and buy games on my own so I had to depend on my older sister and father to get new games.

I was ecstatic when I learned that GOG added The Secret Missions 1+2 and Special Operations 1+2 to the initial games. I just purchased and downloaded the pack the other day and my problem is the game looks rather ugly with the low resolution. I could play in a windowed mode, which I've basically resorted to doing.

It's been ages since I've used a joystick, only real reason for me to use one is for flight simulators.

You probably would have have an easier time using either joystick's mapper software to map the buttons to keyboard keys instead of using DosBox's lackluster mapping utility.

I have the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro and using Logitech's Profiler utility was very easy to map everything. Thrustmaster has an equivalent utility for the T16000M.

You will likely need to use the joystick utility to turn down the range/sensitivity on your stick anyway, because Wing Commander expects a much smaller input range than modern joysticks and is basically far too sensitive with modern sticks.

Also, good luck in general because I found the DOS version of WC1 to be is more or less unplayable regardless due to speed issues. WC2 is ok though.

I also have the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro and when I create a profile and link it with the launch shortcut for Wing Commander it just loads DOSBox on its own.

In Wing Commander III the sticks works quite well. A bit of lack of precision around the centre. In Wing Commander there is quite a deadzone, meaning you can't do very subtle corrections, which make it hard to line up a shot.

Hey phildcomputerlab, I'm a big fan of your GOG tweak-guide series of videos; your Wing Commander video is solely responsible for getting me to successfully configure the game to run optimally.

Like you, I'm using the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick. but I have actually stopped my WC play-through because I'm finding the large deadzone to be too limiting in my ability to pilot effectively. There is a custom build of dosbox that I found online that integrates a joystick deadzone setting that is supposed to be compatible with WC:

http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/dosbox/

I'm having trouble understanding as to how to integrate this custom build (and the contained SDL.dlls therein) to get WC to use this new joystick deadzone feature. I think this is pretty much the answer that we are looking for when it comes to WC regarding readjusting the deadzone; I'd really appreciate it if you could take a peak philscomputerlab and see if you can manage to get it to work with WC!

I tried this modified version of DOSBox. You basically replace the one that ships with the GOG.com Wing Commander game. But even when the deadzone was set to 0 it wasn't working well.

Under Windows however, there is zero deadzone. I mean in the driver settings, there is a screen where you can move the stick and it draws lines of the position.

So it might be something to do with DOSBox or the game. I really should get an old analogue stick and test on my 386 computer to see how the "real thing" acts.

I'm also getting another stick, a Thrustmaster T.16000 M because people mention how good it is and someone mentioned it's better with Wing Commander.

In Wing Commander III the Logitech sticks actually works quite well. Been playing a bit last night.

I will do some tweak guides on the Wing Commander games soon, just want to include the Thrustmaster stick as well.

Thanks for looking into it, Phil. I too tried replacing with the included files, but as you said, even at deadzone=0, it made no difference for me.

Do these deadzone issues persist in WC2 and WC Privateer, or is it better than WC? Good to know that this isn't an issue in WCIII.

I actually haven't tried any of the other Wing Commander games, good point!

Ok everyone, so I played around on my 386 Retro DOS Gaming PC and used a Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro. Stick woks really well I must say.

Now the deadzone is also on the 386. I'm certain now that this is simply how they programmed the game.

However, on real hardware it was never an issue, because people had slow computers like a 386SX with 16 MHz. When you lower the cycles in DOSBox to around 3000, you get the speed of what people got in the old days. The game will be a bit like a frame show, but that's how it was.

The joystick now works a lot better. Not because the deadzone on gone, it's still there, but once it's moving, it now moves much slower.

I also noticed that the movement is tied to the animation of the joystick in the game. So the "slowest" movement you can do is when the first animation displays. This is different when playing with the mouse. The mouse allows for slower movements, making fine adjustments with the joystick animation not changing.

Playing the game on this low speed also makes it a lot easier in regards to pretty much all aspects of the game.

With a high cycle speed and no enemies on the screen you can't aim at anything because it just throws the ship around with the slightest movements.

Thanks for the insight, philscomputerlab. Is there any recommendation or idea that you have to remedy this inherent dead-zone issue within Dosbox while using the Logitech stick?

From what I gather, other joysticks, like the Mad Catz Saitek Pro Flight X-55 Rhino H.O.T.A.S. have more customizable mapping software than our Logitech stick, where it actually allows you to lessen the dead-zone in the settings, instead of just being able to increase it. I'm seriously considering ponying up for one, if there is no other solution for WC that you can see

You have to add the command line arguments that tell DosBox to load the config files that launch the game. Same ones that are in the shortcut that the GoG installer creates.

I'm not on my home PC, so I can't remember what it is exactly, but if look at the command line in the actual shortcut it basically looks like this:

"C:\Wing Commander\Dosbox.exe" -config WC.conf -config WCsingle.conf

One config file it loads has the general DosBox settings to run the game, the other mounts the virtual C: drive and launches the actual game executable.

When you setup the profile in the Logitech software, it will just create the shortcut as:

"C:\Wing Commander\Dosbox.exe"

You just need to add the missing arguments in there.

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I don't notice any unreasonable deadzone with my Extreme 3D Pro with Wing Commander. The problem is that the ship movement is not linearly matched to the joystick movement range. I.e. you move the stick maybe 30% into it's full movement range, and already the ship in game is turning at 100% of it's possible turn speed. Due to the on/off nature of the movement, this may give the impression of a deadzone issue, but that's not actually the problem.

This is because Wing Commander expects a smaller input scale than modern joysticks provide. I.e. joysticks work more less just by outputting numeric X/Y values that indicate their position. Wing Commander expects those numbers to range from 0-100 (this number is for demonstrative purposes, I don't know the exact value), whereas on modern joysticks the numbers range from like 0-300. As a result Wing Commander thinks you have the joystick pushed all the way to edge, when in reality you're only 30% into it's full movement range.

The fix is to reduce the axis range setting in the Logitech profiler. This reduces the scale of the position values to work with older games like Wing Commander that expects smaller scales. I find 50% to my taste. This gives you correct progressive and linear movement of a ship's turn rates across the full range of the joystick.

The game would have to be patched / hacked. I don't see how this issue has anything to do with the joystick or driver issues. It performs like this on a 386 with analogue joystick as well. The issue simply becomes a lot more obvious on a fast PC because the ship will turn further in the same amount of time.

@ Sweetz

I don't have this issue with full speed at 30% movement. I played Wing Commander 1 yesterday and got so into the game that I got up to the 11th mission in one sitting, saving along the way :D

The joystick behaves like on a 386 DOS computer with analogue joystick. The "deadzone" is nothing to with DOSBox, it's the game that simply ignores very small movements and acts a little bit "digital". If it was a DOSBox issue, this would be in every other game, but that's not the case.

Limiting the range would worsen the behaviour. Because limiting range means that the maximum turn will be achieved before you move the stick all the way to the sides.

Note that you can calibrate the joystick in the game. Although I found it works well without doing that.

But I will try your suggestion. But I admit I'm a but sceptical because I am seeing the same thing on my 386 DOS computer and when I change the clockspeed to 25 MHz instead of 40 MHz the game is much better to play,

Limiting the range does the opposite. By default, ships reach their full turn speed far before the joystick reaches the edge of it's range because the game expects a smaller range of input values than modern joysticks offer.

The math is straightforward. If the game expects a joystick to report it's relative position on a scale of 0-100, and your joystick reports position values on a scale of 0-300, it will think the joystick is at the edge when it's only 1/3rd into it's range. If those numbers were reversed, the game would work as you describe, but it's a pretty safe bet that joysticks in 1990 didn't offer the range of values (which corresponds to precision) that joysticks from 2010+ do, even if they are cheap ones...

The point of joystick calibration is to teach the game the possible range values of your joystick so it can adjust its internal math appropriately to a variety of joystick ranges - so it should eliminate the need to adjust the range, but unfortunately I found the game's internal calibration to be unreliable (plus it never seemed to save between sessions). I had better luck leaving the game on default and reducing the range in the Logitech settings.

Here's an old thread where some other users corroborate that reducing range had the desired effect of making joystick movement more linearly match ship movement: http://www.gog.com/forum/wing_commander_series/wc1_joystick_sensitivity

PS You can see nicely the calibration math at work with real numbers in Wing Commander 3. Pre-calibration, it will show you the raw position numbers reported by your joystick. If I remember correctly with my Extreme 3D Pro, the raw range was something like 0-670. After calibration, the position numbers will be on a scale of 0-16 because ships in WC3 actually only have 16 different turn rates (which is still granular enough that none of us notice). It converts 0-42 = 0, 43-85 = 1, 86-128 = 2, etc.

I can confirm that the reduction in the Logitech Gaming software on the X and Y axis to 50% range improves the game quite a bit, and functions as Sweetz explained. The issue of the dead-zone still persists, however, and makes it somewhat tough (particularly for a first-timer like myself) to make on the fly controlled, fine aiming adjustments when lining up shots. I need to push the stick approximately 20% before any input is acknowledged in-game, which makes it hard to eliminate some of the more maneuverable ships like the Salthi, particularly when you're on an escort mission and time is of the essence.

I find it interesting that philscomputerlab has confirmed that this is vanilla behaviour that was present on DOS PC back in the day, but surely there must be some way to overcome this limitation today? Either that, or I guess I'll have to just get used to it, and return to my campaign in the Gimle sector...