x52 Pro

ellF · Post by **ellF** » Fri Sep 17, 2010 11:47 pm

Hi all,

I'm planning to update my x52 Pro plugin code this weekend to work with Mercenary; give me a shout if you'd be interested in testing it.

alpha45 · Post by **alpha45** » Sat Sep 18, 2010 7:57 am

Hey there! Is this the sort of plugin that changes the lights on the device in different situations, things like that? If so, sure! I'd be glad to "test" it.

darcsyde83 · Post by **darcsyde83** » Sat Sep 18, 2010 12:45 pm

i wouldn't mind giving it a try. ordered an x52 pro to replace my aging wingman extreme and itchin to try it out

does the MFD on the throttle display stats right off the bat in-game or will it need anything special to work properly?

soulsacrifice · Post by **soulsacrifice** » Sat Sep 18, 2010 12:51 pm

I'd like to help test it. Did you ever get round to releasing the Legends one? because I never seen it here.

darcsyde83 · Post by **darcsyde83** » Sat Sep 18, 2010 12:53 pm

awesome.

ellF · Post by **ellF** » Sat Sep 18, 2010 1:44 pm

Originally posted by soulsacrifice
I'd like to help test it. Did you ever get round to releasing the Legends one? because I never seen it here.

I completed it, but ran into a few edge-case bugs that I didn't resolve for lack of time. When I update the code for EM, I'll wrap up the coding for EL and make both plugins available.

The plugin itself -- which only works with the x52 Pro, not the regular x52 -- changes the lights on the throttle and stick based on in-game circumstances, and also creates a handful of pages of ship and target data on the MFD (the screen on the throttle). It's eye-candy, basically, but it's neat eye-candy.

Problematically, the API that Saitek created requires that a somewhat buggy Windows Service be running; sometimes, it fails silently, and you have to manually restart it. I'm going to continue debugging and playing with my code to try to catch those silent failures and automagically restart the service when appropriate. Otherwise, it's close to being "done" and ready for release.

soulsacrifice · Post by **soulsacrifice** » Sat Sep 18, 2010 6:04 pm

Originally posted by ellFThe plugin itself -- which only works with the x52 Pro, not the regular x52 -- changes the lights on the throttle and stick based on in-game circumstances, and also creates a handful of pages of ship and target data on the MFD (the screen on the throttle). It's eye-candy, basically, but it's neat eye-candy.

Sounds great, the mfd is not used in enough games. I have my profile displaying what a button does when you push it. I know there are problems with the mfd service stop working - wish they had spent a bit more time ironing out the bugs because we'd probably see more people doing this for more games.

ellF · Post by **ellF** » Sat Sep 18, 2010 9:31 pm

Originally posted by soulsacrifice
Originally posted by ellFThe plugin itself -- which only works with the x52 Pro, not the regular x52 -- changes the lights on the throttle and stick based on in-game circumstances, and also creates a handful of pages of ship and target data on the MFD (the screen on the throttle). It's eye-candy, basically, but it's neat eye-candy.
Sounds great, the mfd is not used in enough games. I have my profile displaying what a button does when you push it. I know there are problems with the mfd service stop working - wish they had spent a bit more time ironing out the bugs because we'd probably see more people doing this for more games.

There are really three big issues: the game needs to support the x52 in some fashion (easier to do when you can drop an email to a guy like Shawn and ask for a custom build that exports a .txt file with in-game data, harder to do when it's a larger player like EA), there needs to be a developer with interest -and- an x52 Pro to test on, and the service and API from Saitek need to be used.

The latter is a pretty significant challenge; the original Saitek API is a poorly documented C affair, distributed as a .dll. I've written a reasonably coherent .NET wrapper around it, but even so, I'm munging the HRESULT return values from their methods, as there's not a particularly evident way of interpreting and handling them in a managed environment. It's frustrating that they didn't expand and stabilize what could have been a really neat idea; I'd have loved to have seen ways to represent the same data on some of their other products.

It does raise the interesting question of what more we could do; I wonder if there's enough of a community to warrant an external server monitor, for example, that captures the text file that Shawn creates and sends the information in it to a server app every minute or two, allowing for a dashboard view of what's happening in the universe? With a bit of interpretation, we could even show where major battles occurred, who lived or died, where the good mining is, etc., etc.

darcsyde83 · Post by **darcsyde83** » Sun Sep 19, 2010 1:53 am

cant wait to see how your first build turns out

Maarschalk · Post by **Maarschalk** » Sun Sep 19, 2010 1:59 am

Hi darcsyde83, welcome to the game and forum....hope to see you out there.....

darcsyde83 · Post by **darcsyde83** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 1:31 am

Thanks. I'll give online a try when i get my new controller tomorrow

soulsacrifice · Post by **soulsacrifice** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 1:37 am

ellF, when do you think it will be ready for testing?

darcsyde83 · Post by **darcsyde83** » Mon Sep 20, 2010 11:03 pm

Looks like i wont be gettin my controller today as planned. ups gave me a notice that it would be late 24 hours. i'm assuming 1 of the morons truck engines turned into a grenade.
it's what happens when the repair shop and/or driver slacks off with inspections...

An act of god or a random D.O.T. inspection and the driver going to prison after getting busted with a couple kilo's of drugs would have been less annoying.