Making Playstation Controllers Work With Xbox 360 Game Ports

Hello and happy Chinese New Year guys. It's been a while since my last post (as if I post stuff frequently here, duh) so here comes some not-so-new stuff.

Back a few days ago at work, a deaf customer came to me complaining that his new Logitech Gamepad F310 controller behaves strangely when he played Darksiders. The left analog stick caused the camera to be stuck in a really awkward position. The same thing happened to me with my Logitech Dual Action Gamepad, but I just continued playing with the mouse and keyboard, which I'm already comfortable with. I concluded that Darksiders require an Xbox 360 controller to work properly.



In fact, many Xbox 360 games has been ported to the PC, so it might be more relevant to buy an Xbox 360 controller instead of a Playstation controller these days.

That aside, if you still insist on using that Playstation controller, the solution is to emulate the Xbox 360 controller. Enter the x360ce, now with force feedback. It requires you to copy some DLL files to the game directory, so check the readme file first.

You can download it here: http://virusdev.ovh.org/files/

Don't worry about the name, it's just the author's nickname. Click on xinputemu to see the files called "x360ce vibmod 3.*.zip" which you'll be downloading. Extract and follow the readme instructions. Then you can test it out.



Another option is to use Xpadder, but the setup would be more complicated.

On a second note, the Logitech Gamepad F310 supports both DirectInput and the newer XInput (used by the Xbox 360 controller), controlled by a switch on the underside of the controller. I did notice that the XInput mode isn't working on my customer's PC, which is running Windows XP. Turns out you have to download a separate driver for that on XP, despite DirectInput mode works. Damn you Logitech for not providing that driver. Not everyone is on Vista or 7.

So if you're on XP, and using XInput compatible controllers, you should download the driver.

Free Games for Cheap Bastards

I know, a lot of you guys were waiting for newer games to be released, and might just end up buying pirated copies. But there are a few games which are totally free, and doesn't play too bad either. Either way, they can serve as time killers before you get the next game to play. So here goes the listing:

Alien Swarm

This is a new game developed by Valve using the Source engine. It features a top-down view to navigate around the levels, blasting away hostile aliens with 4 player co-op. Valve may haven't mentioned this but it might have something to do with Team 17's Alien Breed series, which is very, very similar.

Oh, being a Valve game, it requires Steam to be installed. And no, it has no relation to Ben 10.

Half Life 2: Deathmatch

This is the missing multiplayer component of Half Life 2. It plays almost exactly like the original Half Life multiplayer game, but with Half Life 2 weapons and maps. The game is multiplayer only, but you can install bots if you like. Oh, you can play as Combine as well.

This is a limited time offer, although I think I've seen this on since last year. ATI users click here and NVIDIA users click here to get it. Again, you'll need Steam to download it.

Frets on Fire X

Basically its an open source Guitar Hero/Rock Band clone, which is also a modification of the original Frets on Fire. Available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Don't be alarmed with the very bare theme when you start it up; the game is highly customizable with themes support, some mimicking Rock Band or Guitar Hero.

And the game doesn't actually come with songs. You will need to download the songs in order to play it. While it might sound like bummer, this way you don't actually have to download the songs that you don't want to play, saving bandwidth. A large collection can be found in the wiki for various songs and Geetar Freaks for songs from Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

The coolest part of this game is probably that it is played by holding the keyboard like a guitar, or maybe just the awesome Jurgen from the tutorial ;)

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So that caps off my post today, I might be posting more shortly. Stay tuned.

Warriors of the 3 Kingdoms (W3K) Freebies!

Buying a copy of last month's PCGamer Malaysia, it included a free DVD of Warriors of the 3 Kingdoms (you can download the client at its website for free) along with some freebies codes. As I don't play MMORPGs, I'm going to give off these codes here, in this blog! So come on, grab it while its still hot.

Busting Ghosts - Frame by Frame

A friend of mine just lend me his copy of Ghostbusters: The Video Game a few days ago. Although most licensed games end up bad, I'm actually looking up to this title, since the gameplay video looks kinda sweet in X-Play.

And so goes to the installation. It was all fine until it said the installation failed in the end. Oddly enough, I found the files in my Program Files folder, and actually able to launch the game. Perhaps it's the crappy installer by those pirates I guess (sshhhh!).

So the game launches, and I reach the main menu. And... it lags like hell. More like a slightly movable slide show. Whatever. I tried to play career mode, regardless of the lag, hoping it would be fine there. It was indeed better, but still unplayable. I set the resolution to 800 x 600, then it becomes playable, but not entirely smooth either.

This mystery of extreme lagging has puzzled me. My rig is a good 2.6GHz dual core CPU, 4GB of DDR2-667 RAMs, and a factory-overclocked 9600GT with 512MBs of DDR3 memory. What could've gone wrong? Vista sucks? Unlikely, since my friend also uses Vista, and his game was really smooth.

I almost gave up playing the game, until I briefly re-played Call of Duty last night. I tweaked the game (Call of Duty) via Nvidia's Control Panel to give the old game justice some time ago. Then I realized, maybe I should check something in that control panel.

Indeed it was. The culprit is the global 3D settings were set in a way that not all games are compatible, perhaps a mistake I've done some time ago (I should set profile setting instead of global, which affects all 3D apps). Reset to default settings, and voila, problem no more. In fact, other games seemed smoother than before.

So yeah, next time, try looking up into the control panels if there was any problem with your games. Perhaps you can find a solution there. Now the only problem is beating up those tough and swarming marshmallow minions. Wish me luck, because it's really hard.