FreeGameDev

Hello everybody,
first of all, thank you for STK! I have version 0.7.

I am building a game controller out of an old bicycle. It will connect as an joystick, so interfacing to STK is no problem. But STK has a lot of special buttons you need for full control.
Is there a solution to play STK with the following controls:
- Speed (just positive, maybe brakes are possible)
- 1 Button (for fire)
- maybe 1 Button for reset

It's more the question if nitro etc. can be disabled (for AI players). Or is the solution to build special levels?
I also noticed that the AI player are quite good, also in novice mode.

It would be cool to use STK, the other option is SuperMarioKart on an emulator, but I don't like this because it's proprietary and with STK it's maybe possible to add a bicycle "kart"

Thanks in advance for your tips!

Normally, you'll need 8 keys: Speed, brake, left, right, reverse look, nitro, sharp turn, reset.
If you're good enough (and if you think of novice karts being quite good, I don't know if you are), you're able to omit the reverse look and the last one; maybe last two ones if you really want to.
Maybe you're able to access nitro via a hand break somehow? Another possibility is to edit manually your stk_config.xml: Search for a <nitro ...> tag and change "power-boost" (and maybe "max-speed-increase") to "1". I think this should work.


Crend

ufas {l Wrote}:I am building a game controller out of an old bicycle.

Nice ! I'm pretty curious about it : how will you get it work as a joystick ? Using some Arduino stuff ? And will you make turning progressive (if yes, I'm not sure it would be handled by STK) ?

ufas {l Wrote}:Is there a solution to play STK with the following controls:
- Speed (just positive, maybe brakes are possible)
- 1 Button (for fire)
- maybe 1 Button for reset

- Well, I think using Crendgrim's tip you'll be able to disable the nitro for everybody (including AI karts).
- I almost never use the brake button, so you can easily do without.
- However, the sharp turn would be an important loss I think, especially if you can't break.
- You can get rid of the reset button, this will only be annoying in rare situations (but very annoying ones ), and with experience you learn how to avoid them.
- The reverse look is also cool, but not really needed : it's mainly used to throw something to opponents behind you, that's not an essential feature to win a race.

With this you end up with only speed, turns, sharp turn. I think it's feasible (might need some experiments with another combination of controls to test which one's the best), though the gameplay will be impoverished (maybe you can add some thumbs buttons on your custom joystick ?).

I hope that if you need to ride faster, you'll have to rotate your pedals more actively? Just a joke

KroArtem {l Wrote}:I hope that if you need to ride faster, you'll have to rotate your pedals more actively? Just a joke

that would be the ultimate controller "exercise with STK"

Thanks for your answers. I just set small-container="0" big-container="0", so there is no nitro in the containers.

Sharp turn can indeed be a problem. Maybe I can make a small hack, so if you steer near to the end of the range the sharp-turn-button would be activated.

I use a PIC microcontroller (because I already know them) with USB. So the controller just says that he is a Joystick. The speed is measured by the frequency of the Dynamo (= for more speed you have to push faster into the pedals ;-). Steering is not so easy, I try it with Hall-Sensors and a magnet. I just tested it on my desk, by the end of the week I will know if it works also on the bike.
I will tell you the results.