Using your ps3 gamepad to multibox
I'm making this post because a month ago I would have laughed at anyone who told me you could successfully MB with a game controller. I would have been wrong and wanted to let others know it is possible and if you have a setup like mine, gaming from the couch it is functional.
It all started when I bought a big screen lcd tv and a ps3. As I was sitting around one day I wondered if I could plug my pc into my tele and use it as a giant monitor, (for giant porn of course). To make a long complex story short I ended up with a giant monitor and started using my computer from the couch. So I then tried to get a good set up for gaming with the keyboard and mouse using lapboards or a small table and nothing seemed to work well. Untill I realized I was just used to using a game controller from the console while playing from a couch! So in a simple intuative move I just plugged my Ps3 controller (they are usb) into my PC and to my surprise it detected it and after a bit of messing around (you need a driver update to get it working) I was using my controller rather than a mouse.
So I started messing with some single player games, action stuff mostly and it worked, but I still never really thought it would be good enough for a game like wow with 11tygillion buttons to push, not to mention 5 boxing complications. However I was getting used to the controller and switching back to a mouse and keyboard heavy set up was getting annyoing. Then one day while cleaning up my wow macros I started to do some math- how many buttons did I uase to play wow really? could I consolidate some into macros, for space saving? See for me, using modifier keys always sucked so I tended to make as many unique "buttons" as I could, so my setup had an inflated number of buttons to press.
However using a game pad I realized mod buttons like alt, shift and ctrl were easy to use if mapped to two of the four "trigger" buttons and one analog button so my eight face buttons (on the ps3) suddenly turned into a potential 32 unique key presses (even more if you count mod combo presses like hold Alt, and Ctrl). Once I figured that out I realized I could get enough needed buttons out of a game pad the rest was just trial and error.
The setup ended up being-
Top back trigger is mouse button one Top front trigger is alt, Top back right trigger is mouse two, and Top right trigger is Ctrl. After that the right analog is mouse movement and the left analog is W, A, S, D. The left d-pad is Up, Down, ect (for clone movement). The rest of the buttons and button plus modifier combos are for macros and hotbar.
Hell it was tight but after some practice it became becomes very intuative. Plus I can control my team while chillin on the couch.
Now of course there is no way to fully replace a keyboard, I kepy all the non critical stuff mapped to the keyboard like opening bags and stuff like that. Also you obviously need to use the keyboard to chat with other people. So making the keyboard obsolete is not possible, untill I get a good voice command setup going I guess.
Finally the one true flaw in the setup is that a controller will never have the same pin point accuracy for cursor movement that a mouse has. There is just something inherently less acurate about using an analog stick for mouse movement. However it is 100% functional. If a mouse gave you 10/10 control, I would honestly say (after acclimating to it) a controller gives you 9/10 for general selection, and 8/10 for on the fly battle targeting.
Anyway, the whole point is that for anyone who wants to but just can't imagine that it really works, I am here to testify that you can MB with just a ps3 controller and limited keyboad support.
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