A question about memory...

[Kamikazekid]

Hey there, I was just wondering how many pages with custom button sets are able to be put on the controller. I know that the macros are stored on a 1 MB memory unit inside the controller, but does that include the preset modes such as rapid fire, one touch quick scope, jitter, etc? Will memory become a problem later on when I have a lot of pages/modes on the controller?

On another topic, is it possible to make it so whenever I pull the right trigger the ring of light turns red, or whenever I use the jitter mode made by viking I could turn it green or something? Or is it only possible to use the custom colors for custom macros? If I wanted to make it so that the colors are constantly changing, without touching any buttons, would I be able to do that?

Sorry for all the questions, and thank you very much for you help.

 

[PS3andCOD]

You can fit 5 or 6 pages on the controller at a time. But it doesn't really matter in the end, you can always switch them on your PC.

 

[odingalt]

The thing that dictates how much of the 1MB is used up, is how complicated your macros get. There is an emtpy/full guage, kind of like your car's gas gauge, that will show up while you are building your macro set to let you know how you are doing on memory. Here are some examples of macros and how much memory they take up:

If you were just recording a simple rapidfire macro (trigger on, trigger off, trigger on, trigger off) or a simple fast reload (x.... pause... y... pause... y....), you could record about 3 hours worth of macros.

If you are recording typical sports skill moves or fighting game combos, or things that use a couple analog sticks mixed in with some buttons, you could record about 10 minutes worth of macros.

If you pushed ALL joysticks, triggers and buttons on the controller constantly (I mean if you had six hands and six thumbs and were just changing buttons and stick positions on the controller like 100 times every second), you could record about 120 seconds worth of macros. I.e. if you set up the timeline editor to change EVERY possible value every 10ms, you would get about 2 minutes of macros.

There are five available pages, but if you use the multiple pages, you also have to assign one of your tac switches (or two if you wish) as 'page left' and/or 'page right' buttons. So let's say you assigned a page right button, that only leaves 5 tac switches per each of the 5 pages, or 25 macros total (plus anything you want to assign to the stock buttons).

So, even if you are storing the typical skill moves or combos from fighting games, anti-recoil script, etc., you would fill up the memory but you shouldn't run out of room. I tried to pick the size of the EEPROM carefully so that it would get everybody what they need without driving the cost up too much. (LED questions answered in next post)

 

[odingalt]

Hey there, I was just wondering how many pages with custom button sets are able to be put on the controller. I know that the macros are stored on a 1 MB memory unit inside the controller, but does that include the preset modes such as rapid fire, one touch quick scope, jitter, etc? Will memory become a problem later on when I have a lot of pages/modes on the controller?].

So short answer is no, you should not run into memory problems, especially if you're just going to be doing rapidfire/jitter/etc. These macros take up very little if any space in the EEPROM.

On another topic, is it possible to make it so whenever I pull the right trigger the ring of light turns red, or whenever I use the jitter mode made by viking I could turn it green or something? Or is it only possible to use the custom colors for custom macros? If I wanted to make it so that the colors are constantly changing, without touching any buttons, would I be able to do that?

You have to create a custom macro to have control over the LED's like that. Some customers are already requesting that we add special drop-down menus for all of the rapidfire, jitter mod, fast reload, etc. (similar to our custom hex editor) as they don't want to use the timeline editor. If we do this, then you won't be able to program custom LED sequences with the macros.

If you want the custom LED's, you gotta use the timeline editor. Other than assigning a color to each page of macros. Right now you have to hit a button to get the macro to playback, and if you want to repeat the macro you gotta hold down the button. We already have plans in version 2.0 to add even more to the macro timeline editor such as a'hold' feature - i.e. you can tapa button once and a macro will keep playing over and over and over again until you tap the button again to stop it.

It's funny but no matter how hard I tried to make this thing the end'all macro editing software, people have already come out with a dozen good ideas. The nice thing is because I'm not wasting my time writing drivers all the time, I can focus on improving the macro editing software.

 

[Kamikazekid]

You have to create a custom macro to have control over the LED's like that. Some customers are already requesting that we add special drop-down menus for all of the rapidfire, jitter mod, fast reload, etc. (similar to our custom hex editor) as they don't want to use the timeline editor. If we do this, then you won't be able to program custom LED sequences with the macros.

If you want the custom LED's, you gotta use the timeline editor. Other than assigning a color to each page of macros. Right now you have to hit a button to get the macro to playback, and if you want to repeat the macro you gotta hold down the button. We already have plans in version 2.0 to add even more to the macro timeline editor such as a'hold' feature - i.e. you can tapa button once and a macro will keep playing over and over and over again until you tap the button again to stop it.

Well if you make a special drop down menu why not find a way to to pair it up with the timeline editor to make it so when you press the tac button to say use the easy quick scope the entire ROL turns red. I know this is way harder than I think it is and it would take a while, but it's just a suggestion that I think would make the controller really awesome. Also would you be able to make your player 1 led a different color even if you were not using a macro?

 

[odingalt]

Well if you make a special drop down menu why not find a way to to pair it up with the timeline editor to make it so when you press the tac button to say use the easy quick scope the entire ROL turns red. I know this is way harder than I think it is and it would take a while, but it's just a suggestion that I think would make the controller really awesome.

You can do this actually. You can program a macro that performs the quickscope and also turns the entire ROL red. When it's done performing the quickscope, the LED's will return to the normal page color (and any other indicators you may have programmed, i.e. if LED2 is programmed to show rapidfire)

Also would you be able to make your player 1 led a different color even if you were not using a macro?

Yes, but only all four LED's. I.e. you will be able to assign different colors to each page. That means all four LED's will be the same color when the LED's are on. The LED's turn on when you receive an xbox 360 message, when the controller is out of sync, when player1 is led or when you have assigned one of the LED's to be your toggle on/off indicator, etc. The only time you can make two LED's show up as different colors is when you program a light show in a macro.

We did it this way because if we give users 100% total and full control over the LED's with no rhyme or reason, we'll end up spending the rest of our life trying to answer support tickets from confused customers. We had to set the limit somewhere, and it seemed to make sense that each page gets its own color. Perhaps in v2.0, we can allow individual color assignment for each page. Perhaps you want Page 1 to be Rainbow, Page 2 to be blue, page 3 to be green/red.... so long as you can remember which page is which, it probably oughtn't matter what colors we allow.

Will have a talk with the software developer about this one. I want to see if customers can get used to using this mod and the software before we get too fancy and complicated with the addons. I guess all I can say as far as the ultimate control you are talking about, this is definitely and easily within the capability of the hardware, but not programmed into the software, and we want to be careful to implement this stuff so the average Joe Consumer doesn't get lost. But we do want our Super Tech Savvy Consumer to also be able to get what he wants.

 

[Jonny]

With the drop down pre-made options if you were to do them and people wanted the option for what colour they wanted you could have a lay- out such as:
Button:-----Macro:----------Led 1: ----Led 2: ----Led 3:----Led 4:
Tac 1. ----Rapid fire.--------Off.-------Off.-------Off.-------Off.
Tac 2. ----Quick scope.------Red.------Red.-------Red.------Red.
Tac 3. ----Drop shot.--------Green.----Green.----Green.----Green.
Tac 4. ----perfect reload----Blue.------Blue.-----Blue.------Blue.
A.---------Jitter.--------------Yellow.---Yellow.---Yellow.---Yellow.

Wow that took some time to type out.. - please tell me if this looks like a big jumble rather than a drop down menu list.

I know this is probably harder than it looks to make but it would give the user to apply the pre-made macros to any button and what colour combo, although I do not make these things so I don't know if it is possible..

 

[Kamikazekid]

With the drop down pre-made options if you were to do them and people wanted the option for what colour they wanted you could have a lay- out such as:
Button:-----Macro:----------Led 1: ----Led 2: ----Led 3:----Led 4:
Tac 1. ----Rapid fire.--------Off.-------Off.-------Off.-------Off.
Tac 2. ----Quick scope.------Red.------Red.-------Red.------Red.
Tac 3. ----Drop shot.--------Green.----Green.----Green.----Green.
Tac 4. ----perfect reload----Blue.------Blue.-----Blue.------Blue.
A.---------Jitter.--------------Yellow.---Yellow.---Yellow.---Yellow.

That my good sir is a wonderful idea. I think that an extra tab on the viking software with this would be amazing, it would look similar to the legacy driver but would pull together the controller and add a lot of customization. Plus what Odingalt said up above makes me believe that in v2.0 this would be a great option for the common joe and tech savvy people. The only change that I would make is to allow under the macro column is to allow insertion of custom macros that you saved. I would love to see this actually happen.

 

[Jonny]

With the drop down pre-made options if you were to do them and people wanted the option for what colour they wanted you could have a lay- out such as:
Button:-----Macro:----------Led 1: ----Led 2: ----Led 3:----Led 4:
Tac 1. ----Rapid fire.--------Off.-------Off.-------Off.-------Off.
Tac 2. ----Quick scope.------Red.------Red.-------Red.------Red.
Tac 3. ----Drop shot.--------Green.----Green.----Green.----Green.
Tac 4. ----perfect reload----Blue.------Blue.-----Blue.------Blue.
A.---------Jitter.--------------Yellow.---Yellow.---Yellow.---Yellow.

That my good sir is a wonderful idea. I think that an extra tab on the viking software with this would be amazing, it would look similar to the legacy driver but would pull together the controller and add a lot of customization. Plus what Odingalt said up above makes me believe that in v2.0 this would be a great option for the common joe and tech savvy people. The only change that I would make is to allow under the macro column is to allow insertion of custom macros that you saved. I would love to see this actually happen.

Well thats 2.0.1 being started already..

 

[odingalt]

With the drop down pre-made options if you were to do them and people wanted the option for what colour they wanted you could have a lay- out such as:
Button:-----Macro:----------Led 1: ----Led 2: ----Led 3:----Led 4:
Tac 1. ----Rapid fire.--------Off.-------Off.-------Off.-------Off.
Tac 2. ----Quick scope.------Red.------Red.-------Red.------Red.
Tac 3. ----Drop shot.--------Green.----Green.----Green.----Green.
Tac 4. ----perfect reload----Blue.------Blue.-----Blue.------Blue.
A.---------Jitter.--------------Yellow.---Yellow.---Yellow.---Yellow.

Wow that took some time to type out.. - please tell me if this looks like a big jumble rather than a drop down menu list.

I know this is probably harder than it looks to make but it would give the user to apply the pre-made macros to any button and what colour combo, although I do not make these things so I don't know if it is possible..

Can you walk us through how this works? I'm not quite wrapping my head around what you are showing us here, but I'm trying hard to understand . I'm all ears.

 

[Jonny]

Ok.. ill try..
For example you have all the pre-made macros, just like on the legacy controllers so the user does not have to hake their own - Eg trying to make 12.7 shots per second on the time line.

Then at the top or in a different tab, have a drop down menu where the user can customize these classes.
So the user can select it to be on
Tac switch 1 - use the Jitter mode - have what colours they want to light up so Player 1 red, Player 2 Green and player 3 and 4 not it up.

So effetely it is like the legacy driver but with the option to light up the the multi light board how you want and to set it onto what ever button you want it to be on rather than having to download like 20 macros just to get a specific speed.

Have i explained this well?

 

[Jonny]

and so with this example, imagine that these are drop down boxes and you can select what you want

Box 1 -----Box 2------------box 3-------box 4-----box 5-----box 6-----ect..
--V-----------V-----------------V-----------V-----------V----------V
Button:-----Macro:----------Led 1: ----Led 2: ----Led 3:----Led 4:
Tac 1. ----Rapid fire.--------Off.-------Off.-------Off.-------Off.
Tac 2. ----Quick scope.------Red.------Red.-------Red.------Red.
Tac 3. ----Drop shot.--------Green.----Green.----Green.----Green.
Tac 4. ----perfect reload----Blue.------Blue.-----Blue.------Blue.
A.---------Jitter.--------------Yellow.---Yellow.---Yellow.---Yellow.

 

[odingalt]

Ok so does tac switch toggle the option on and off? And when rapidfire is on for example, it will display any four colors you want?

What happens if you want to turn on rapidfire and perfect reload at the same time? How do you keep the LED selections from interfering with each other?

 

[Jonny]

with this when you select 'Jitter' you can make each led light up the colour you want so when it is turned on the RoL will light u with 'player 1 as red, player 2 as green, player 3 as red and player 4 as yellow'. With this you can choose what colours flash on when you turn the mode on (like on the time line editor) but then you can also make options to click the tac switch once to turn it on then click it again to turn the mode off or click and hold to turn the mode on and when you let go it turns off.

effectively this is the HEX. editor with the option of how to turn the modes on and off and what to have the lights light up as.


Ill try have a go at making an example of the drop down box on excel if i can remember how..

Can anyone else explain this better than me..?

Ok so does tac switch toggle the option on and off? And when rapidfire is on for example, it will display any four colors you want?

What happens if you want to turn on rapidfire and perfect reload at the same time? How do you keep the LED selections from interfering with each other?

You could have a different colour combo for this? or the normal player 1 led on like any other controller and then have player 4 led on 'red' saying that you have a mode turned on and you have to remember this?
uh.. or.. have the leds flash between the 2 modes so the rapidfire lights are on for 3-5 seconds then it changes to the perfect reload lights for 3-5 seconds then changes back and forth..

 

[Kamikazekid]

Jonny those are some good ideas. I really like the idea of the flashing lights to indicate the modes that are turned on. So you are saying that when you have two modes on, say player four, it will flash two colors like purple and blue? Brilliant. The only problem would be the actually putting it into the software, and making sure everyone is able to get it to work properly. Though if this were to work omg, it would be so awesome.

 

[Jonny]

Jonny those are some good ideas. I really like the idea of the flashing lights to indicate the modes that are turned on. So you are saying that when you have two modes on, say player four, it will flash two colors like purple and blue? Brilliant. The only problem would be the actually putting it into the software, and making sure everyone is able to get it to work properly. Though if this were to work omg, it would be so awesome.

Yeah, you are understanding the idea that i am putting on the table but i also do agree that i will probably be hard to program, like everything else.

 

[odingalt]

with this when you select 'Jitter' you can make each led light up the colour you want so when it is turned on the RoL will light u with 'player 1 as red, player 2 as green, player 3 as red and player 4 as yellow'. With this you can choose what colours flash on when you turn the mode on (like on the time line editor) but then you can also make options to click the tac switch once to turn it on then click it again to turn the mode off or click and hold to turn the mode on and when you let go it turns off.

effectively this is the HEX. editor with the option of how to turn the modes on and off and what to have the lights light up as.

So again, I post my question...

What happens if you want to turn on rapidfire and perfect reload at the same time? How do you keep the LED selections from interfering with each other?

You could have a different colour combo for this? or the normal player 1 led on like any other controller and then have player 4 led on 'red' saying that you have a mode turned on and you have to remember this?
uh.. or.. have the leds flash between the 2 modes so the rapidfire lights are on for 3-5 seconds then it changes to the perfect reload lights for 3-5 seconds then changes back and forth..

But you already defined like four-rainbow colors for the jitter mod and they are controlling all the LED's. As soon as you define four colors assigned to the jitter mod, you've essentially locked up the LED's until you turn jitter mod on. So if I turn on jittermod, it puts red/green/red/yelllow on the LED's, then I turn sniper mode on and nothing happens, because all the LED's are already being used to indicate jitter mod... So you see what I am saying? You have to basically treat the LED's as a 'resource'. You can't have two different modes fighting over the same resource... because there's no way to determine which one gets priority.

Add a third mode to the mix and you're screwed. What if I want to turn on rapidfire, akimbo mode and sniper mode all at once? And all three of them are trying to control all four LED's?

 

[obo]

Add a third mode to the mix and you're screwed. What if I want to turn on rapidfire, akimbo mode and sniper mode all at once? And all three of them are trying to control all four LED's?

The first ever RROD of an Xbox 360 controller lol.

 

[Kamikazekid]

But you already defined like four-rainbow colors for the jitter mod and they are controlling all the LED's. As soon as you define four colors assigned to the jitter mod, you've essentially locked up the LED's until you turn jitter mod on. So if I turn on jittermod, it puts red/green/red/yelllow on the LED's, then I turn sniper mode on and nothing happens, because all the LED's are already being used to indicate jitter mod... So you see what I am saying? You have to basically treat the LED's as a 'resource'. You can't have two different modes fighting over the same resource... because there's no way to determine which one gets priority.

Add a third mode to the mix and you're screwed. What if I want to turn on rapidfire, akimbo mode and sniper mode all at once? And all three of them are trying to control all four LED's?

Unless you make it so that each tac switch is applied to one quadrant on the RoL, with one color. For instance Tac 1 and 2 go to player 2, 3 and 4 go to player 3, 5 and 6 go to player 4 and if you have both of the tac switches that are assigned to that quadrant turned on the two colors will alternate. Priority wouldn't be an issue this way because they each have their assigned place and color.

 

[odingalt]

But you already defined like four-rainbow colors for the jitter mod and they are controlling all the LED's. As soon as you define four colors assigned to the jitter mod, you've essentially locked up the LED's until you turn jitter mod on. So if I turn on jittermod, it puts red/green/red/yelllow on the LED's, then I turn sniper mode on and nothing happens, because all the LED's are already being used to indicate jitter mod... So you see what I am saying? You have to basically treat the LED's as a 'resource'. You can't have two different modes fighting over the same resource... because there's no way to determine which one gets priority.

Add a third mode to the mix and you're screwed. What if I want to turn on rapidfire, akimbo mode and sniper mode all at once? And all three of them are trying to control all four LED's?

Unless you make it so that each tac switch is applied to one quadrant on the RoL, with one color. For instance Tac 1 and 2 go to player 2, 3 and 4 go to player 3, 5 and 6 go to player 4 and if you have both of the tac switches that are assigned to that quadrant turned on the two colors will alternate. Priority wouldn't be an issue this way because they each have their assigned place and color.

I think at most you can assign one tac switch per LED. If you assign Tac 1 and Tac 2 to LED1, and Tac 1's color is blue/on or off/off, And Tac 2's color is red/on or off/off, then what happens when Tac 1 and Tac 2 are both on? Purple? lol