G-13 Replacement for my N52 ?

[awspeed]

As any Nostromo n52 user would know, the new n52te is a major step backwards for the game pad. The unit was put on the market in a condition that wouldn't even work out of the box and after...what, a year or more now, still doesn't work.
I'm looking for a new game pad that I can use to replace it and Logitech is a company that I trust to make solid computer input devices.
Not having a G-13 in hand yet to try, I don't know if it will be able to do some of the things I am looking for.
#1- The ability to program any key to Momentarily(while held) change what is bieng called Game Modes. The M keys
I have well over 100 profiles written for the n52 and all of them completly remove the need to use the keyboard for any action ingame. For games such as Operation Flashpoint this can be hard to do. I do it by holding a key with my pinky that changes all of the other keys to a different action ingame. With 4 levels (null, red, green and blue) I can program over one hundred(100+) different actions. When you add Macros to the equation, things really get interesting.
#2- Running a continous Macro should not interfere with further Macros or key press inputs. Marcos should have incremental timing settings and the ability to be held when more than 1 button is being pressed within the marco. Pressing and holding 1 button on the pad would have the effect of say pressing and holding ctrl+shift+F1 in the game.
#3- This is more of a question. Does the joystick act like say an analog flight controller with changable axis and/or is it just a button press thing? Even better can I program both? such as a Y-axis + 2 different button presses.
Saving the best wish for last(and I think this alone would have made the n52te, with no other changes worth the extra cost)
#4- Please tell me this is possible! When pressing a key on the pad the LCD can be set to display the button being pressed and the title you have given it. With the number of games I have and the different variations of the profiles, my kids have trouble learning what each button is programed to do and stopping the game to refresh their memory isn't something their going to do. But if they could just press the buttons till they SEE the correct one on the LCD, they could easily learn the button location.

Well, I'm going to wait awhile to see if I can learn a little more about the G-13 for the same reason I haven't yet replaced the n52 with one of the other offerings available. With the number of profiles I'll have to write for the new device, it has to be a pad that will stay around for awhile, I've got to be able to program it, lock it to a game .exe and not think about it again... its simply got to work.

I've used the N50+n52 since they first hit the market and many of the profiles you can download from the internet are mine but we are quickly wearing out the 4 units currently being used by myself and the kids, with no viable new product from the company making them. I'm going to need something soon.

Logitech has given me knew hope?!

[Xevious]

#3- This is more of a question. Does the joystick act like say an analog flight controller with changable axis and/or is it just a button press thing? Even better can I program both? such as a Y-axis + 2 different button presses.

No, it does not appear to emulate a gamepad. Isn't that what the mouse is for?


#4- Please tell me this is possible! When pressing a key on the pad the LCD can be set to display the button being pressed and the title you have given With the number of games I have and the different variations of the profiles, my kids have trouble learning what each button is programed to do and stopping the game to refresh their memory isn't something their going to do. But if they could just press the buttons till they SEE the correct one on the LCD, they could easily learn the button location.

There's an option to display the macro being played on the screen. It doesn't show the G-key (you pressed it, so you probably know what it is)

With the Lua scripting, you can override G-key events, and do custom actions (eg playing existing macros, writing text to the LCD, etc). Here, you can get really fancy.

[CABRONAZO]

Hi guys!

Are you sure abou the stick being analog not digital?

There's no choice to bind axis to it. That is a feature that almost any other pad has, I can't believe that this stick is just a digital up down left right controller.
Is there a way to bind axis to it?

[Xevious]

Which axes are you talking about? Are you referring to mouse axes or gamepad axes?

You can say "almost any other pad" has it until you're blue in the face, but if no one uses it, what's the point?

Again, explain why you'd want to bind a left hand controller analog stick to a mouse axis, when you already have a mouse on your right hand. It's like playing a game with 2 gaming mice ... one in each hand.

[CABRONAZO]

Which axes are you talking about? Are you referring to mouse axes or gamepad axes?

You can say "almost any other pad" has it until you're blue in the face, but if no one uses it, what's the point?

Again, explain why you'd want to bind a left hand controller analog stick to a mouse axis, when you already have a mouse on your right hand. It's like playing a game with 2 gaming mice ... one in each hand.


I don't know the difference between both type of axes, I'd just would like the stick to behave as a truly analog stick.

[awspeed]

Which axes are you talking about? Are you referring to mouse axes or gamepad axes?

You can say "almost any other pad" has it until you're blue in the face, but if no one uses it, what's the point?

Again, explain why you'd want to bind a left hand controller analog stick to a mouse axis, when you already have a mouse on your right hand. It's like playing a game with 2 gaming mice ... one in each hand.



I could use it for sooo many other axis settings its not funny. Like I'ld love to use it as the throttle in BF2 for flying. With button presses you have no variable control, its either on or off. I could go on but you get the idea ..right?

[Xevious]

FYI, this may help you to get the analog stick working as real stick...
http://www.g15forums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5130

[awspeed]

[QUOTE=Xevious;36973]FYI, this may help you to get the analog stick working as real stick...


This looks interesting...I'll have to give it a try.
I have been waiting, still using my old N52, to see if anyone has problems with the new G-13.
From what I've seen here it would seem that there are no insurmountable problems with the Logitech Gaming pad and... iching to replace my old, dying N52, I went ahead and purchased a G-13 last night from NewEgg.

With the N52 I always thought that the Mouse Scroll wheel would have been better off as a joystick Axis with programable banding (such as with the Saitek X-52)or as a free scrolling axis.
If the D-Pad on the G-13 was like a 2 Axis flight stick with optional Banding it could be beter used for movement as some like to do. (not me I use it to Crouch, Jump, Sprint and Walk) I could make better use of it in say Need For Speed by Making the Forward-Backward movement for a Throttle Axis and the up-Down movement for emergrency Brakes and Q-Look Behind. While of course using the mouse for steering. You just can't buy a hand held racing wheel for the PC anymore so a gamepad with a Axis would really be nice.

Anyhow my new G-13 will soon be here and I'll find out just what its capable of doing. Anything will be better than my dying N52.

[awspeed]

There's an option to display the macro being played on the screen. It doesn't show the G-key (you pressed it, so you probably know what it is)

I don't nesseccarily need to see what the Macro is. What I want to do is Name the Macro(Jump, Crouch, Sniper Rifle...) and see it displayed in the screen so the kids will be able to find the correct button on the G-13 just by pressing buttons until they find the right one.

[Xevious]

Take a look at the LCD applets in this forum. I believe someone wrote an LCD applet that shows G-key assignments.

[awspeed]

For the most part using the G-13 after using the N52 for sooo many years is just a matter of getting used to the minor differences between the two devices. That being said there are some things that I will have to have to meet the ability of the n52 or I will never really WANT to unplug my n-52.

From what I've read on the forums using Lua scripting can make it possible to program any button with the ability to change modes as the M-keys now do. Though Lua Scripting at this time apparently doesn't yet work on the G-13 correctly. I've read that a future patch will correct this or even simply add the function.
The N-52 has 4 different states, null, red, green and blue, giving the device 27 diffferent button presses per state or a total of 108 different programed button presses/macros. I do NOT want to use the Keyboard to play a game. if I have to move my view from the screen to the keyboard to find a key chances are I will find myself respwaning. The whole idea of the gamepad is to remove the need to use the keyboard and place the keys on the gamepad so that the location becomes memorized and basically the same in all the different profiles.
Now I know I'm harping on this but I find myself wondering if the Engineer who designed the M-keys for the logitech only ever plays RPGs or point and click games. For this the M-keys may work great but for a game like Operation Flashpoint you need to be able to, on the fly, control your own weapons and movements and weapons and movements of your entire squad. This takes a lot of buttons. The buttons ARE available on the G-13 but I simply can't afford the time to move my hand off the controls to press an M-Key. Then of course you have to stop and press it again to get back.
If the option of changing the M State is programable to any key with the abilty to set it as momentary or held you can easily program all your normal WSAD moments to each state only changing the other buttons to add more functionality to the player. On the n-52 I use the left 3 buttons and my pinky to momentarily change states. Maybe someone could point me to a place where I could learn to write the Lua script to make this work? I've heard it has been done for the G-15.
Enough said.


Ok I have to ask it...why build a D-Pad that looks and feels like a joystick? I've read that a future hardware update might make it an actual axis?...That would be great! Please add the option for banding as well. Oh and make it lower with a larger Mushroom head. Opps... I just described a larger version of the PSP mouse nubbin with the addition of programing. Maybe that would actually work....?

The LCD is every thing I wanted and all by itself guarantees that I will be switching to the G-13 as the Primary gamepad for the kids. They love the fact that they can now find the button they want on the pad just by pressing the keys till they see what they want on the LCD.
Excellent!

Some say the large number of buttons on the G-13 cause some buttons to be hard to reach but I say GOOD! I can use these buttons for commands that I would not want to accidentally hit. Where as I used to hide those commands under a different state.

And did I say how ####ed good looking the G-13 is?
Sitting here comparing it to the n52te USB powered blue Paperweight I really feel I got my eighty bucks worth.

Well all in all for you people looking for the replacement to the n52... look no further as the G-13 is well on its way to being (easily) the best choice.

[TeeJayMule]

Hello all,

I currently have an n52 which I use for a lot of different types of programs. These include games, programming, 3D modeling, browsing, etc.

I am currently building a profiling application using a combination of C# (for GUI & eventually direct input hooking) and AutoHotKey (for HotKey emulation).

The program currently allows me to intecept keys from most input devices (n52, mouse, keyboard) and then assign a hotkey or macro to them. Since the primary app is built in AHK it can do a lot more that just simulate hotkeys and macros as any AHK user well knows.

Anyway, one of the things the n52 allows is the running of a profile directly which means I can use AHK to "run" the profile from the profiles folder activating it without having to open the n52 profile manager.

Now it seems that there is some instability problems that I won't go into here with the LM_nost.exe driver that is causing some very irregular intermittent problems.

For this reason and for other driver and support issues I have had with the n52 & the previously mentioned backwards step the n52te is (by awspeed) I have been seriously looking at going to the G13 since it seems to have many of the pluses the n52 has.

So to cut this long story short, is there a way to call the g13's profiles directly. That is, can I go to where the profiles are stored and open/load them directly?

Sorry for the long spiel but I though I would explain why I am asking the question to alleviate confusion. :)

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer ;)

Btw, thanks awspeed, your posts and comparison of n52 & g13 have been very helpful. :cool:

[awspeed]

Well, its been quite awhile since I started using the G-13 and I'll have to say that it is a whole lot better than the n52te but I still have to use my n52 to play many of my games.

The extra keys on the G-13 make up...mostly, for the inability to use the different modes that the device has. Now I know what you will say. You CAN use the other modes! Well, not easily enought to make high speed mode changes ingame....if I try I will most likely end up dead. And for you that will say most 1st person games don't need that many buttons to play, try playing Operation Flashpoint. The whole point of a seperate game controller in my opinion is so you can place ALL the games controls on the pad and never have to lift your hand from the controller to play.

Ok, so Logitech says that a fix will be added to make mode selection work like I want it to in the next software update. (Someday Soon.......) Until then I have to keep my n52 hooked up to play any game that I can't get all of the buttons on, on the G-13.

Now, I'm told that there is a work around for my problem through the use of Lua Scripting....Opps, Lua dosen't work correctly with the current software.

Well, here we go again...Belkin promised a fix for the shoddy software on the n52te and here we are over a year later and...nothing. But they did point out that the D-Pad is just simply broken. Great! It looks like I will never get to use the n52te I bought. And I can't afford the USB port to use it as a pretty Blue Glowing paperweight. There's good money down the toilet! I'm just tired of paying $80.00 for a device that doesn't work out of the box.

Now Belkin...I've given up on, Logitech...well they still have my faith for now as they have a huge number of Gaming boards and I believe they want the G-13 to go. What's hard is waiting for the update to come down the pipe. It could be here tomorrow or next year or as with Belkin, maybe never.

Now that I have gotten all the negetivity against the new conntrollers out of my system,(mostly) lets look at the good stuff.

The LCD on the G-13 is downright wonderful! The kids(with the n52) used to use the controller and the keyboard as they didn't want to take the time to figure out where the button they needed ingame was on the controller. With the G-13 they simply press any button their not sure of and read the output on the LCD screen. Watching them play now, they never go for keys on the keyboard anymore and they say their scores are getting better and better as they become accustomed to using it.

The keys took a little getting used to but the ones that are hard to reach just supply me with a place for buttons that I wouldn't want to accidentally hit when in the blured furry of button smashing while trying not to die online. I really like the feel of the keys.

The software is Ok and I've had little problem getting the Macro's to do what I want, but I don't like the way profiles are saved. That could be made better. So far I've built my profiles by copy/pasting them from my n52 software....Button by Button. Oh and with the n52 software I could build a Master and Master Clear Profile that I could use as a starting point for all my new profiles. This is a little harder with the G-13 software but can still be done...if your tricky. Just use any .exe you wouldn't use the G-13 for then save a profile that includes all the usual keybindings you want then Export/Import the profile therefore making another profile of the same name with the added 2. Change the name of the profile and the location of the new game .exe and there you go. Yeah RIGHT ! Please make it so you don't have to use a .exe to save a profile!

There's one other problem that I have...I just don't know if it's a problem or just built that way. The compass points on the joystick are a little out of parallel with the rest of the keyboard. In other words twisted counter clockwise by 5 or 10 degrees. This causes me to generally hit two commands rather than one unless I constantly remind myself. Without the Joystick being a true AXIS, I see no point in not just using a simple D-Pad instead. And OMG pressing that sucker is a god awful balancing act. If the Joystick is not normal in this twisted position please let me know as it would be worth it to get one that isn't. I think I will add a picture of it later when I have my camera.

All in all I think the G-13 is the best alternative out there but some might like the Saitek or even the new n52te better. I guess it depends on what you get used to and what you want out of a controller. I'll stick to the G-13 and hope the years just see it becoming better and better. Listen up Logitech!!! Don't make the mistake of ruining your controller the way Belkin did by trying to be cool. The bells and whistles are nice but without good roots(software) you can quickly turn what was my favorite Game Pad into a peice of dung. Then where would I be....there aren't that many choices in this niche of the market.

[awspeed]

Ok, If I got it straight your wanting to program a key that would cause the G-13 to load a different profile, whether that key be on the G-13 or the mouse ect... That is something I hadn't thought of.... I'm pretty sure Lua scripting could be used for that purpose but I havn't wasted my time learning to script yet due to Lua scripting not yet working properly on the G-13. I'm fairly certain it could be done, you just need to ask on a thread that isn't so dead. I had not expected to see any new posts here and just came in today to add an ending to it from my point of view. This thread was mostly just a personal comparison between the n52 and the G-13. Look through the threads...I'm sure I've heard of someone else doing something of this sort. Don't expect too much in the way of answers here.

[awspeed]

Alright, I installed the newest patch and have finally been given the power to switch modes with the G keys. Its not perfect as I still have to use script to Momentarily change modes but this will work. My only problem is that I have to hold the G(Mode Change) key until any Multi-key Macro is finished running or the macro will be cut short. If I am walking or flying, say in BF2 and use a macro on a different mode, any macro I am currently using stops. So, I'm flying a plane, pressing W(forward) and use the View change on the mode 2 layer. When I release the G-key(mode change) for the view change, I have to release the W-Key and re-press it even if I have the W-Key in the same location on both modes. If I don't, I fall out of the sky.
So what I'm looking for here is a way for macros using the same key in both modes to continue without pause when changing modes. Now, this is the standard with the belkin n52. Once a macro is started, it continues until finished or stopped by me. This means that if W(forward) is on the same key on all modes that I never stop moving forward so long as I continue to press the W Key, no matter how many mode changes I make.
Maybe there is a way to do this also through scripting? The problem is, I have never used scripting and therefore don't know the possibilities. I simply lucked up finding a way to momentarily mode change by looking on the internet. If anyone has a script for this please kick me to get my attention...I won't mind as I NEED it. Not the kick ... the script.

Ok, with the new patch and the possibilities through script, I suppose I will have to finally give the Logitech G-13 the full Thumbs Up as the best replacement for the Nostromo N-52!

GO LOGITECH!!!

[awspeed]

It's been a long time since my orignal post here and I think I should put a finishing touch on this thread.

When I first bought the G-13 it lacked some of the things the N-52 could do.

Without writing a book here which is a problem I seem to have when trying to express myself,

The G-13 with the newest driver (3.04) will do everything the N-52 will do and more. If your thinking about which to get then go no futher as the G-13 is an excellent choice where as the N-52 is dead to me.

Kudos to Logitech

P.S. as of this date the 3.04s are a little buggy but knowing Logitech they will address the problems quickly.