The Clear October Sky

X360 Router
david.nikdel posted in general on March 16th, 2006

So I finally found a fun project for the XBox 360 controller I bought. I just finished the main part of a program I call X360 Router, designed to allow me to use my gamepad to control World of Warcraft. Right now, the app supports selecting a primary among multiple controllers and mapping various button presses to key and mouse messages (sent only to WoW). The right shoulder button toggles the left thumbstick into mouse mode (as opposed to sending movement keys like the D-Pad). Also, the right trigger functions as a shift indicator (not to be confused with the actual keyboard key “shift”) giving dual functions to many of the keys such as ABXY and the right thumbstick (does a cameraturn rather than character turn).

Now that this part is done, my plan is to make a WoW interface mod which will act as a companion to the router application. Right now, the number of useful hotkeys is limited to six (X,Y,B and their shifted counterparts). What I’d like to do is design an interface where rather than being bound to a single buttonpress, spells are cast using button combos. I figure if I only bind to combinations of two, I’ll get 36 (6*6) usable combinations which is just enough to map the bottom three action bars (12 buttons per bar). This also lends itself to an intuitive interface. I’d like to display the ABXY pad in the upper or lower right corner and show, on top of each button, a two icons representing the spell that will be cast (or secondary menu that will be accessed) if that button is pressed (with or without shifting). The A-Button would be reserved for jump,while shift-A could be used to back out of a sub menu. I think I would also use Start to toggle on and off the regular spellbar (to switch into mouse and keyboard mode).

I’ll post again with a download link when the mod is done.