Okay, so by “controller” I just mean a specialized mechanical keyboard. Endless Sky is a spiritual successor to the Escape Velocity games. EDIT: I also realized this pic is from before I wired it up, but the only differences are four screws in the corners and the Micro USB cord from my long-gone Nexus 10 tablet semi-permanently coming out the back.
- Gateron Black for most of the keyboard switches
- Also got momentary toggle switches and a light duty aluminum push button, because Millennium Falcon and Top Gun.
- “DSA” and “F10” profile keycaps
- laser cut (painted Masonite) and 3D printed (PLA)enclosure
- Layout built around the in-cockpit control mapping
- Hand-wired (aka “Dead Bug”) keyboard matrix
- QMK/VIAL programmable firmware on my last Promicro with a Micro-USB cable.
- Dymo-style embossing tape labels!!!
I need some more games that benefit from 30 different hotkeys. Elite gets boring after a while, but I made a website that has rows of buttons for things like FSD, cycle weapons, deploy landing gear. Would load it up on a tablet and use that for those keybinds. Few games can really benefit from stuff like that though.
Apache2 hosted webpage which was all PHP, buttons and hotkeys they run were in a JSON config, includes an option to set the button colour which matches a CSS class. So colour:red would apply class=“button red” and that class sets the border, box shadow and a gradient fill of the button to give it a slight 3d effect. PHP runs shell exec, so you could run any bash commands with it. Xdotool/ydotool allow entering key inputs from a bash command.