Modifiers or Combinations

[Escrypha]

Is it possible to make one's own button combinations for games? Say I'm playing an MMORPG. I'd like to customize one of the many, many abilities that such a genre typically comes with. For the sake of the example, I'd like to customize the first ability to one of buttons on the bottom + < on the D-pad (which is also a track pad?). I'd like to have the ability go off only when I press both at the same time. Would that be possible? If so, how many combinations is the controller limited to? Could I get away with 3 buttons for one ability? :o

[cammelspit]

In spirit yes, you can do something damn near identical to what you want to do. To directly answer your question about multi-button combos being able to be mapped as one action is not possible at this time. To accomplish something essentially what you want, though not exact, you are going to need to familiarize yourself with action layers. They aren't hard at all, only impossible to understand without just trying it out. At some point, you will say to yourself 'Oh, I get it! That's not hard at all.' and you will be off to the races.

There are two ways I would recommend handling you MMO issue and I have used both at some point so they each have their merits.

1. The simplest way to handle games with too many bindings is Touch menus.
   
   
   1. if you have say, 16 functions you need to map to buttons then you can simply map those all directly to one menu on the left pad.
      
   2. To maintain use of the four directions, you can map those into the menu as well and label them with arrow icons provided by Valve giving you a max of 12 total mappable keys/functions.
      
   3. if 16 is not enough, you can use radial menus, even though this is best used with the analog stick, it still provides you with quite a few more bindable buttons and it does work with the pad too.
   
   
2. Harder to understand initially how to set it up but substantially closer to what you want.
   
   
   1. First, make an action layer that changes nothing but the left pad like you want your second set of skills to be.
      
   2. Bind that action layer to one of the grips, I will use left grip in this example.
      
   3. Set this set the HOLD type of layer so it only takes effect WHILE you are holding the left grip.
      
   4. Create another action set with the third set of skills you wish to bind.
      
   5. Bind this second layer or 'third skill set' to an activator of the left grip.
      
   6. Set this activator to double press to activate.

So, as you can see, you can have almost insane thousands of mapped functions on the SC if you get super creative about it. Generally, unless you KNOW what you precisely want for each direction, a menu is a good option. This way, if you forget ever what you have bound where, you can just look at the screen. This gives you a single change to the left pad, making it a menu, and you get pretty much however many bindings you really need. The drawbacks are if your PC doesn't have a very fast CPU when using menus on a very graphically awesome game. With an MMO, most of the time this isn't going to be an issue but for those hi Hz people out there, it could degrade that 144Hz to 110Hz. Just try to remember, if you game at 60FPS, 60 is 60 and any difference in performance over that threshold to maxing out 60Hz are meaningless since you see the same number of frames. You just have to keep expectations realistic.

The other method as you might be able to tell uses the action layers ability to change only small parts of a config, in this case, the left pad, but leave everything else 100% alone. While holding the left grip, the whole left pad shifts over to be your second set. The double press was just an example but in this example, you would double press and hold the left grip and it would use the second alternate set of bindings. You could have just as easily bound this second set to the right grip. Or bind two sets to each grip for a total of four sets. You can't do three sets per button because you holding the button and the long press binding couldn't be separated. Well, there is a way but I won't get into that theory right now because it is ATM just a theory.

I know it's not quite what you wanted here but the second method should be close enough for MMO usage. Hell, you could even start getting into combining layers, activators, and menus all together to get a truly insane nested touch menus set up. I actually pride myself on having made X3: Terran Conflict fully playable with multiple nested touch menus on both pads, fully labeled, custom icons, all while being easily canceled at any time to switch right back to the default combat mode for taking and giving fire. The most sets I have ever used in one single config is 30 and that was before layers so I had to manually copy each and every binding from one to the other. God help you if you made even a small change to a config like that because you would have to hunt down any set that needed to be changed the same way. Layers REALLY cut down on those shenanigans, I mean, a LOT LOT LOT.

If you have any questions or whatever just let me know, I usually have nothing better to do.

[Escrypha]

Looks like I'll be looking up some videos on Action Layers in the near future. Thank you for that highly detailed and eloquent response. For an ultra-noob like me, it's like digesting a whole banquit after fasting, but it's still a lot of help.

Anywho, on the subject of more questions, would it be possible to do this in reverse? The grab/throw input, for example, in Xenoverse requires pressing the Ki Blast and Block buttons at the same time. If I have them mapped to Left Bumper and B respectively, would I be able to map Left Bumper and B to, say, the left trigger (when pressed only halfway down)?

Thanks again for your time!

[cammelspit]

That is even easier! All you need there is two activators.

For this example, I am going to assume for no particular reason you want to bind down on the left pad to hold LB, press B and then release all with just one single tap of the down button on the left pad.

1. When in the main binding screen for down on the emulated DPAD, hit the select button to enter the activators menu.
   
2. Bind this activator to LB.
   
3. Move the press end delay and move it up by several ticks, maybe four or five to start with, you will tweak this later.
   
4. Add a second activator by using the tabbed list at the top of the activators screen.
   
5. Make sure this activator as well is also set to regular press.
   
6. Bind this second activator to the B button.
   
7. Here is the real magic, set the START delay of this second activator one or two clicks from the bottom.
   
8. PROFIT!

See, what the first activator is doing is pressing LB but that end delay means that Steam will make that button held down for that specific amount of time. I believe the bar all the way to the right is one second. SO that handles holding the LB.

The second activator simply waits a tiny amount of time till the LB is fully pressed and the game has had time to notice it and then press the B button. Simple as that.

The only real issue you can run into here is those delays. Some games are really forgiving and don't really care, others are super picky and you will have to adjust the delays several times till you dial in something that works. Hell, some games will even work if you just hit both buttons at the same time, in that case, you don't even need activators, just double bind it to two buttons. Typically, especially with gamepad controlled games, some kind of delay is required for it to work and activators are the way to do it.

As you might be able to already see, it wouldn't take longer than maybe 30 seconds to actually put in all of this and test it. From there, it's just a matter of doing the adjustments. You kind of want to have as short a delay as the games will allow you to have in case you want to spam one or two of these commands in quick succession.

Should get you going there. Good Luck and Happy Gaming!

[Escrypha]

Thanks again, Cammelspit! I'll be sure to try that out, too!