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Adaptoid Driver 2.0.1 Readme
- Installation Instructions
- Configurator
- Force Feedback Support
- Memory Pack Data Transfer
- Limitations
- Programming API
- Change Log
- Disclaimer
Plug in the Adaptoid. Run the Adaptoid201.exe setup application.
If your Adaptoid doesn't seem to work properly, try double clicking on the controller icon in the tray to launch the Configurator and select the menu item FILE | CHECK DEVICES. If the devices show up with big red X's over any of the 4 controller pictures, you need to either reboot or do FILE | REINSTALL DRIVERS or both. If that still doesn't work, try uninstalling the drivers, reinstalling them, and then rebooting.
The driver can be uninstalled via the control panel add/remove programs icon.
The Adaptoid configurator allows you to set up configurations for the Keymapper, which allows the N64 controller to produce keypresses, mouse clicks or mouse movements in addition to the normal joystick button presses and stick movements.
Using the configurator you can assign whichever keyboard keys you like to the controller's buttons. These can be single keys like "A" or "ESCAPE", or can be key combinations such as "ALT-B" or "CTRL-SHIFT-F5". In addition to assigning keys, the configurator will allow you to assign mouse clicks to a controller button so that pressing the button has the same effect as clicking the mouse.
For the analog stick on the N64 controller, the configurator has a variety of settings you can apply. You can set the sensitivity, flip the Y axis, tweak the range to reach the inaccessable corner positions. You can cause analog stick movement to either move the joystick or move the mouse pointer. There is even a special "smoothing" adjustment to improve accuracy when using the controller as a mouse.
To use the analog stick as a mouse in FPS style games, you need to use a special "relative" mouse mode which moves the mouse continuously at a speed which corresponds to the stick deflection. A few sample scripts have been provided which generate this "relative" mouse movement. You can use these sample scripts as a base and tweak the button actions to your liking. You will probably want to "clone" the scripts first so you are modifying a copy. Use the FILE | CLONE menu item to do this.
If you have multiple Adaptoids, different settings can be applied to each device, and they can all be used simultaneously. That means you can assign different keyboard keys to each controller and use them multiplayer.
Configurations are stored in "script" files, and you can create as many different configurations as you'd like. You can assign a different configuration to each controller, or you can assign one configuration to mutiple controllers. You can assign a script file to a particular game and have it activate when the game is started, or you can use the configurator to launch the game for you.
The configurator places a small controller icon on in the tray on the taskbar. This icon shows the status of the keymapper by changing colors depending on what is going on. It shows different colors when no Adaptoids are plugged in, when it has activated a configuration for a game, or when it is sitting idle waiting for a game to start. This icon can be double clicked at any time to bring up the configurator.
For the programmer types out there, the keymapper has a lot to offer. This
is due to the fact that the "scripts" are very similar to C source files,
and can be customized to produce an infinite variety of effects. Setting
buttons as shift buttons, range zooming, or key sequencing are all possible,
as well as many other things that we haven't even thought of yet. Take a look
at the sample scripts or scripts you automatically create through the "edit script" dialog.
To enable force feedback in a DirectX game which offers it, just plug a rumble pack into
your N64 controller before starting the game. The Adaptoid force feedback driver should
be detected automatically by the game. Some games may require that force feedback be
enabled via a menu item in the game, or require you to enable or set up a joy
stick using
a configuration menu in the game.
Since force feedback commands used by DirectX games usually control the forces applied to
the joystick itself, the driver translates these commands into ones suitable
for a rumble
pack. The Adaptoid's rumble driver uses two methods of doing this, either rumbling when
the game calls for a steady force or rumbling when the game changes the direction of a
force. The default is a 50/50 mix of the two, but you can change this, as well as the
overall rumble strength, using the "on the fly force tuning" feature. ON-THE-FLY FORCE TUNING
A) Press the following buttons all at the same time and then release them:
Left Shoulder Button + Right Shoulder Button + Z + Start
Be careful to keep the joystick centered when you press this button combination, as
this also resets your joystick center calibration.
B) The rumble pack will start rumbling to indicate you're in "force setting"
mode.
C) Move the stick up to increase the force effects in the game, or down to decrease them.
Leave the stick in the center for the default setting. While you are doing this, therumble pack will speed up or slow down to reflect the new setting D) Press any button on the controller while holding the stick at the desired
force setting.
This will end the "force setting" mode and will return control of the rumble pack to the game in progress. E) ADVANCED: Moving the stick more to the left or right while in the "force setting" mode
will select which type of forces you want the rumble pack to respond to, with the left
side responding to changes in force direction, and the right side responding to steady
unchanging forces. Again, the center is the default setting. While you are in the "force setting" mode, the rumbling indication will be
rougher or
smoother to indicate the method mix, with rougher indicating more "direction change"
response, and smoother indicating more "steady force" response. In general, with more "direction change" response, the rumble pack tends to rumble only
when something happens in the game, while more "steady force" response causes the rumble
pack to rumble more often. But each game differs, and everyone's tastes vary, so you
just have to play with it to see what you like best. F) ADVANCED: While in the "force setting" mode, you can decrease or disable spring effects
by pressing the D-pad up for full strength, diagonal-up for 50%, right or
left for 25%,
diagonal down for 12% or down for OFF. Spring effects are usually used for steering
wheel tension in racing or flying games. Since spring effects are sometimes used to convey
collision forces, the Adaptoid simulates these types of effects with the rumble pack. If
you find it annoying that you get rumbling when you move the stick, reducing or disabling
the spring forces will usually stop it. Spring effects require force calculations whenever
the stick moves, so turning them off may improve system performance.
G) The on-the-fly force tuning is separate from the game's force feedback stregnth settings.
You may want to change the game's force feedback strength settings to control the relative
strengths of the different force feedback effects (e.g., a racing game's road effects vs.
collisions).
Memory packs are used to store data used by N64 games. The Adaptoid allows you to transfer
this data to and from your computer. This is useful for backing up this data, archiving
important game saves, sending game saves to your friends, or downloading game
saves from
the internet to help you through a tough part of a game.
The way the Adaptoid gives you access to this mempak data is by extending the file system
on your computer to include files that are on a mempak which is plugged into
a N64
controller, which is plugged into an Adaptoid, which is plugged into a USB port on your
computer.
The mempak files are located in a special Adaptoid folder which exists in your "My Computer"
folder. This folder can be opened in either an explorer window or a folder window.
The easiest way to get to the mempak files is to double click on "My Computer" then double
click on the Adaptoid icon. This will open a window which shows what files are on your Memory
Pak. You can drag these files from the Adaptoid folder onto your desktop or
into another
folder, and you can drag these files back into the Adaptoid folder at a latertime to restorethem.
To delete files from a Memory Pak, select them in the Adaptoid explorer window and press
the "Del" key to delete them. You will be prompted to confirm deletion of ea
ch file.
When you drag files out of the Adaptoid folder, they are encoded into .a64 files. This
file format is a text format which hex-encodes the binary mempak data. This text format
allows you to add notes to the file (in the a64-notes section). When you drag an .a64
file back into the Adaptoid folder, the data section in the file is parsed out and
decoded before copying it back to the Memory Pak. Any text preceding or following the
a64-data section is ignored.
You can also import other Memory Pack file formats by dragging the file into the Adaptoid
folder. Formats supported for importing are 32768 byte raw binary files, and
36928 byte.n64 dexdrive files. There is no method provided for exporting to other dataformats.
Before a brand new mempak can be used it must be formatted by a N64 console.
To do this, insert the mempak and power up a game which uses the mempak while holding down the "Start"
button. This will launch the mempak manager, and will automatically format the mempak
if it isn't already formatted. An alternative to formatting the mempak is to
copy a .n64
format (dexdrive) mempack image onto it.
This version of the driver has the following limitations in the mempack support:
A) If more that one Adaptoid is installed, the Adaptoid folder will show only
the contents of a mempak in the first Adaptoid. The first Adaptoid is the
one in the owest numbered USB port.
B) Exporting mempak data to file formats other than .a64 is not supported.
c) Sometimes when you drag a file into the Adaptoid folder, the file is opened
as a text file in an Explorer window instead of transferring it to the
memory pak. To get Explorer to stop doing this, close the window and re-open
it from the Adaptoid icon.
D) You cannot transfer game saves to or from a mempak by using a single explorer
window. You must open two windows and drag/drop between them, or drag/drop between one window and the desktop.
A SDK is available which describes how to programmatically communicate with the
Adaptoid and includes some sample programs with C source code.
This SDK can be downloaded from www.adaptoid.com/drivers/sdk_1163b.zip
Revision 2.0.1
- Stopped configurator GUI from showing at boot time
- Added option to not load keymapper at boot time
- Fixed problem with device not restarting on Win9x (after electrical interference)
- Fixed native 0xFF command in PIF API (low level API)
Revision 2.0.0
- Key Press & Mouse Move emulation moved from user mode to kernel mode so it works
in games which use DirectInput for their keyboard or mouse input.
- Multithreading and timer capabilities added to script engine to support relative mouse
movement for FPS type games.
- Integrated driver installation and uninstallation into the Configurator ins
tall.
- Fixed multiple device detection on DirectX 8
- ACPI support
- Windows XP support
Revision 1.3.175
- Adaptoid Configurator application for mapping keypresses and mouse movements.
Revision 1.2.78
- New DirectX force effects engine for rumble pack
- Added on-the-fly force tuning
- Improved support for 3rd party rumble packs by enabling rumble command retransmission
Revision 1.1.63
- New Driver Installer Application
- Added support for Windows 2000
- Added support for force feedback on multiple Adaptoids simultaneously
- Added communication timing workaround to get Arcade Shark joystick working
(controls only... no mempak or rumble pack support for this joystick)
- Fixed problem in mempak driver regarding game save name corruption when
transferring saves from hard disk to mempak that have an extension as part
of the name.
- Fixed incorrect detection of some 3rd party memory paks as rumble paks
- Added DirectInput escapes for SDK
- Enabled octagonal-rectangular mapping transformation when using rumble driver
- Fixed bug in DirectX force feedback where rumble effects were not being stopped
when they should
- Added capability to remove desktop icon & mempak driver from within Add/Remove
programs control panel (leaves rumble driver installed)
- Gave proper names to buttons for DirectX
- Added capability to rearrange the order of the controller buttons via a command
line utility program. Altered button arrangement persists until a reboot occurs.
Revision 1.0.0
The Adaptoid is a product of ZTNet, L.L.C., and is not manufactured,
distributed or endorsed by Nintendo of America Inc. N64 and Nintendo are trademarks
of Nintendo of America Inc. |
