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invert mouse in Beyond Good & Evil

Wed, 01 Jan 2003 [comments (12)] [history] [rdf] [raw]

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If you like Beyond Good & Evil, you might also like my writeup and the soundtrack.

Problem

I recently played the game Beyond Good & Evil, and I loved every minute of it. However, it has a bug that prevents inverting the mouse input, in both "look" and "camera" modes.

I'm very used to inverting the mouse in games, so I looked for a fix. Anything that can invert mouse input on the y axis, and works with DirectInput would work. After a lot of work, including posts to many forums, and even a Google Answers question, I found a few solutions.

Solutions

Moritz Franckenstein has written a shareware mouse driver that inverts the y axis. Thanks, Moritz!

Otherwise, if you have Logitech MouseWare, and you're comfortable editing the registry, try Ashley Ings' instructions, originally posted on the Logitech forums. It works with both Logitech and non-Logitech mice.

Background

Before Moritz contacted me, I'd done a fair amount of research on this. When I got to the point where I needed to write a Windows device driver, I called it quits. That was a too much of a time investment, even for me. :P

I knew I needed either a setting or registry entry in Windows XP (or DirectX) that controls mouse orientation per-axis, or a program that runs in the background and inverts the mouse input (per-axis).

I first looked through the windows mouse control panel, the registry, etc., and didn't found anything.

I tried installing Logitech's MouseWare and Advanced Settings Utility, which lets you change the mouse's orientation, and has effect in DirectInput-based apps (close!), but doesn't let you change it per-axis. I also tried Kensington MouseWorks, but I don't have a Kensington mouse, so I couldn't use it.

I tried a number of utilities that let you drive the mouse pointer with a joystick, and can control the orientation of each axis independently...but the ones I tried don't have any effect when you use the mouse itself.

Finally, I wrote a script for AutoHotKey, a pretty sophisticated program that lets you script and remap mouse, keyboard, and joystick input. It inverts the mouse per-axis successfully, but doesn't affect DirectInput apps.

See also:

comment bubble OpenID Guest, Fri 23 Jun 2006

Well, I finally got Beyond Good and Evil and just installed it this morning to find I hate the uninverted Y-axis. Then when I inverted it in-game, as you know, the X-axis also becomes inverted...

In other words, it's what… almost 2 years later and, through the magic of the web, I see that you and others have had the same problem when the game first came out. I sent an email to Moritz and hopefully he still has that little mouse driver lying around somewhere. The logitech forum thing by Ashley Ing no longer exists, afaict. And, of course, logitech and autohotkey and other sorts of drivers and utilities have been updated since you wrote this… So I guess I will spend my morning downloading it all and seeing if the newer versions can invert the Y-axis… bleh. :)

- Mark

comment bubble OpenID Guest, Fri 23 Jun 2006

Oh! oh!

I just found the google cache of the Ashley Ings post on the Logitech forums.

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:lmAn3VASV3wJ:forums.logitech.com/pe/forums/displaypost.jsp%3FpostID%3D10125316+%22Ashley+Ings%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=6

- Mark

comment bubble OpenID ryan, Fri 23 Jun 2006

thanks! i'll mirror it here in case google ever forgets it.

Re: setting orientation on each axis independently? Posted Nov 26, 2004 by Ashley Ings I've managed to set the orientation for the up/down axis.

Once you've installed MouseWare and configure you mouse, go into the registry.

Now depending on what kind of mouse you have cordless or hard wired you should have and entry under: Under hkey_local_machinesystemCurrentControlSetServiceL8042pr2Parameters I have installed a cordless mouse so the next key is CordlessOptical20000

Under this key there is an entry that set what kind of mouse you have called: DeviceModel. If you set this to TrackMan4 and start up the mouse configuration ,from the control panel or the SystemTray (right on the taskbar) you will see a new tab called 'Orientation'. With this you can reverse the Y axis by dragging in the direction you desire. So to give you the complete reg entry for my installtion of a cordless optical mouse it was:

There will be a similar one explaining your DeviceModel if you use the MouseWare install:

hkey_local_machinesystemCurrentControlSetServiceL8042pr2ParametersCordlessOptical20000DeviceModel

Hope it helps - Ashley 26th Nov 2004

comment bubble OpenID maf-soft, Tue 14 Aug 2007

You can find my axis inverting and rotating mouse filter driver now here: http://www.maf-soft.de/mafmouse/
(Maybe you can add the link to your text...)

comment bubble OpenID Maffu, Wed 15 Aug 2007

You say that the driver from Maf-soft is freeware - it isn't.
According to the readme it's a trial version which "automatically deactivates after a random amount of time after each machine restart".
What is the point of installing that if it's going to just stop working without warning?
I'd say that this is an unsolved problem...

comment bubble OpenID ryan, Wed 15 Aug 2007

thanks for the clarification. you're right, it is shareware, not freeware. it still seems like a perfectly good solution to the problem, though, even if it's not free.

comment bubble OpenID joker, Sat 18 Aug 2007

...Waow, very nice Work!

comment bubble OpenID maf-soft, Fri 31 Aug 2007

@maffu: Of course not your mouse will stop working, but the driver will stop inverting the y-axis. This way you can test the driver under real conditions before you buy. The registration fee is as low as US$10, currently.

comment bubble OpenID doane, Sun 24 Aug 2008

I have a MX310 optical mouse.
In the registry under the HKEY_Local_Machine folder and the CurrentControlSet-Services- L8042PR2 folder, you said above you can change the "DeviceModel" to "trackman4." in order to enable the oriention tabl. I looked and found no keys for "DeviceModel" in that folders.

I did find OpticalMouse14 (MX310) entries under HKEY_Local_Machine folder and the CurrentControlSet-Services-LMouFlt2 folder.. also under the system and users folders with keys for "orientation" in order to enter the degrees of rotation, but again, no entry that I can see to turn the orientraion tab on in the software.. I know there's got to be some way to do this.. how do I get the orientation tab to show up for the MX310 mouse?

Any help would be appreciated,
Doane

comment bubble OpenID doane, Sun 31 Aug 2008

OK, I got this to work by attaching the mouse with a USB to PS2 adapter and then had the registry entries available to change.
When configured as a "trackman4" it does an install at boot up and thinks it's a track ball. You have the orientation tab options, but loose the use of some of the programmable buttons.

Warning!! If you try to change it back to "opticalmouse14" in the registry it will hose your computer, couldn't boot, had to safe boot and do a restore, then had no mouse use at all. Had to reinstall the mouseware over the old install to get the mouse to work again. Several hours of work getting things back to normal, so I would say, Do Not Do This Registry Trick!
Use your video card rotate only and or get a track ball or tablet that you can rotate instead.

comment bubble OpenID zetto23, Sun 14 Dec 2008

http://www.download.com/SakasaMouse/3000-2056_4-10553398.html

"SakasaMouse is a freeware to reverse direction of mouse cursor movement in x-axis and/or y-axis."

easy to use. works perfectly with 3d games. banzai! :)

comment bubble OpenID Uplasenko, Mon 09 Feb 2009

_zetto23 ,YOU are the man!!!THANK YOU!!!

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