Chopping up keyboards

[whisper979]

So, I will soon be modifying a couple of keyboards to go in a spaceship simulator that I am building for my son. I have moved all of the customizable buttons to a usb number pad. This is where all thrusters and whatnot will go. What I would like some input on is; what keys do I absolutely have to leave in place on the keyboard? Obviously, I will need F1-F8, Ctrl, Shift(do I need both left and right?), Enter, etc...Apparently, there are things to do in the Pioneer, like scooping and mining, that I haven't even begun to get into(I have mostly explored so far). I would like to remove as many keys as possible to make room for other switches and things. What keys do I absolutely need to keep? Yes, I understand that the game is in alpha and that keys could change. This is a risk that I am willing to except. Or I may stick with one alpha version for the life of the simulator.Thanks!

[robn]

Long-term everything will be rebindable as you please.

[whisper979]

Everything!!! That would be perfect! I am trying to make the keyboard not look like a keyboard. I would love to use this: something like it but I hate to invest the time/money if it doesn't work.

[Subzeroplainzero]

You're the coolest dad ever! Will it have a joystic too? I've been playing a bit on a 360 pad and it works a charm. There's some nice stuff you can do with XPadder too, a program that lets you bind joypad and joystick controls to do pretty much anything.It would be really cool if you could get in a small space and block out the outside world. I used to throw my bed covers over me, my tv and my cd32 and pretend I was in a tight cockpit when playing Frontier and Subwar 2050. Those were the days............

[whisper979]

I am trying to buy an enclosed trailer to put it in. Yes, it will have a joystick!*edited for spelling

[OzFalcon]

You could use an iPac arcade interface. I bought a few for some arcade machines.There is also an iPac-4 which has 56 inputs. Compatible with WIndows, Linux and Mac.(All inputs can be re-mapped. And the default mapping is compatible to Mame)http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.htmlAnd if you wanted to really go all the way you could setup two (or more!) ANALOG arcade sticks.http://www.ultimarc.com/ultrastik_info.htmlOr even a trackball!http://www.ultimarc.com/trackball.html(I have no association with http://www.ultimarc.com other than being a happy customer).

[fluffyfreak]

Subzeroplainzero wrote:
I used to throw my bed covers over me, my tv and my cd32 and pretend I was in a tight cockpit when playing Frontier and Subwar 2050. Those were the days............
Last week is not an appropriately old enough timeframe to say: "Those were the days"

[whisper979]

If every function could be remapped then I would be all for this. But, for now, only a few functions can be remapped. Related to this, does anyone know of a safe way to completely disable the cockpit. It is redundant to have a cockpit displayed on my monitor when I am sitting in a cockpit. I was thinking about taking the picture file of the current cockpit and just replacing it with a clear cockpit using gimp. I have already made my own custom buttons for F1-F8 anyways.I am going to look at an enclosed trailer this evening that a friend of mine is selling. If I decide to buy it then I could begin construction within a month or so. I will put everything up on my blog when I start so those interested can check it out.