Playing Toontown with a Gamepad or Joystick

Playing Toontown with a gamepad or joystick

Introduction

Now, you all might be wondering, why would I want to play Toontown with a gamepad or joystick? Why would I even want to use a gamepad or joystick at all? Well, the answer's fairly subjective, but the most probable reason you'd want to do so is because it's fun, and if you play Toontown on a laptop (especially machines with keyboard layouts that are tough on Toontown players, i.e. certain Compaq or Dell machines), it makes reaching for the keys much easier (and if your laptop runs pretty hot like mine, saves you the torture of playing Toontown using a hotplate). This document serves to show one how to set up the computer so that you can play Toontown with a gamepad.

Warning: This document is for the more advanced players who're looking for fresh new ways to enjoy Toontown. It involves using software and possibly hardware that might cause complications if you do not know how to handle it. If you're new to Toontown and/or know natch about Windows tweaking, I strongly recommend playing Toontown as it's meant to be played - With the keyboard and mouse.

Picking a controller

Well, you can skip this section if you already have a gamepad or joystick hooked up to your PC. But for those who don't yet have a gamepad or joystick and wish to get one, this section of the guide serves to help you pick a good gamepad.

Now, before you go out and buy a joystick, do you have a game console? Specifically, a Playstation, XBox, N64 or Gamecube? If you do, you already have a good controller for playing Toontown on. All you needs a converter box. There's plenty of converter boxes out there for converting the gamepads for the console of your choice to work with a PC, but only few are guaranteed to work properly with the software needed to "emulate" the mouse and keyboard, so choose wisely. You should choose one that'll register one-on-one presses (some converter registers a keypress on the gamepad as two key presses on the PC. Avoid those at all costs) and that's fully compatible with DirectX. I personally use a PSOne controller hooked up to a Rockfire PX-205 Playstation-to-USB converter. It's fairly affordable, fully compatible with the DirectX input layer and thus the keyboard/mouse emulator software, and supports the features of an Analog controller, including both thumb sticks and force feedback (although you won't be needing force feedback for now, since it doesn't work with the keyboard/mouse emulator).

Okay, what if I don't have a gamepad at all? What should I look for in a gamepad if I want to use it to play Toontown? Well, it depends. If you wish to do everything possible in Toontown with only the gamepad, I suggest looking for a gamepad with the following features:

• At least 9 buttons (you'll need to map F8(Shticker Book), F7(Friends List), Page Down, Page Up, Home, End, Control, Insert, and the left mouse button to them)
• A D-Pad or stick to emulate the keyboard arrow keys
• Yet another D-Pad, 4 buttons, or a hat switch to emulate the mouse

NOTE: A quick and dirty way to get away with only 8 buttons is to keep your mouse cursor on the "Pie" button during VP and use the left mouse button to simulate the Insert key.

well, it's kinda hard to find a pad with all of the above features, but not impossible. Digging around the 'net should get you what you're looking for fairly fast. Or, if you want to take the easy way out, get a Playstation 2 controller and a converter. However, as I know it, both Rockfire and XFX are among the handful of manufacturers who manufacture controller models that fulfill the complete requirements.

You'll also need to evaluate your controller port type - most laptops and some newer PCs lack the 15-pin Game/midi connector, so you'll need to get a USB gamepad/joystick for those. You could also get a USB-to-gameport/midi converter and use that with a standard gameport gamepad/joystick, or get a Playstation 2 controller and a converter box (or if you already have a console, a converter box for the gamepad of the console of your choice), since these boxes are usually USB based. Many modern gamepads or joysticks are also USB based.

Getting the software and customizing it

Okay. You've got the gamepad or joystick hooked up, maybe through a converter box. You've set up the drivers, and tested to make sure that the pad/stick is working correctly. Now you need the software. They're plenty of software out there that can accomplish this, some better than the others, some are free, some costs money. The one I use, Joystick 2 mouse, works fairly well with Toontown. You can get Joystick 2 mouse here: http://atzitznet.no-ip.org/Joy2Mouse3/ . NOTE: This guide will preliminary cover Joystick 2 Mouse, because it's the only keyboard/mouse emulator I've used so far. Anyways, download and install it, and start it up. You should now be able to control your mouse cursor with your gamepad. Happy? Well, that's just the beginning of it. Click on the profiles tab, and get customizing. Depending on your gamepad, you might be able to squish every single key and button needed to play Toontown onto the pad, or you will end up relying on both the mouse and the pad. If you're using a Playstation 2 controller hooked up to the PC via a converter box, it's safe to say that you can squish every single function onto the pad.

Once you're done with customizing the set-up, click on "Save as" and save the profile. Then switch over to the Joysticks tab and click on "change". Select the name you've given the Toontown profile, and click apply.

Fire up Toontown and test your settings, and tweak until you're fully satisfied with the settings. Then save the profile again.

NOTE: You'll need to go back to the Profiles tab, select "Open", and choose the Toontown profile every time you restart. Also note that you must exit the software before other DirectX programs can access the joystick.

Viola! You can now play Toontown with a gamepad/joystick. Have fun!