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T2 And Carmageddon, The Last Word Randy: WOOOHOOOO! Gary: Yeah, baby! Randy: ALLLLL RIIIGHHTTT! Gary: This kicks BUTT!!!! Randy: Don't call me baby again…Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Gary: Think we should clue the readers in as to why we are so happy? Randy: Oh yes, my crunchy on the outside but chewy on the inside little buddy. We shall tell the people, and there shall be much rejoicing. Gary: Drum roll, please… Randy: Thanks to the hard work of some of our readers out there in game land, the Thrustmaster T2 Steering Wheel and Pedal set DOES work with Carmageddon II! Hell, it even works with Carmageddon I. Gary: That's right folks, you heard correctly. The T2 and Carmageddon are compatible! Randy: We are happy to say that even though our own personal efforts failed to set up the T2 with Carmageddon, the evil and twisted minds of the world made it work anyway. Gary: So we want to give a shout out to three readers who really worked long and hard to devise a Stroke Set that would work with everyone's urban driving sim. And as an extra special treat, we have some cheats to get you through those tough missions at the end of each level. Randy: A driving sim? Dude, please tell me you don't drive like that in real life. Gary: I do now! Randy: Yikes! But I could see how you could get carried away. Driving Carmageddon II with the wheel and pedal is incredibly realistic. The T2 has just enough tension to give you the feeling of really cranking those tires around. Gary: And the pedals make it so much easier to maintain a constant speed, without cramping up your hand from repeatedly tapping the "8" key. Randy: Besides the completely crappy and altogether vague documentation that came with the T2 Wheel, my only real complaint with the T2/Carmageddon combo is that I wish there were more buttons on the T2 dashboard. Two just isn't enough. We currently have it set up so that the top dash button is your repair button and the bottom is the recover button. However it would be great if there were two or three more for functions like the map (Tab key) , camera (c key) and enter keys. Right now we have the keyboard lying over the top of the dashboard so we can use those functions. Gary: True enough. We were able to set the two-way shifter to become the handbrake (Spacebar) when you pull back and the peel out function (z key) when you push it forward. This makes it perfect for taking sharp corners and pulling back on the handbrake to slide around. Randy: Since Carmageddon's cars are all automatic shifters it was a perfect setup. However I could see that in games that support shifting, like the ever-tasty NASCAR Racing, you could run out of buttons real fast. Gary: But let's get to the important stuff. How and who made it work, and how to cheat your butt off in Carmageddon II! Randy: First off thanks to all the readers who wrote in after we ran the first Carmageddon II story. To date it has gotten more response than any other column we have run. Gary: And special thanks to John Mark Davis, Mark Heinze and most of all to Emir Quandus. It was through these letters that the mystery of how to set up the T2 for Carmageddon was revealed. Randy: The problem was not really that difficult when we look back on it. If ThrustMaster had written some decent instructions for the T2 we probably could have figured this out for ourselves. But then again, we are Idiots. Gary: Emir Quandus was actually the first to write us with the news that he had gotten the T2 working. He was even kind enough to include the stroke set he had created. However, we tried to load it up on our machines and we could get no response from the pedal or wheel. Randy: Next we received a quick note from Mark Heinze informing us that he had created a rather interesting setup using the T2's wheel and his Gravis Firebird joystick.
Gary: So we knew there was a way this had to work. Despite the fact that David Bradcliffe from SCi himself had told us that the T2 was not supported, people out there were getting this thing to work, at least partially. Randy: Next we received a letter from John Mark Davis who had put together a very professionally done Strokes Set package. He had included lots of instructions and detailed info about his experiences with oddities in the Thrustware software that controls the T2. Gary: What finally tipped us off to the answer was the way John had created his setup. He had made a Default Strokes Set for each game, Carmageddon I and II. This meant that instead of creating a new set and naming it after the application, he had just been dragging in these Default Stroke Set and overwriting the original Default Stroke Set. The trouble with this work around is that because the Stroke Sets were all named Default Stroke Set instead of the application name, it did not allow the Stroke Set to load with the proper game. This forced the user to restart each time they changed the Default Stroke Set. Randy: We discovered that the Stroke Set must be named exactly the same name as the game it is controlling to load properly. This was why we had had no luck with Emir Quandus' Stroke Set originally. Because we hadn't set it up to load with the right name. This info came once again from Emir Quandus who had written a much more detailed letter to the good people over at XLR8 your Mac that detailed exactly how to configure the T2 and how to set up Carmageddon to understand the mouse input for left and right. Rather than print the entire letter here, and since XLR8 Your Mac unfortunately no longer has this letter posted we have the text of his letter here as a downloadable file. It is essential reading for all T2 Mac owners. It tells you far more about the T2 than the skimpy one page manual that comes with the wheel. Gary: When you look at the Carmageddon II control setup screen you see the joystick/ mouse controls are grayed out, leading you to believe that the options are not available. However you need to click with your mouse on the keyboard controls for left and right until they highlight and either use your mouse and drag left and right until the control reads "Joy L" and "Joy R" for your left and right options, or just pull the wheel left and right to reset the left and right input controls. You might have some crazy cursor response after you set these controls. Just give the wheel a wiggle and the cursor should respond to the mouse properly again. Randy: Also another big problem we noted about the rather outdated Thrustware software driver for the T2. There are big conflicts with AppleVision software. We had to enable the Thustware extension and reset out monitors to 640 x480 and then restart our machines before we played Carmageddon. If we did not do this we often found that the wheel did not respond at all. Gary: Right now this column is late because my desktop does not like the Thrustware extension at all, and is refusing to boot at all unless I disable extensions. So use this software with caution, and at your own risk. While this is a pain in the butt we were able to get the wheel and pedals to respond to Carmageddon II great. In fact thanks to all the configuration info we learned form our readers we have gotten the T2 setup to work with every game we have tried it with, even PlayStation games using Virtual GameStation. While the Thrustware software is horrible clunky and under documented it does do what it is supposed to do. Here is a downloadable file of our Stroke Set. We used Emir's instructions to make it and we modified it to our preferences. We make no claims that will work for everybody, so read Emir's letter too, to really understand how this works. Randy: So thanks to all the hard work the readers put into make this solution possible. We are loving the T2 and Carmageddon II. If you can lay your hands on a T2 setup, we recommend you get it. It brings driving games to a whole new level of fun. And until USB wheels are available the T2 is the only Mac wheel around. Gary: Hmmmm? It seemed like we were going to talk about something else… Randy: Oh yeah. What was it…? Gary: Just kidding, everybody. Here are the cheats as promised. For all you gamers who just can't stand the missions in Carmageddon II, use these codes by just typing them in mid-game. Some of them will accidentally disable sound or other features if they contain a key that is also a game control. Just wait a second or two until the cheat feature kicks in and then just hit the "s" key to restore the sound or whatever feature you disabled. Randy: Here you go and enjoy. While we have tested them we make no guarantees that they will work for everyone. Good luck and good gaming! BIGDANGLE - Earn the big mace. (That last one's just a joke, folks.) |