As I mentioned in my last post, Gelo gifted me Blazing Angels 2 via Steam for christmas. I was immensely moved and compelled to reciprocate, which I did in the form of Depths of Peril. There’s little doubt that Gelo’s choice of gift was motivated by my recent fondness for flight and space combat games and my purchase of a delicious Saitek X52 HOTAS setup.
Unfortunately, upon loading the game, it immediately became clear that Blazing Angels 2 was not about to acknowledge the existence of my joystick just like that. In the game’s control settings, a seperate column does indeed figure for setting up a joystick, but every function is unbound by default, and clicking buttons or moving along axes on my joystick does absolutely zilch – I just get a message after a while that it failed to set the function, presumably because it has no idea I was providing any input at all.
In fact it seems BA2 has quite a few issues with joysticks in general. Observe these discussions on that very topic at Ubisoft’s own forums for the game:
Unable to install patches for BA2 Secret…, and joystick won’t work
Blazing Angela wont run or update or joystick!
joystick problems blazing angels 2
But wait, help is at hand in the form of Ubisoft’s tech support site!
How Do I Configure My Joystick?
Oh wait… no it isn’t. I have to use a seperate setup program that the game has put in my start menu, except… I got the game through Steam. There is nothing in the start menu, and a thorough search of the game’s folder in the Steam directory reveals bugger all.
So this is… a flight game with broken joystick support? Great job, Ubisoft. Great job.
[UPDATE February 18] I realized the support site I’m linking to above is for Blazing Angels 1 – Ubi’s support has nothing on joystick problems in BA2. In the end, I solved the problem by uninstalling from Steam and downloading an .iso via Bit Torrent – this allowed me to actually patch the game (for some reason it was unpatched on Steam), which made it recognize my joystick input.
It’s not a very well suited game for playing with a joystick. Even in simulator mode, it seems intent on levelling the plane automatically, so to execute a long turn, you have to keep the joystick twisted in a really uncomfortable position to apply both roll and yaw while pitching up – it’s shit on the wrist, in short. Furthermore, some of its timed objectives are definitely timed for the arcade mode – it’s way slower to maneuver in simulation mode, so some of these time limits get fairly ridiculous.
I notice this post still gets a lot of hits from Google searches, so here’s a piece of advice: If you’re looking for an action flight game that’s playable with a joystick, hold out for the HAWX PC demo – from what I’ve played of the 360 demo, it seems like it’s a lot more suited for joystick than BA2. I’ll post a little review of that when I’ve tested the demo with my X52.
If you’ve already bought Blazing Angels 2 and you’re trying to get it to work with your joystick, get a hold of the retail copy and patch it. That should do the trick. Good luck!
[UPDATE April 8] Here’s my characteristically subjective and informal review of the PC version of HAWX as played with my X52 setup.
Well that sucks…
But, it should at the very least be possible to map your joystick functionality to equivalent keyboard presses!
A long time ago I used a joystick emulator for playing xwing alliance, because that game offers no keyboard/mouse support…as far as I recall, it was called “PPJoy” and it was able to emulate various older types of joystick as though they were connected through seriel and parallel ports, and it was able to accept input from a variety of devices.
I’m not sure it’ll solve your problem, and it’s definately not what you’re ought to go through to get a game up and running, but hey, it might be worth looking into if you want to mess with it till it starts working =]
I can map my stick to keyboard buttons yes, but it’s kinda shit to have an analog joystick acting like digital keyboard buttons.
I’m not sure I can be arsed looking into a joystick emulator, the problem is that Steam simply doesn’t seem to include the external joystick configuration tool.
I know that last part, and it sucks =]
It’s just a suggestion ^^
And a solid one
In the end, I may just end up playing it with the keyboard. Or not at all.
As I am aware, the BA2 isn’t worth of joystick support since it’s arcade…so go keyboard for this case.
Arcade games are enhanced by proper controllers just as much as simulations. In fact perhaps even more so, as in spite of having 32 buttons on this damn thing, I still have to use the keyboard for certain functions in eg. IL-2 Sturmovik or Freespace 2, whereas the limited commands in Blazing Angels easily fit on my controller.
In fact you can change the game from arcade to simulation mode giving it full pitch, yaw and roll control. As far as you joystick goes have seen this problem talked about a ton however I rarely see anyone advising people of the simple fix. Make sure you are making your joystick configurations in the far right column that are all “?” by default. Leave the first two columns alone and only work on the column that says “game controls”. This should solve you problems.
Hey Brian, thanks for the advice but the problem is that the options don’t even recognize that a joystick is connected. I double-click a function to bind a key, and then I click buttons or move sticks and nothing happens – after a while of waiting for an input it won’t acknowledge, it just tells me it failed to bind the control.
I’ve found a forum post that said patching to 1.01 fixed it, and he was using the same stick as I am (the X52), but unfortunately the patcher doesn’t work on the Steam version, since Steam’s supposed to keep your game updated automatically. It looks like Steam is what’s currently standing between my joystick and the game. I’ve contacted Steam’s support unit and am waiting for them to return from holidays and address my problem
In case anybody still cares, I ended up solving it by uninstalling from Steam and downloading a copy of the game from The Pirate Bay, then cracking it and patching it.
(If anybody from the anti-piracy group is reading, stress on I actually own the game through Steam, alright?)
It works now. I’m having a blast, though there are still some control problems (I really wish the game would stop trying to auto-level the plane in simulator mode! VERY annoying) but maybe I’ll post about it later.
what about steam did they respond?
Yes, the responded to tell me Ubisoft was responsible for support.
Ubisoft’s support site was down.
Updated the post with further developments in the case.
My platform is PS3 with a Thrustmaster T Flight HOTAS X joystick. I couldn’t map or configure my joystick to either BA1 or BA2. Under the games “options” menu there was no option for a joystick. I called Ubisoft tech support and was surprised to learn that neither BA1 or BA2 were designed/coded to support a joystick for the PS3. I was surprised when I saw a Saitek AV8R joystick for the PS3 advertising it was compatible with both BA1 & BA2. I purchased the joystick and the instructions which are basically non-existent said the joystick had to be set on “mode 2.” Neither BA1 or BA2 recognized the joystick. Needless to say I will be returning this joystick.
Well, it does appear Blazing Angels has been abandon by the company. In the forum offered by the makers folks gave up getting a joystick fix back in 2007. Some folks did contend they were able to get a joystick recognized, but they also admitted there were problems. I think it is safe to say playing the game with a joystick is a lost cause.