Anyone play Roguelikes with a gamepad?

[Legend]

First, I know it sounds like a silly idea, but it does work.

Just curious if anyone else had ever tried this. I use the program xpadder and map the keys to a logitech dual action gamepad. It works really great for  Doomrl. I map all orthogonal movement to the d-pad and the diagonal movements to the left analog stick so that way I don't accidentally go up or to the side when I want to go diagonal.

I haven't tried more sophisticated games like nethack or Angband with it yet though. But it works nicely with doomrl, Berzerkrl, Frozen Depths, and Rogue.

The Alpha grip controller looks ideal for roguelikes, but it's around $100 and not available again till Feb.

[Z]

Are you a laptop user? I guess that if your computer does not have a full keypoard and the roguelike does not require you to often use lots of non-directional keys, then a gamepad indeed should be better than other options (playing on the laptop keyboard itself or attaching a full/numerical keyboard).

What do you do if the game requires you to use a non-directional key? I guess you can also map the most frequent ones to the gamepad (like fire in DoomRL), but what about other keys?

[Legend]

Are you a laptop user? I guess that if your computer does not have a full keypoard and the roguelike does not require you to often use lots of non-directional keys, then a gamepad indeed should be better than other options (playing on the laptop keyboard itself or attaching a full/numerical keyboard).

Yeah, I'm using a laptop. The lack of numerical pad is the main reason I tried looking into using a gamepad.

What do you do if the game requires you to use a non-directional key? I guess you can also map the most frequent ones to the gamepad (like fire in DoomRL), but what about other keys?

I map all the keys needed to the gamepad with xpadder. a logitech dual action gamepad gives 12 buttons total and each direction of the analog sticks can be set to a different key. You can also set a specific button to switch between different key maps. so in the first key map, button 1 could be used to pick up items. Then I could press the button to switch key maps, and button 1 will do something else. Then switch back. I usually use the two left shoulder buttons as the "shift" key and a button to switch key mappings.

I don't bother with every single key, but the majority of them.

Using a gamepad is very comfortable and I prefer it to keyboard now. It's also fun when using a gamepad and hooking up my laptop to my tv o play on a bigger screen. like playing a Rogue on a game console. The only tricky part is trying to remember which keys are mapped to which button at first but eventually it gets memorized.

xpadder is a free program that lets you emulate keyboard and mouse to a gamepad in case that wasn't clear before.