The answer will of course vary from game to game, but perhaps at least in some games it's a relatively simple matter. Recently I have played Blood Rayne: a TPP action game, in which the heroine moves at much greater speed than in most titles in the genre. The game features a slider for turning sensitivity which seems to address the issue, but: the way of surviving boss fights is to always be behind the back of the opponent, which lead me to cheesing and changing that setting for a couple encounters specifically.

I have also just finished Mirror's Edge - one of the best games I played in my life - and, while it is not a player controllable setting, playing with a gamepad emphasises the problem of this input type: aiming is hard unless look sensitivity is really low (in large part due to the deadzone and stiffness), but you need a relatively high sensitivity to be able to turn towards your enemy - in that game, being flanked means you are often dead before you complete a 90 degree turn and react.

Which lead me to an observation: why not dedicate a button to 'high/low sensitivity' which, when held, switches to a different sensitivity setting for look input? At the very least, this should be doable on the driver level (perhaps even easier), but it would be quite a hack.

Just get a gaming mouse with multiple configurable sensitivity profiles and use the button to switch between them whenever you want? Seems like the easiest solution.

Assuming you're going slow motion all the time in those boss fights?

It is quite difficult when you don't, especially when you're being shot at by a gatling gun, and enemies turn around quickly where you HAVE to use the slow motion.


On the other hand BloodRayne 2 you have a limited meter you can build/use for special moves or for speed. Though my big gripe on that game was a lot of 'puzzles' involve throwing minions into fans/furnaces/pools/spikes/bombs or other things to progress... Gets a little too samey...

It should be super simple and in games with a console you could do it with a script like quake,source or unreal engine.

Cheap mice have had basic setup and macros for a few years now although they are still pretty basic. Macros only track button presses and not mouse movements for example but most of them have what you are asking for where you can set a button to switch from high/low or low/high when you hold or release it. Usually called it a sniper button. because mice makers and half the businesses making these items are fucking retarded. They follow the same tired old mouse shape and rainbow lights. Look at the button positions for switching up and down the sensitivity on most mice. Usually they are out of the way so you have to take your grip off the mouse to press them properly unless you can bend your fingers in strange directions.

Dosbox? Quite easy. Other things? It gets complicated.

There are different levels on which one can mod controls:
* Game level: If the game has freely rebindable controls, this is trivial; other times, you might be able to find an easily editable text file that specifies the controls. If not, this probably requires editing the executable, which typically involves running the game in a debugger, which is quite difficult, in order to edit the code. (If source code is available, this gets much easier, but this is not usually the case.) In some cases, editing the game's code can trip copy protection/DRM or anti-cheat measures.
* OS level: Sometimes there may be a way to re-map controls in the OS. For example, Linux has tools like xmodmap. This has even appeared on game consoles; the Nintendo Switch even has a way to remap controls at the OS level, and is probably the only feasible approach here if the game isn't specifically coded to have input remapping. The ability of some emulators (such as DOSBox) to remap the controls is similar, but only works if the game runs in an emulator.
* Running software to fake input: This allows you to do things like macros, as well as things like turning gamepad input into keyboard input. It works well enough to play games like Guacamelee!, for example. Apparently, however, some games may be able to detect that the input isn't "real" input and block that; Cyberpunk 2077 is an example here, at least in its original form. Also, some anti-cheat systems (those that look at other software running on the system) may be able to detect this.
* Hardware level. Just get a device that can fake inputs, and program it. There are some mice and game controllers that allow this sort of thing, but you could also make you own with a Raspberry Pi Pico (specifically the Pico, not the regular Pis) and some hardware to attach to it; many people have made macro pads this way. This has the advantage that, to the OS and game, it's just another real input device, and it avoids anti-cheat software by not actually running on the system the game is. There's been some players who used this to cheat at Final Fantasy 10's lightning dodgin minigame; just use a light sensor to determine when to "press" the button to dodge.

very hard

Thanks for taking the time for such a write up. The thing is, I am talking about more than simple remapping. Not as far as actions the game doesn't allow (I would *love* to mod a lot of older TPP games to have a mod where camera is tied to the character and you get to control the angle), which does indeed seem more like an 'enhanced edition' than a mod. The example above however is characterised by that it is just modifying device input; so, while doing it on hardware level is beyond my skill, it does seem completely doable on the driver level: a gamepad can't have too complex drivers, they certainly exist in OS for Linux, so porting that to windows if it hasn't been done (and almost certainly it was) should be within any programmer's capabilties, given google and motivation. From there, just modifying the driver code to suppress one button and multiply the reported signal is a piece of cake.

The thing however is still quite a bit of work, as I haven't done any system programming since the uni, and windows programming at all; it is also an inconvenient solution as it might actually require switching between drivers on the OS level to play the game, and that can't be super easy under windows.

Knowing however that it should be doable, one can start looking for the easiest way. I had an impression that while graphics and all engine stuff is compiled to the machine code, a lot, if not most, of actual game scripting is in either an interpreted language or a VM language such as C#, which decompile almost perfectly. I may be completely wrong of course, and this might not include controls due to latency issues, so I guess the question is kind of that: how compartmentalized and standarised are games in that regard (this seems like something likely provided by the engine?), and how easy/dificult it would be to locate that module.

I never learned proper keyboard+mouse controls, while obviously superior in FPSs, I can't fathom how unergonomic WASD is the standard. I might look into those weird gaming devices like keyboard sections specifically designed for gaming, but the thing is, I just enjoy playing with a gamepad more on psychological level (unless it's an RPG, where that amount of input is simply not enough and you rely on mouse also for runtime selection of abilities like spells). Psychological effect of putting away the keyboard after a day of work I guess.

I actually like to use a gamepad for RPGs whenever feasible. The d-pad works just fine for menus and for navigating tiled maps, and I don't have to worry about pointing a mouse in just the right spot to select something.

(Of course, this really only works if the RPG is designed around a gamepad, as console RPGs tend to be, but computer RPGs (not counting console ports) tend not to be.)

Some program like antimicro would do what you want using a gamepad. Autohotkey involves more scripting for general controls.
Glovepie was around in the past but I don't know what happened to it. It's high time this tech was better so we can program a disconnected A.I sidekick for coop games,practice bots etc.

Also quality of life options in games e.g automatically planting blocks in basic patterns in minecraft clone games,.