Modern Controls

Modern Controls (experimental)

A separate RAC1 PAL / NTSC-U mod for a quicker, more adjustable camera and movement response.

The mod integrates directly into Pause → Options → Kamera. There is only one camera entry: the original RAC1 Kamera page is removed and replaced by the Modern Controls page. The replacement Kamera page keeps the two inversion controls and replaces the original Slow/Medium/Fast camera rotation speed row with the Modern Controls 1–100 adjustment. Use Left/Right for exact one-step changes; the bar shows the current number. Changes affect the next gameplay input tick and are saved for the next launch.

The remaining settings are under Launcher → Mods → Modern Controls → Settings and take effect after a game restart.

Mouse, Steam Input gyro-to-mouse and trackpad-to-mouse turn the camera directly, without stick emulation, acceleration or smoothing. Stick rotation is linear outside a circular deadzone. Horizontal and vertical settings are independent. Mouse counts depend on the operating system / Steam Input sensitivity too. The native Camera inversion options now apply to the direct controller and mouse/gyro/trackpad camera too.

The follow camera keeps its pitch when the stick or mouse stops, and its original camera-volume locks and pitch limits still apply. First-person aiming is also direct. Other camera modes, menus, cutscenes and the Triangle weapon ring keep the game's controls. The left stick retains its analog movement input. Movement speed independently scales the on-foot target speed; 100% keeps the original maximum run speed. Acceleration and braking have their own multiplier. Vehicle controls are unchanged. Jump and animation speeds are not scaled directly. Set movement response to 100% to retain the original acceleration/braking. Disable Modern Controls to return entirely to the game's controls.

Controllers

Works with Xbox, PlayStation, Steam Deck and other gamepads that OpenRAC maps to its pad input; it does not depend on controller branding. Controller camera fine adjustment (1–100) is the main right-stick speed control. 1 gives 25% of the base rate, 50 gives 100%, 75 gives 200% and 100 gives 300%; all intermediate levels are distinct. Controller first-person aiming speed (%) is an additional multiplier for precision while aiming. For example, level 75 camera (200%) and 75% aiming gives 150% of the base speed in first person. These sliders leave mouse/gyro/trackpad sensitivity unchanged. Aiming affects the first-person camera, not every weapon's third-person fire mode.

Movement speed (%) separately changes how fast Ratchet moves on foot, including analog walking. Start at 100%; 120% increases the target speed by 20%. It applies to on-foot movement regardless of whether its input came from a controller or keyboard. Movement speed, acceleration/braking and camera speed are independent. Other speed mods multiply with this setting, so keep one of the speed multipliers at 100% when combining them.

The in-game camera slider takes effect immediately. Changes to other launcher settings take effect after restarting the game. No mouse is required for the controller improvements. Disable the mouse-camera setting for a controller-only configuration if you want the mouse left free.

Steam Deck Pack

Keep the Steam Deck Pack enabled for its icons, but switch Gyro / trackpad mouse camera off in that pack. Modern Controls becomes the one mouse-camera provider. Its own mouse setting can be disabled for a stick-only setup. Do not combine it with Keyboard & Mouse; both control the camera.

The Camera integration uses one native pause Options slot internally. The local OpenRAC build permits four slots across all mods. If all four are already occupied, Modern Controls leaves the original Camera page in place and logs a warning; free a slot to expose the integrated 1–100 camera control. With Multiplayer and the old Steam Deck mouse-only pack, disable that already-unused mouse pack and keep the separate icon mod. A current Steam Deck Pack can stay enabled if a slot is free; its own mouse camera must remain off.

The fine adjustment is saved in controls.ini in the SDK's per-mod data directory on interface 1.11+, or beside this library on older runtimes (including 1.10). Only this mod's own preference is written. A read-only mod directory still allows live adjustment, but the page reports when it cannot save. The saved in-game camera level takes precedence over the launcher default; remove that file to use the launcher's level again. Existing 0.2.0 launcher camera percentages should be migrated to the closest new level (100% → 50, 200% → 75, 300% → 100).

Development and verification

Uses the SDK's stable rac1.camera.follow.apply_overrides and rac1.player.approach_speed hooks. Camera math and disc layouts are reused from keyboard-mouse/src/kbm.hpp and discs.h, under the repository's GPL-3.0-or-later license. Build through the root CMake project with SDK 1.9 or newer.

Tests cover radial deadzone boundaries, diagonal magnitude, mouse scaling, 60 Hz game-tick normalization (both OpenRAC disc builds), and camera vector length. A native-library host test exercises both discs on synthetic game RAM with interface 1.10: camera and first-person movement, duplicate polls, pitch bounds, movement speed/restoration, controller-only turn and aim scaling, vehicle passthrough, movement response, menus, focus loss, weapon selection and special-camera passthrough. Tests also exercise all 100 slider positions, endpoint clamping, live rate changes, language selection, preference reload on interface 1.10, and graceful handling of occupied Options slots. No game assets are included.

This is a first implementation. Automated tests do not establish how it feels on hardware. Actual Mac / Steam Deck gameplay, unusual camera volumes, gravity boots and multiplayer need playtesting before proposing an upstream release. Other mods changing the same camera state may interact even when their hooks chain correctly.