Where, exactly, are Joystick and Keyboard bindings stored? Easy Backup?

[Antix70]

There are two folders inside my Saved Games DCS folder...

Config, and Input Commands.

(Input commands MIGHT be from a mod that adds more logical keybinding options to all the LUA files.)

What I'm looking to know is how to backup pretty much everything important, game settings, joystick and keyboard bindings, mods, skins, etc, in case I have a major crash.

I'm starting to think it's my entire Saved Games DCS folder!

 

[Rudel_chw]

15 minutes ago, Antix70 said:

I'm starting to think it's my entire Saved Games DCS folder!

Yes, that’s the simplest option, as not only your control bindings are there, also your system settings, your mission logbook, the status of any campaign, any custom mission, custom liveries, stored trackfiles, screen captures, custom snapviews, etc, etc.

[Art-J]

On 8/31/2023 at 7:12 PM, Antix70 said:

(Input commands MIGHT be from a mod that adds more logical keybinding options to all the LUA files.)

Nah, Input folder (with subsequent sub-folders and .diff.lua files) gets created whenever you make any single change to any default control assignments table of any chosen aircraft. Nothing to do with mods.

But, as Rudel said, to be on the safe side, just make a backup of the whole Saved games folder and you'll be good. You might want to dump the unnecessary trash from there like temporary shader files (in fxo and metashaders folders), old screenshots and tracks, old logs etc. but keep the rest.

[Antix70]

On 9/1/2023 at 10:58 AM, Art-J said:

Nah, Input folder (with subsequent sub-folders and .diff.lua files) gets created whenever you make any single change to any default control assignments table of any chosen aircraft. Nothing to do with mods.

But, as Rudel said, to be on the safe side, just make a backup of the whole Saved games folder and you'll be good. You might want to dump the unnecessary trash from there like temporary shader files (in fxo and metashaders folders), old screenshots and tracks, old logs etc. but keep the rest.

I wasn't referring to the Input folder inside the Config folder for each aircraft.

I have in a folder called InputCommands inside my DCS Saved Games root folder, which is created by DCS Community Keybinds, from their readme:

 

Quote

# DCS Community Keybinds
A collection of keybinds for DCS. For use with Quaggles' DCS Input Command Injector:
https://github.com/Quaggles/dcs-input-command-injector

Using Quaggles' mod allows you to put custom keybinds in your _\<User\>\Saved Games\DCS_ folder, so you don't have to worry about redoing them when DCS updates are released.

In this repository are two folders. You'll only need one of them.

* __InputCommands__ has all the keybinds currently available for all modules in the project. Once you have Quaggles' mod going, put the InputCommands folder from this download in your _\<User\>\Saved Games\DCS_ folder.
 
* __InputCommands_Skeleton__ is a blank structure covering all modules for you to put your own keybinds in. Rename it to _InputCommands_ (remove the _Skeleton part) and place it in your _\<User\>\Saved Games\DCS_ folder.
 
__If you are interested in contributing...__ thank you. If you'd like to follow the patterns in place, that's great, if not, that's okay too. Right now the main objective is get better coverage.

 

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by Antix70

[Art-J]

Roger that. Never used Quaggle's injector so can't advise about that one, but it's clear now what you meant.

Well, you might PM Quaggles, but I'd still say making a backup of the whole Saved Games/DCS folder (minus fxo, metashaders and similar junk) is the way to go.

[MAXsenna]

@Antix70
The files in "InputCommands" don't change, or I would have lost all my special settings every time I update new keybinds from Munkwolf. I just download the whole shebang and overwrite. The changes are in the diff files to my knowledge, but let's ping @Munkwolf and ask.

Cheers!

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[Antix70]

The InputCommands folder appears when enabling dcs-community-keybinds in OvGME.

The exact path is C:\Users\<user>\Saved Games\DCS\InputCommands

I think the quaggles mod "moves" the special keybinds normally placed in the DCS installation folder, to your saved games folder, and the dcs-community-keybinds somehow interacts with that.

 

Honestly, the amount of 'stuff', putting it politely, you have to go through to get DCS to work as it should work, if ED only implemented these things themselves, is kind of infuriating. And then because they won't/don't want to/refuse to, you have to reapply each "fix" again after their patches breaks them.

The ONLY thing I've seen from ED in this area is the ability to set bindings to "Button03" and "Button03_Off" for single signaled switches like the style Thrustmaster uses all over their throttle. So a switch that only sends a signal in the ON position can now be set to control something like landing gear, or master arm switches, where Gear UP can be mapped to button03, and Gear DOWN can be mapped to button03_OFF.

That feature alone removed the need for quite a bit of the things that Community Keybinds imports, but not all of them, since Community Keybinds adds so many things that ED didn't feel we had the need to apply a binding to.

Edited September 16, 2023 by Antix70

[Antix70]

15 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

@Antix70
The files in "InputCommands" don't change, or I would have lost all my special settings every time I update new keybinds from Munkwolf. I just download the whole shebang and overwrite. The changes are in the diff files to my knowledge, but let's ping @Munkwolf and ask.

Cheers!

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk
 

Thanks for pointing out that updating doesn't wreck the whole setup, I've refrained until just now.

[Munkwolf]

On 9/15/2023 at 6:42 PM, MAXsenna said:

@Antix70
The files in "InputCommands" don't change, or I would have lost all my special settings every time I update new keybinds from Munkwolf. I just download the whole shebang and overwrite. The changes are in the diff files to my knowledge, but let's ping @Munkwolf and ask.

Cheers!

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk
 

 

On 9/16/2023 at 10:08 AM, Antix70 said:

I think the quaggles mod "moves" the special keybinds normally placed in the DCS installation folder, to your saved games folder, and the dcs-community-keybinds somehow interacts with that.

 

@MAXsenna is correct, the InputCommands files don't change (unless updating to a new version of community keybinds). Quaggles mod references that folder to add commands to the commands defined in the base game files in DCS\Mods\aircraft\<aircraft>\Input. It doesn't move any files around, think of it as extending from the commands in the DCS installation folder.

Saved Games\InputUserProfiles is the default save location for control profiles saved in game, and then in Saved Games\Config\Input are the snapshots of last configured bindings for each module, files named by device name and GUID.

Saved Games\Config\Input would be the important one to save your current bindings, but if your device GUIDs change then it could require some updating of the filenames to get them going again. I recommend saving all bindings using the profiles in-game if you dont do that already. I do that and backup the Saved Games\InputUserProfiles folder to save my bindings.

[Tom Kazansky]

11 minutes ago, Munkwolf said:

I recommend saving all bindings using the profiles in-game if you dont do that already. I do that and backup the Saved Games\InputUserProfiles folder to save my bindings.

+1

[MAXsenna]

@Antix70 @Munkwolf

Got me thinking. Just tested the backup feature of Skatezilla's app. This is what it backed up of the "config" files.

 

Guess 2.45MB is too small to be calculated.

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by MAXsenna

[Antix70]

On 9/20/2023 at 11:47 AM, Munkwolf said:

 

 

I do that and backup the Saved Games\InputUserProfiles folder to save my bindings.

My InputUserProfiles folder is empty

[virgo47]

1 hour ago, Antix70 said:

My InputUserProfiles folder is empty

That means you did not save the profile explicitly - those are your saves, not game's saves. You have to click on the device dropdown menu at the top and by default this is the selected folder. It's your backups, but still stored under Saved Games folder. But not to be confused with automatically managed input config of the game (Config/Input), separate directory is used.

[MAXsenna]

To complicate it further with even more ideas. I have "moved" my Saved Games to Onedrive, so they're backed up all the time.

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[Antix70]

"Not to be confused" Too late. My head can't handle it.

So this InputUserProfiles folder would only get populated if I were to manually save my settings?

[virgo47]

19 minutes ago, Antix70 said:

"Not to be confused" Too late. My head can't handle it.

So this InputUserProfiles folder would only get populated if I were to manually save my settings?

Yes, unless you choose a different directory for the save - which is possible. It is just the default offered directory. Just try it yourself:

And then you see:

This is otherwise not used by DCS at all. The configs managed by the game are all under Config/Input folder:

This also includes your modifier setup for the plane, which is not otherwise savable.

So, manually, you "back up" to InputUserProfiles, but it is all under Saved Games/<dcs-folder>, and you may wish to back it up somewhere else.

[Antix70]

I did try it, and the folder that was selected when I clicked Save Profile As was the folder I loaded a profile from the other day. So once you change it, it's changed from that point forward.

[MAXsenna]

I did try it, and the folder that was selected when I clicked Save Profile As was the folder I loaded a profile from the other day. So once you change it, it's changed from that point forward.

Yes, it remembers "last used folders". But nothing prevents from changing it.

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