Editting Logitech WingMan Profiles

Most recent games have support for Logitech (and other) gaming devices such as joysticks, gamepads and gaming mice. Many have control panels within the game which allow you to set how the buttons and axis are used.

For games that don't have internal support, Logitech provide the Logitech WingMan Profiler software. This software allows the user to :-

Assign keystrokes to a macro
Assign macros to buttons or axis on the device
Controlling sensitivity of the device

So if you can either set up the device within the game or use the Profiler, why would you need (or atleast want) to edit the profiles by hand? Well, I can't give you the definitive answer to that question, but if (like me) you do find yourself wanting more information on those magic numbers stored in the "wgp" files, then you may find some help here.

Syntax of the profile files

The "wgp" files are much like "ini" files found in windows and many other applications.
Firstly, they are divided into sections each with a heading within square brackets like [Section].
Secondly, each option is in the form of parameter=value.

There are some sections that are found in every profile such as the [Profile] and the [Signature] sections. Other sections are more device dependant and may not be in a particular profile. For example the [Gamepad] section may not be in every profile.

[Command]

I have not bothered to edit the [Profile] or [Signature] sections, leaving the Profiler software to maintain them. The first section that most people will be interested in is the [Command] section. This is where you assign a keystroke or sequence of keystrokes to a macro. You need to have this section correct because when you assign the macros you define here latter they obviously won't work if you get it wrong here.

Each macro is defined in the following manner.

identifier - A unique numeric identifier. These normally start at 0 and run consecutivley. I have not seen any profile with more than about 50 commands so I don't know what the limit is, but I would be surprised if you really needed that many.
name - The name by which you will recognise the macro. It really is up to you how you name your macros. Sometimes I will name them with the description of what I want it to do (like "Select Weapon 1") and other times I will name it with the keystroke it provides (like "Left Mouse Button").
keysequence - The keystroke or sequence to be executed. A keysequence is made up of one or more keycodes, pauses or repeat values.

The keycodes are based on the scancodes provided by the keyboard to the PC. They have been tailored to suit Logitec's (and our's) particular needs. This table lists the keycodes in numeric order. Keycodes are in the form of "Kx" where the x represents a number from the scancode table. Keycodes can also be "Shifted", "Controlled" or "Altered" by using "KSx", "KCx" or "KAx" respectivley. So for example the keycode for a "shifted F" would be "KS33".

Pauses are in the form of Pn where n is the number of milliseconds to wait.

Repeats are in the form of Rn where n is either 1, 2, 3 or 4. These values give the following rates.

1 - Slow
2 - Medium
3 - Fast
4 - Very Fast

A recent addition to the Profiler software has been support for mouse clicks and movement. The codes for mouse clicks are *B600 - left mouse button, *B601 - middle mouse button and *B602 - right mouse button.

Here are some examples of how this section might look
[Command]
0="Select Weapon 1", K2, P500, K28
1="Fire", K57, R4
2="Quit", KA16
3="Left Mouse Click", *B600

When the first macro is executed, it will send the "1" key followed half a second latter by the "enter key". The second macro will send the "space" key and if held, will repeat in rapid sucession. The third macro will send the "Alt" + "Q" keys. The fourth macro assigns the left mouse button.

The Profiler can actually differentiate between keypress and release. If you export one of the supplied profiles and use a text editor to view its content, you will often see assignments that look quite complex - like 4="Handbrake",+K29,-K32925 The +K29 represents "Left Control" being depressed. The -K32925 represents it's release. I tend to replace these with simpley the keycode like K29.

[Hat]

The next section that you will be interested in will probably be the [Hat] section. Hat definitions can be 4-way or 8-way. They are in the form of :-

identifier - A unique numeric identifier. These normally start at 0 and run consecutivley.
name - The name by which you will recognise the POV definition.
movement - Movement is either W4 or W8.
commands - Starting with the Up/North/Forward command and working clockwise with either 4 or 8 commands

An example of a hat section with the relevent command section might look like
[Command]
0="North", K72
1="NorEast", K73
2="East", K77
3="SouEast", K81
4="South", K80
5="SouWest", K79
6="West", K75
7="NorWest", K71

[Hat]
0="POV", W8, C0, C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, C7

[Axis]

Another section worth looking at is the [Axis] section. You will normally have two axis definitions - one for the x-axis (left/right or west/east) and the other for the y-axis (forward/backward or north/south). they are in the form of :-

identifier - - A unique numeric identifier. These normally start at 0 and run consecutivley.
name - The name by which you will recognise the axis definition.
commands - The command for moving left/west or up/forward/north followed by the command for right/east or down/backward/south.

An example of an axis section with the relevent command section might look like
[Command]
0="North", K72
1="NorEast", K73
2="East", K77
3="SouEast", K81
4="South", K80
5="SouWest", K79
6="West", K75
7="NorWest", K71

[Axis]
0="WestEast", C6, C2
1="NorthSouth", C0, C4

[Gamepad]

The last section you will need depends on what your device is. I use a "Logitech Gamepad Extreme" and so the section I am interested in is called [Gamepad]. You may need to print out the Device Layout from Profiler to help you identify which button is which, but in all honesty, it's not crystal clear even from that. The Gamepad Extreme has 9 buttons, 2 triggers, a hat and is motion sensitive. One of the buttons (the sensor) is non programable and another button can be used as a "shift" key to double the use of all other keys. The basic assignment to the buttons are made by identifiers 0 to 9. The second or "shifted" assignment is made by the identifiers 100 to 109. Assignment of the x-axis is made to identifier 1000 and the y-axis to identifier 1001. The hat assignment is made to identifier 2000.

An example of how this section might look is :-
[Gamepad]
0=C7
1=C8
2=C12
3=C13
4=C5
5=C6
6=C10
7=C11
8=C14
100=C28
101=C29
102=C30
103=C35
104=C36
1000=A0
1001=A1
2000=H0

With the recent support for mouse movement, you can use motion sensing axises to perform mouse movement. To do this you would not need the [Axis] section described earlier and in the [Gamepad] section, you would drop the assignments to 1000 and 1001 and replace them with the following :-
AXIS0=S1010,Z1010,R1100,I0,M1000
AXIS1=S1010,Z1010,R1100,I0,M1001

This would set the sensitivity to 10% (S1010), the dead-zone to 10% (Z1010), the range to 100% (R1100), no inversion (I0) and mouse x-axis (M1000) or mouse y-axis (M1001).

Another usefull command for the gamepad assigns the "shift" function to a button so you can access the second assignment for the other buttons. The following assignment makes the macro button (button 9) perform the "shift"ing.
SHIFT=9

Other Devices

As for other devices, I am sure by exporting a couple of the supplied profiles, and reading this page, you should be able to work out what's needed for the appropriate section. If you can't then you probably shouldn't be using an editor anyway:)

In Conclusion

I recommend you keep your version of the Logitech Software up to date so check back at The WingMan Team often. I wrote this in November 2001 and the current version is 4.11.328

If you want to contact me for any reason you can email me at [email protected].

Thanks for being the Counter th visitor to my site since 3rd November 2001.

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