So you bought Extreme Trucker 2, plugged up your Logitech wheel and fired up the game, only to find the wheel is so stiff in game it's almost unusable. While you can mess about a bit in the game settings and make things slightly better, it still needs some serious help. That's where this guide comes in!

Note that the guide was written based on my experiences with my own G27 wheel set, but it's likely to also apply to the many Logitech wheels supported by the Logitech Profiler tool. This includes Driving Force EX, GT and Pro variants, G25, G27, MOMO Force and Racing Force.

In Options > Controls > Controller, set the following:

• Force Feedback: ON
  
• Force Feedback Gain: 40%
  
• Steering Sensitivity: 100%
  
• Steering Non-Linearity: 0%
  
• Steering Axis Deadzone: 0%
  
• Acceleration Axis Deadzone: 0%
  
• Brake Axis Deadzone: 0%

While you're in here, also make sure that you have all the right axes enabled, since the game typically assigns both Acceleration and Brake to the accelerator pedal! To do this, click on the words to the right of Steering Axis, Acceleration Axis and Brake Axis and move the wheel or press the appropriate pedal for each one.

Create a new profile for Extreme Trucker in Logitech Profiler, then head to Edit > Specific Game Settings... and set the following:

• Use Special Force Feedback Settings: ON
  
  • Overall Effects Strength: 100%
    
  • Spring Effect Strength: 25%
• Enable Centering Spring: ON
  
  • Centering Spring Strength: 150%
• Use Special Steering Wheel Settings: ON
  
  • Report Combined Pedals: OFF
    
  • Degrees of Rotation: 900°
• Use Special Game Settings: ON
  
  • Allow Game To Adjust Settings: OFF

If you find the steering a little light, try increasing Spring Effect Strength and/or Damper Effect Strength in small increments until you find a setting you like. Be wary that even Logitech's own software leaves a deadzone, so don't mistake this for light steering. I found it best to use a roundabout in the Australia map to do this testing.

Pro Tip: You can mitigate the deadzone a little in game by going into Options > Controls > Controllers, making a small change and then reversing the change! Unfortunately this must be done every session.

If you don't have the Logitech Profiler software, grab it from http://support.logitech.com/en_us/product/g27-racing-wheel#download

Sadly, the in-game keyboard mappings don't fully support all of the buttons on the G27. For example, you can't use the D-pad on the H-shifter if you try to map controls inside the game.

To get around this, we can use the Logitech Profiler to map the standard in-game keys to buttons on the controller.

The simplest way to do this in the Profiler is to click the label for the desired button and select Select Keystroke > New Keystroke. From here, click Record and then press the keyboard key you want to assign to this button.

Now, when you press this button in game, the G27 will send the assigned keystroke to the game, just as if you'd pressed it on the keyboard. No more need to battle with in-game mappings!*

(* See "Using the H-Shifter" below for a caveat).




A slightly more advanced approach is to assign a Command to the button by clicking the button label and choosing Select Command > New Command. Now you can record a keystroke as usual, but you can also assign it a name like "Cruise Control" for example, which then appears on the Profiler screen.

Pro Tip: After you've assigned commands to all the buttons you need, you can print out a control diagram showing all of your command names and the buttons they're assigned to! I usually print this to a PDF file and save it in the game's Documents folder.

Super Pro Tip: Profiler Commands are powerful! You can assign whole key sequences to them, and even insert pauses between keystrokes to allow stuff to happen in the game before the command continues.

There is one caveat with setting up mappings in the Profiler - it's not possible to map Keypresses or Commands to the H-Shifter itself. For this, we need to set the mappings inside the game.

Extreme Trucker 2 only offers a manual sequential gearbox, with simple Gear Up and Gear Down controls. Clearly, it's not possible to map individual gears to the shifter and produce a true H-Shifter layout.

What we can do however, is use the in-game mapping tool to map Gear Up and Gear Down controls to suitable shifter positions. For example you could map Gear Up to Third Gear position and Gear Down to Fourth Gear postion. In this way, you can still use the H-♥♥♥♥♥♥ for gear changes, if a little awkwardly.

Of course, you may be happier just to map Gear Up and Gear Down to the paddles, and that's perfectly valid as well.

To help you map the controls, here's the list of all default control bindings in the game.

Thanks for checking out the guide - I hope you found it useful. Please give it a thumb if you did. If you found any errors or omissions, please let me know and I'll get it fixed or added.

Cheers, GeeTee
http://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/id/GT3x24x7