I don't know if this was addressed before in another topic. Are there going to be any controls that will be hardwired and can not be changed? I use a PC and on FO3 I was unable to play the game for a week because of this problem. I later learned what the problem was from a helpful fellow on the forum. I had moved the pipboy control on the keyboard and when the character started as a baby, crash went the game. When I left the control for the pipboy alone the game was fine.

So, are there going to be any controls that will be hardwired and can not be changed?

I certainly wouldn't mind being able to customize the control scheme. I guess with the GECk, you can probably do that, but it would be nice to have the feature right there in the Options menu.

Odd, I believe I remapped the pipboy key and I never had any problems, in fact I remapped over half of the keys without issue.

the PC version i can see that being an option, but the consoles...i dont for some reason

I imagine it will be the same as Fallout3. You can remap almost everything, but there are some controls that are not mappable--namely, the buttons to make selections within screens like VATS, barter, and looting. These are hard-coded to the A and E buttons, which is fine for people who use the default WASD setup, but not so good for lefties like me. However, you can use the mouse to click your choices instead of using the A/E keys, so that works okay.

Before the first patch, there was also a problem with the PIPboy--you could remap the button to open the PIPboy, but it did not remap the button to close it (it stayed hard-coded as TAB). I've heard of some people crashing after remapping buttons, but that wasn't a universal problem--I've remapped everything for a left-handed setup, and I've never had problems from it.

on Fallout 3 for the consoles you can assign whatever command to whatever keys on the controller you want, it was completely customisable. Same for Oblivion, and i cant see New Vegas being any different.

i must have not noticed this. so thanks for setting me straight

Lefty666,

I use the right side of my keyboard and I was able to change every key but the TAB pipboy key. The TAB key change would cause my system to crash at the walking baby. Never did try to see if it was fixed during the patches. It was solved through the forum for me. Though I did finish Farcry 2 while unable to play FO3.

This was why I wondered if any keys would be hardcoded and unchangeable.

I changed the pipboy to M and didn't have a problem.

Hey, we joined the forum on the same day!

It's probably fixed now after the patches. I've gone through the start of the game at least 7 or 8 times now with my custom controls without trouble. I would assume NV is starting with the latest version of the FO3 engine, so these older problems hopefully won't reappear when the game ships.

In the beginning, I got so used to taking my left hand off the mouse to hit TAB to exit the PIPboy, it took quite a while to readjust to using the PIPboy button with my right hand after they fixed it.

I honestly cant think of a big title where you couldn't change the controls since maybe some of the old low budget xbox games (even then I cant really think of 1), heck even some super Nintendo games had remap ability.

As for you crashing because of a remapped, are you 100% sure that's what caused the crash? I have never heard of that 1...

If you had some mod active that used FOSE and the key you remapped to was used to toggle something else then I could see some problems. Hmm I might have to try that just too see if it crashs.

100% sure. I was not the only one with the problem. SwissArmyShoe solved it and I forwarded it to Bethesda Tech. There were no mods to use at the time either.

topic "Game continues crashing while I'm still in the baby stage"
SwissArmyShoe -- Nov 12, 2008
Hi all
Just registered lol, I had to just to post the fix for this.
I had the same problem. Fixed as soon as I set the controls back to default (I narrowed it down to the PIPBOY hotkey) Make sure you reset both the keyboard and device options to default.
Seriously that's all this is. I have had about 5 unrelated crashes since then over 20 hours of play time.
Hope this helps

I remapped all of the keys except I left TAB as the Pipboy key. When I played the game at Quakecon, I had to setup my keys before I could play it (I can't play with default WASD setup), and I did not have a problem with my setup.

However I did notice that the [2] key was hard coded to switching ammo types. I do believe there was an option in the control menu to reassign it, but even after I reassigned it and went into the Pipboy and assigned a weapon to the [2] key, it still stuck to switching ammo types. I hope this is not the case in the final release.


Grand Theft Auto IV originally wouldn't let you remap a mouse button to a foot control, but you could do it for vehicle controls. I returned the game because of this. They eventually patched it, but the right mouse button is still hard coded to hang up the phone, even after the latest patch where you can change those controls to something else. I use RMB to move forward, so I have a hard time playing GTA IV because if the phone rings as I start to walk, it hangs up one whoever is calling me.

Mafia II also doesn't let you assign mouse buttons to movement functions for walking, but it does for driving. It was like this in the demo, which started a long heated discussion about it on their forum. As far as I know it wasn't fixed in the final release, and I'm not sure if it has been patched. I didn't buy the game because I couldn't use the control setup I'm used to. I don't know if it has been fixed because I've lost interest now that NV is so close to release.

Yea me too. I don't know about the pipboy key, but I remapped alot of them many a times.

A lot of games have some basic key-mapping, but certain keys remain hard-coded. Often it's cases where a button serves several functions. In FarCry2 for example, you can remap the Use key, but it doesn't work for some functions like letting go of a stationary turret gun (hard-coded as E).

Some games have the arrow keys reserved for a specific function, so if you wanted to use them for movement, you're outa luck. Many games do not give you the option to remap everything.

If you want to use an xbox controller with the PC version of Fallout3, you can't swap the anologue stick functions for a left-handed setup, and you can't map Quicksave to anything.

In short, while most games have some level of control customization, many games implement it poorly.