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What's the possibility of racing well in NFS Shift using a keyboard?
Share your experience...

Hi!

Its playable, but you will have to use some Driving Assists, at least Traction Control.

Cya!

Rogério

yes, it's playable... very hard, but doable

you have to know how to quick-tap a lot... especially in turns

Playable in the same way as you can always stab your eyeballs with forks. Possible but not much fun and may show you to have slight mental instability

I got to Tier 2 and then got bored of having my car try to start a doughnut in the middle of a 200kmh straight. So far nothing I have done lessens the kb issue. I hope it gets fixed but I'm not betting on it.

Kaerar wrote:Playable in the same way as you can always stab your eyeballs with forks. Possible but not much fun and may show you to have slight mental instability

lmao

but seriously, I finished the game using a keyboard and as I never had a steering wheel it was fun.

It costs me about 1 US dollar per hour to play Shift in a decent cyber café (my computer dates from 2001). And I have been spending a few of them trying to fix steering adjustments with no good results. The car won't go to where I want. In Drift races, I can't even manage to make it to the finish line without leaving the track and spinning at 40 km/h.

I mean, UG1, UG2, MW and Carbon were great in this aspect... How on Earth did they make it impossible to play ProStreet and Shift with keyboard? Did they get so much money from steering wheel manufacturers that they made keyboard playing horrible on purpose? I can't find any other reason.

Since Prostreet, NFS has been using EA's new (at the time) 'Heroic' driving engine. I guess it's just not so keyboard-friendly. I don't doubt (although I'm guessing) that some conscious decision was made about keyboard support in light of the fact that there are a great many very decent analog controllers available these days.

Perhaps you can pressure the cyber cafe managemnt to buy a few pads, or even a wheel? If they can see that those things will bring more business their way, I'm sure they'd consider it.

Jackhammer wrote:but seriously, I finished the game using a keyboard and as I never had a steering wheel it was fun.

Seriously?? Were you playing on easy with all the assists turned on?

I can't do it with the keyboard at all, and trust me I tried like hell to make it work. After about halfway through tier 1 it becomes extremely difficult to control the cars and I gave up. Next day went down to the shops and picked up a Logitech gamepad. Best thing I ever did, and now I can play the game properly!

Experienced, all assists on *standard experienced* but of course steering/braking off... those are for noobs =)

and keyboard obviously... it's perfectly playable with lots of practice... but sometimes i get lazy and plug-in my 360 controller

just traction control abs and stability, "pro" driving setting, max effects on damage and all that. keyboard and i've beat world live etc etc . though i doubt ill do anything else online than lose, unless someone can't really take turns or will spin out

Howdy,

Just thought I'd post the solution to fix keyboard steering in Need for Speed Shift.

Unfortunately the in-game configuration is quite useless because most of the keys can't be reconfigured.. a good example of this is the keypad keys are by default bound to free look while in cockpit or chase views and there's no option to reconfigure them for people that use keypad arrows for car control. Secondly if you use the default mouse/keyboard then you can't rebind the key for selective gear change OR for clutch. ?.. that's just stupid. you have to choose another config option such as User Pad and then on the binding list you can configure these keys..

However for the steering, I to simply use keyboard and this game is literally unplayable unless you like going every where side ways. so after looking around the game install files, I decided to start doing some editing and testing and bingo the solution is quite easy to achieve. Using the default Mouse/Keyboard config setting.

First up, go find the following path

<game-install-directory>\ControllerDefaults\PC\

I suggest you take a copy of the original file first, so if you stuff up then you can always restore it.

open the following file in notepad vehicleset_pc_mousekeyboard.xml

and edit the following values. (there are more values in that file, but simply locate these and change them to the values listed here) So quick recap of those. increase speed sensitivity by 35%, set speed to instant for reaching steering lock and returning to center. (this stops that strange 1/5 second delay) increased the digital ramp rate, increased the turn sensitivity and finally increased by 35% the speed sensitivity, so now the car won't constantly fish tail if you just blow on the turn keys while on fast straights.

Save the file, load the game, go into config, select some other controller (it alerts you your config will be lost, that's ok.). now reselect mouse/keyboard, re-setup your keys and go test it with a race.. I use the time attack so i can see how much improvement I get per lap compared to the previous key config, and so far my lap times have improved by 4 seconds (playing on realistic settings (we as realistic as this game allows)) and can now easily get maximum stars in any time attack race.( eg beat the fastest times)

I do prefer a car that is a bit loose (oversteer), so the above configuration settings may not be for everyones liking, so simply adjust those values until you find one that suits your driving style.

warning if you go into config screen now and look at the settings, you'll see there maybe some listed with no value, that's because we've adjusted their value beyond what the game allows to be display (ie 1.35 is 135% and the in game config screen only allows up to 100%), so don't make any changes there.

Atleast you'll now be able to enjoy the game without having the hassle of wheels and other devices cluttering up your desk.

Sounds like useful advice.

hmmm... i just have the time to play this nfs..
for tier 1 i have no problem with racing with keyboard, traction control high, stability on.
now i'm stuck with drift!!! it's so hard playing this nfs!!! >_< i 'll try the setting hope it work..

xanadu wrote:hmmm... i just have the time to play this nfs..
for tier 1 i have no problem with racing with keyboard, traction control high, stability on.
now i'm stuck with drift!!! it's so hard playing this nfs!!! >_< i 'll try the setting hope it work..

go the sucker way and use Normal handling and turn steering assist on low... it's THAT much easier

I use normal keyboard. driving difficulty is "pro" and AI difficulty is medium. My driver level is 46. In the beginning i used to feel the game's too tough. But now I chat on phone with my girlfriend and win driver duels... Humans are the greastest machines...with practise we can lift universe i guess..