Steam Controller trailer, $50

This controller will be totally worth it for the sole purpose of playing Civ and other TBS on a couch with comfy gaming

Picked up a Link and the Controller. As a former avid player when it comes to TF2 who has used both the controller and M+K in some comp play, itll be interesting to see how much better I am with this thing as opposed to the limits of the standard thumbstick. Id love to see this become standardized among all the console makers, but hey, if itll allow me to play a lot of my old CRPGs on a. tV then im fine with it
 
What is awesome is how these haptic touchpads will work in virtual reality in valve's vr controllers. They will do some awesome context sensitive stuff.
 
What is awesome is how these haptic touchpads will work in virtual reality in valve's vr controllers. They will do some awesome context sensitive stuff.

There's no info on whether the Steam Controller will have photodiodes on it for Lighthouse use, is there? Would photodiodes on a gamepad be too easily occluded?
 
What's the issue? I'm left-handed and I've never had an issue with any controllers. I'm not sure if I'm playing 'right-handed' because I don't really get how you'd do that. Assuming you can swap the left and right touchpads around (emulating a southpaw config) I can't see why left handed people would struggle.

Personally I gave up on waiting for everything to support southpaw and retrained myself to 'normal' sticks.
Most games have southpaw control schemes. This will have os level configurations which is awesome, but it only has one analog stick which isn't awesome. The reason the thing has an analog stick is because the touch pads can't replicate analog movement properly. The problem here is the analog is on the wrong side for me. So yeah, I won't be using this. You say you don't know what 'playing right handed means' but then immediately say you've retrained yourself to play everything right handed. So yeah, good for you but I didn't.
 
There's no info on whether the Steam Controller will have photodiodes on it for Lighthouse use, is there? Would photodiodes on a gamepad be too easily occluded?

It doesn't have those, but there is an imu inside the steam controller for motion controls. It can even be remapped like any other button.

What about the minuscule fonts used in PC gaming? Are they scaled up on TV while using Steam tv mode?

Most pc games dont use miniscule fonts anymore. The ten foot rule has been rule of thumb for the last 5-10 years now.

For old games like system shock 2, you can lower the resolution and it will make fonts bigger.
 
Man the controller looks sweet but I'd like to demo it before buying. Yay for AA.

How does the controller work? Dinput? Or does it do something like Pinnacle and basically remap a mouse and keyboard to a gamepad?
 
They still make competiton pro joysticks, they are sold in a bundle with amiga forever. They are usb these days.

The competition pro cd32 gamepad is also terrific, but not a joystick.
Oh, wow! It'll have to wait until after the Steam summer sale, but I need one of those. Not so much the CD32 pad though, I never liked those first time around.

Most games have southpaw control schemes. This will have os level configurations which is awesome, but it only has one analog stick which isn't awesome. The reason the thing has an analog stick is because the touch pads can't replicate analog movement properly. The problem here is the analog is on the wrong side for me. So yeah, I won't be using this. You say you don't know what 'playing right handed means' but then immediately say you've retrained yourself to play everything right handed. So yeah, good for you but I didn't.
Ah, I had assumed you would be using the haptic circles in place of dual analogues, as I intend to. That's where the confusion arose.
 
How does the controller work? Dinput? Or does it do something like Pinnacle and basically remap a mouse and keyboard to a gamepad?

It presents itself as a keyboard and mouse at the OS level. New control schemes essentially flash the firmware so that the OS sees the new mapping even at the lowest level. That's what makes it compatible with all old hardware that supports KB/M
 
It presents itself as a keyboard and mouse at the OS level. New control schemes essentially flash the firmware so that the OS sees the new mapping even at the lowest level. That's what makes it compatible with all old hardware that supports KB/M

That's pretty awesome. Judging by the trailer, even games like Cities Skylines seem perfectly handled with the controller.

If I hook up other controllers with xinput, those become player one right? I use a Mayflash Wii U pro controller adapter and it has a direct input toggle so I could probably still play with my family and friends and still be lead player.
 
I don't see it.

G7bknhY.jpg
 
That's pretty awesome. Judging by the trailer, even games like Cities Skylines seem perfectly handled with the controller.

If I hook up other controllers with xinput, those become player one right? I use a Mayflash Wii U pro controller adapter and it has a direct input toggle so I could probably still play with my family and friends and still be lead player.

Possibly. If the game used to work with KB/M + Wii U pro, it should continue to work with Steam Controller + Wii U pro
 
remind me why it has an analog stick then?

So, let's go into a bit of history about how the analog stick itself evolved. Originally, the steam controller was going to have a touch screen in the middle of the pad, like so:

fzV1rGK.jpg


The way this would work is exactly how the touch keyboard described above worked. Valve talked about this at Dev Days. Originally, they had in mind that, when you needed to input text using the controller, a keyboard overlay would appear on screen and on the controller itself. You would type on that controller by moving your thumb around the touch screen, which could also be pressed like a large button. That way, you could look down at your controller and see actual keys if you needed, or you could just glance on screen at the on-screen keyboard and touch-type. They also intended for this screen to be programmable, so developers could design their games to have touch screen components on the gamepad.

Additionally, when in legacy mode, the touch screen would be split into 4 to act as 4 more buttons for input.

When they shipped the original steam controller prototypes, they couldn't actually provide the touch screens, so instead they provided devs with 4 big buttons where the touch screen should go:

RzwQxlc.jpg


This was to give devs an opportunity to start developing their games with touch screen components in mind. Their functionality would have to be limited (because you basically had a touch screen resolution of 2 x 2) but it still got the controller into devs hands.

When you used this controller in legacy mode, those 4 buttons that represented the corners of the touch screen were called 1, 2, 3, and 4. You may also notice there were 4 other buttons on the controller - A, B, X and Y.

Well, the protos go out into peoples hands, and some people just cannot get used to the left haptic pad. This is partly because their legacy mode implimentation is poor (currently, it works like a touch screen where even the slightest touch is registered as input, which is terrible, when it should be push button activated and using the actuators to make it feel like the pad pivots, which makes it feel like a real d-pad), but also because some people were used to old inputs. A near-universal request was to normalize the controller a bit, to provide a more easy transition. As an example, while the controller used to have ABXY buttons, and while it can operate like an X-input device (making it, effectively, an xbox controller), the layout of those buttons were so alien. When people design controls for games, they usually consider the position on the controller. Thus, where certain in-game functions made sense when ABXY were in a cluster, they made no sense when they were spread around the controller.

Additionally, people quickly noticed that there was no corresponding equivalent of the d-pad buttons on the Xbox controller. While ABXY were represented, Up, down, left, and right were not. And in most 3D action games, those buttons are not used to directional input, but rather as odd-ball buttons, like inventory management or maps or things of that sort. Devs wanted an equivalent so that the controller made a bit more sense when they played X-input games.

By this point, valve had also decided that the touch screen input was pretty redundant, as they could duplicate all the functionality, sans the on-controller visuals, with the current touchpads and the ghost keyboard on the screen. So they decided to nix the touchscreen. To prevent devs from losing their functions of the 1, 2, 3, and 4 buttons, and to simultaneously satiate those asking for equivalent d-pad buttons and for something resembling directional input, they compromised and moved them to the diamond cluster. I thought this was pretty logical.

That said, I like the analog stick much more. For the most part, analog sticks are usually better than d-pad input for 3D control. And the left haptic touchpad can emulate a physical d-pad pretty well. It made more sense to replace it with an analog stick, and I think it's the right choice. If devs need an equivalent of the xbox d-pad, they can use the actual touchpad.

.
 
There's no info on whether the Steam Controller will have photodiodes on it for Lighthouse use, is there? Would photodiodes on a gamepad be too easily occluded?

It's not that the steam controllers will directly work with the vive.

The vive vr controllers are directly designed from the steam controller.
 
so it has an analog stick to replace the dpad? that's not what I read. A valve dev said it was because people had trouble 'transitioning' to the trackpad, which is what I'm saying. They go on to elaborate that this will 'ease the transation' but I suspect that's balony. Many people will just default to it and never use the trackpad for analog 3d movement. Mark my words, that left touchpad will end up defaulting to a dpad in nearly all default control configurations once all is said and done. it even has the cross shape on it. There's no way the analog stick was intended as a substitute to a dpad. heck, even in that video they show witcher 3 and some first person shooter, both with movement controlled exclusively using the analog.
 
Woe is me, I'll have to open my controller and slap a new battery in after half a decade or so!

That'll be a great solution when the company has stopped manufacturing the lithium battery for that product. Just ask laptop owners!

Also, half a decade is probably the best case scenario for the life of that battery.
 
It presents itself as a keyboard and mouse at the OS level. New control schemes essentially flash the firmware so that the OS sees the new mapping even at the lowest level. That's what makes it compatible with all old hardware that supports KB/M

Do you know if it's possible to have it switch behavior automatically depending on the game that is being played? Say, the controller will act like KB/M when Cities: Skylines is launched, and automatically switch to Xinput to mimic an Xbox controller for something like Tomb Raider 2013. Thanks!
 
Do you know if it's possible to have it switch behavior automatically depending on the game that is being played? Say, the controller will act like KB/M when Cities: Skylines is launched, and automatically switch to Xinput to mimic an Xbox controller for something like Tomb Raider 2013. Thanks!

Yes, profiles are on a per-game basis. They are also stored on your account, so if you go to another computet and log into your account, your controller configuration follows you.
 
Yes, profiles are on a per-game basis. They are also stored on your account, so if you go to another computet and log into your account, your controller configuration follows you.

Thanks, Krejlooc. It sounds like this thing (the Steam pad) is going to solve all of my problems. :P
 
I'm waiting to see how it is in my hands but it seems like it could kick start a new evolution in game controls.

Seems like we've spent the last 15 years becoming more and more bogged down with legacy ideas (dpads for one) and trying to pay service to each one with every new generation.

I'm pretty sure the steam controller may be a tough thing to easily adapt to, at least at the start, but I'm willing and able to persevere and learn it if it leads to a better standard and a long overdue step forward in game controls.
 
Thanks, Krejlooc. It sounds like this thing (the Steam pad) is going to solve all of my problems. :P

I am curious to see how it handles multiple steam controllers at the same time however. They show two people using two different configs in the video, but steam only lets you log into one account at a time. Logging into multiple accounts for local multiplayer has been a long time request for steam, maybe these controllers and their profiles will force their hand.
 
Analog sticks never struck me as the best solution to anything. They seem very much like a compromise and a stop-gap solution to a difficult problem.

As someone who used KBM before analog sticks existed, trying to adapt to sticks was very weird. Same how for stick people, going to a mouse is weird. I don't get when people try and argue that sticks are inherently better than the mouse, but I understand that people can't easily switch from the control style they're used to.

When we get this future generation raised on these haptic touchpads it'll be funny hearing people argue about pads vs. sticks. 20 years from now no one's going to be using sticks.
 
Krejlooc, you are doing great work in this thread. Just wanted to thank you for all the information and effort.

I've used my steam controller since dev days. Not just playing games with it, but also playing with the api and making small little demos. I don't think many devs actually dove into their sdk from dev days.

In case it's not obvious, I am a big believer in this controller. From experience.
 
Yes, profiles are on a per-game basis. They are also stored on your account, so if you go to another computet and log into your account, your controller configuration follows you.
What if I want to play an Xinput game outside of Steam? Is there any way to swap to that mode without Steam running?

I'm curious about the controller's native API as well. Could Dolphin make use of it to use the gyro's and accelerometers? I think it'd be ideal if RetroArch could support it's native API as well to be able to map everything the controller offers (since Xinput limits the amount of buttons, and kb/m mode doesn't let you use the left touchpad as an analog input). But maybe Valve only gives native support to devs making games on Steam...
 
Looks cool but I'll have to try it first.

I hope the right touch screen works, my Xbox One controller already has major drift issues on the left thumb stick, so I'll be happy to abandon analog if it works better.
 
I'm going to look forward to revisiting older games with this controller, even the ones that would use a traditional controller. What are you all looking forward to trying out with it? I'm for sure going to play some Morrowind, Resident Evil 4, and Descent. But of course, the possibilities are endless, and it will be fun figuring out ways to rebind controls for certain genres, like fighting games.
 
What if I want to play an Xinput game outside of Steam? Is there any way to swap to that mode without Steam running?

If the game is made to recognize the steam controller, it can work as an xinput device without steam running.

I'm curious about the controller's native API as well. Could Dolphin make use of it to use the gyro's and accelerometers? I think it'd be ideal if RetroArch could support it's native API as well to be able to map everything the controller offers (since Xinput limits the amount of buttons, and kb/m mode doesn't let you use the left touchpad as an analog input). But maybe Valve only gives native support to devs making games on Steam...

That is all possible. Also, "steam" is a nebulous term these days. When talking about the api in question, it isnt tied to the store front not the steam client itself. You can freely use the api in your game without needing permission from valve, nor do you have to publish on steam or run through the steam client.

There is nothing stopping dolphin from using this. Valve doesnt gate keep their technology.
 
I'm going to look forward to revisiting older games with this controller, even the ones that would use a traditional controller. What are you all looking forward to trying out with it? I'm for sure going to play some Morrowind, Resident Evil 4, and Descent. But of course, the possibilities are endless, and it will be fun figuring out ways to rebind controls for certain genres, like fighting games.

Point and click adventure games, like the lucas arts games, are wonderful with this controller.

Try beneath a steel sky when you get the controller. It is free, and the whole game was made to be controlled entire from a mouse. It's also one of the best adventure games of all time.
 
Point and click adventure games, like the lucas arts games, are wonderful with this controller.

Try beneath a steel sky when you get the controller. It is free, and the whole game was made to be controlled entire from a mouse. It's also one of the best adventure games of all time.

Oh yeah, adventure games should be excellent with this! I'll play The Secret of Monkey Island for sure, one of my favorites of all time, but I'll look into Beneath a Steel Sky as well. I think I may have downloaded it from GOG before, but haven't tried it yet.
 
Oh yeah, adventure games should be excellent with this! I'll play The Secret of Monkey Island for sure, one of my favorites of all time, but I'll look into Beneath a Steel Sky as well. I think I may have downloaded it from GOG before, but haven't tried it yet.

If mame is your thing, try a few trackball arcade titles, like missile command, centipede, marble madness, sega sonic arcade, etc.

It will blow your mind and you will instantly understand what this controller is all about.
 
Top Bottom