EvoMaldonado
Banned
Does anyone know if this can be used with emulators like ZSNES or Dolphin?
Steam Controller trailer, $50
- Thread starter Formless
- Start date
It can, yes. And since the trackpad is a mouse you'll even be able to emulate the pointer on Dolphin, and most likely it will be possible to use the motion sensor in games like New Super Mario Bros and Mario Kart.
Thanks for helping me out there.
Infinite Xero
Member
2015 and I need AA batteries to (wirelessly) power my game controller. Why Valve, why?
JoeyJungle
Banned
And the triggers click in just like the gamecube controller! Perfect for Dolphin!
charlequin
Banned
Get regular eneloops. The pros are pretty much tailored to provide a longer charge in high-usage devices like cameras, but their lifespan is reduced in the process and they can sometimes actually drain faster in lower-charge devices like controllers.
Because controllers that use AA batteries are better than controllers with internal batteries that need to be charged through a cable.
Chance Hale
Member
My Xbox One controller lasts over 30 hours before I have to put in my other pair of enloop batteries which I have charged and ready to instantly keep going. My Dualshock 4 lasts 5-6 hours if I'm lucky and then takes around 2 hours to fully charge again.
Batteries are the way to go in controllers.
SirMossyBloke
Member
Not when you have a power outlet right where you sit. Unless the controller allows you to charge the batteries through the cable. Then it's win/win.
Refreshment.01
Member
?????????
Left thumbstick > brakes
Right Thumbstick > accelerates
What are the opposite actions on the same inputs you are talking about here?
Four buttons + 2 clicks = 6 inputs total (8 on the Steam controller), between shoulders and Thumbsticks push actions (plus 2 Paddles in Steam controller). 6/8 inputs withouth the need to move your thumbs.
King Gilga
Member
Because using the same stick to both steer/control your camera as well brake/accelerate is not a fun time.
It may have a shitty battery life but I've never played a game long enough to even get sub 30% on a DS4, AA's are categorically worse for me, and I hate them.
But it only takes like 10-20 mins to charge, but I plug it into my wall socket phone charger so yeah.
charlequin
Banned
Plug the battery charger into the power outlet, swap the batteries when they get low?
AsfaeksBR
Member
That's because the DS4 has a touchpad in it, and that thing sucks energy like mad. People usually think it's the lights, but their Energy usage is almost none compared to the touchpad.
I bet that the DS4's battery would last the same as the DS3 is it didn't have the touchpad.
Refreshment.01
Member
What's up with all these asumptions? Who said you would be steering with the thumbsticks?
Because it's better.
SirMossyBloke
Member
Or not have to buy batteries at all and just plug it in and not worry about swapping?
All I need to know is that I can charge the batteries from the USB port and I'm happy.
Can I?
Edit: btw personally my plug is behind my couch. Moving my couch to swap batteries is...not ideal. Also, a shit ton of people play at a desk by a PC with USB ports which could also charge a controller. Just seems backwards to me. Or a choice, battery back or swappable batteries, like the 360 controller.
Cool cool. Thanks for the heads up.
Do you have any recommendations for a really good charger. ?
My big beef with a dedicated battery is they lose performance over time. A lot of people are going to be complaining about how their launch PS4 controllers only work while plugged in a few years from now. If you got AAA rechargeable so, just swap Ina new set and you're good to go.
SirMossyBloke
Member
A very fair point. A choice would still be nice though.
King Gilga
Member
^ It's basically 0 effort to replace built in batteries in controllers, every 7 years or w/e.
That's a good point, if I could recharge AA's without have to take them out and put them into a charger I wouldn't be fussed either.
That's a good point, if I could recharge AA's without have to take them out and put them into a charger I wouldn't be fussed either.
mattiewheels
And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
I remember Skyward Sword being one of the hardest ones to play with a controller because of the control design, could the customisablity and the motion sensor make it perfect for SS? If so I'd finally be able to buy that one.
I don't think so. Skyward Sword and other Motion Plus games are tricky because they read the inputs almost 1:1. Maybe people will figure out a way to use it, but I can't see how it would be confortable enough.
I'm saying that not because of the tech inside the controller, but because of the diffence in physical layout between the Wii Remote Plus + Nunchuck and this controller.
visiblemode
Member
Yet the Wii U pro controller lasts like 80 hours with an internal battery.
These comparisons are meaningless. Battery size and controller demands are way too variable.
For the record, to me, built in batteries are by far the best. I despise messing with rechargable AA's.
I'm thinking people's best bets for this will be mapping Plus gestures to buttons. Somebody could probably get it to work.
charlequin
Banned
Ok. thanks again.
grandwizard
Member
It wasn't the dual sticks that made shooters work on console, it was the autoaim. They are still just as bad to control on dual sticks as they always were, it's just that they learned to fudge the aiming so that people can actually hit things. Either via sticky aim or snap-to on ADS. Before they did that this is how dual analog shooters were thought of:
Any control scheme that requires such levels of artificial assistance simply to be playable is not the right control scheme for that type of game. Dual analog has been an outdated standard since 3rd person platformers went out of fashion.
Refreshment.01
Member
Exactly.
This is something that goes flying above the heads of many people that disliked motion controls. With a Wii Remote you are actually aiming, same with the Gyroscope assist we see in a controller like the Gamepad. i would have gladly sacrificed some of the conventions ("advantages") we got used to with the dual analog setup in shooters, if developers would have build shooting games with these type of aiming controls in mind.
Auto aiming was a neccesitty to adapt the genre to a less than ideal input method for pointing. Golden Eye did a fantastic job for it's time but even that game had an assist less aiming mode. Some shooters today have aids in all aim modes, like snapping when ADS.
The PC only games we'll be able to play with the Steam controller will relay on the player's ability to master the trackpads, instead of relying on aids for the player to hit something.
SirMossyBloke
Member
whatyearisthis.jpg
I've been playing shooters with a controller for years and NEVER use autoaim (at least in games that don't force it) and I never have an issue aiming or getting the target.
If this isn't a pure "git gud" post I don't know what is.
How it started, you may have a point, but now? Jesus no.
grandwizard
Member
Almost all shooters on console have auto aim. People always say they don't use auto-aim just because they are used to how it feels or they have the option off in options, but there is still aim assistance built into the game to make it playable. Test it yourself, find a friend and go into a private online game on opposite teams, have him stand still and roll the crosshair over him at a constant speed and watch it slow down. Also try aiming down the sight near him at varying distances to see where the snap-to engages.
While I don't necessarily agree with the post you're quoting in every aspect, it's not a "git gud" post. There's some degree of auto-aim and stickiness/magnetism (reticle slowing down when drawn over targets) in most console shooters. Halo, for example, has it, and has no way of disabling it. See here: http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Auto-Aim. Sure, you can turn it off in other games and do just fine, but there's no denying that most of them have it designed around it or turned on by default.
Crayon
Member
But in games with no autoaim, the sticks work. I play tf2 for instance with a ds3. I can hit people just fine. It is a fuckton harder to get to that point tho. The mouse is way more intuitive than a stick for looking, and i think this inflates the percieved difference in speed and accuracy.
ultrazilla
Gold Member
So is the steam controller that much better than my
PC xbox 360 usb controller? Not sure it's that
revolutionary where I need one...
PC xbox 360 usb controller? Not sure it's that
revolutionary where I need one...
Rodney McKay
Member
If you want to play PC games that don't already support controllers (older PC games, RTS games, etc, then yes this is better than a 360 controller.
Digital triggers feel like poop. At that point you may as well fish a turd out of your toilet and play with that instead.
Both. Halo pioneered the "sticky aim" method of lowering the sensitivity when the reticle is over an enemy, but it also has a slight amount of what most people think of as "auto aim", where the game will literally pull your aim towards a target and alter the trajectory of projectiles if they're slightly off target. It's a lot more obvious when you're on a vehicle with weapons.
It's roughly 100x as hard as swapping out AA's though. It may not be "hard", but I'm not incredibly enthusiastic about buying sketchy no-name batteries from the web and taking apart my controllers to replace the battery.
It's a coin flip if the no-names are of OEM quality. And replacing AA's takes all of 45 seconds. To me, it's a lot more convenient than the PS4's internal battery, because I may be at the couch, far away from the PS4 with my barely charged controller.
Neither is a deal killer, but it just seems to me that AA's are so much more flexible of an option, I don't understand how people can prefer internals.
robertlebrone
Member
If you pre-order the controller through Steam are you charged now?
Crayon
Member
Wow at the battery war again. Incredible passion for years on end. I once thought I had a strong preference for a built in battery but it turns out I dont really give a fuck because you people redefine 'strong preference for x battery'. I suppose Ill take any reasonable battery.
Here's a hint: compare your first sentence to your second one.
I don't think anyone is saying or even implying that dual analog made things worse than if consoles never implemented it and kept using the D-pad all this time. Obviously, analog sticks opened up a lot more possibilities for console games.
What people are saying is that gaming should have outgrown dual analog by this point. It was the best technology that was practical back in the 90's. Now, it's literally the least precise method of cursor control available. You can use a mouse, trackball, IR camera, gryo sensor, or trackpad to aim and any of of them will be far superior in both speed and precision.
People are too stubborn and insular to let dual analog go and try new input types. The Wii remote is a prime example of this; it was a revolutionary controller for shooters, yet most of the hardcore FPS crowd on MS and Sony systems lambasted it as a shitty controller without even trying it.
The only thing dual analog still does well is the left half of the controller. An analog stick is fine there, and I would argue that it's preferable to any other input. This is why the Steam controller still has an analog stick on the left, because so many critics didn't like the trackpad for character movement. For blunt directional movements, dual analog works great, much better than the arrows on a keyboard. It's the right half of the controller that desperately needs to evolve. Again, the Wii remote made a lot of progress in this direction.
Iced_Eagle
Member
Do you really think auto-aim was put in as the same time as dual analog sticks? No.
Auto aim was around long before that, both on PC's and on consoles. On PC, it was extremely prevalent before the mouse became mainstream. Many PC games to that point handled the vertical aiming on your behalf, and you just needed to rotate the character.
Same thing once FPS games started coming to consoles, with a single stick you moved and they handled the vertical movement (aka, aiming on behalf of the player) for them.
The dual analogs were thought of as crazy because it was a lot of joysticks and buttons to have, and be using at once. Think about it, to that point, only one hand was controlling movement, and the other just handled firing, reloading, etc. Now with two analog sticks, both hands were required to be used at all time. Not to mention, how could you even aim and use the face buttons at the same time?! It was madness everyone thought, but everyone adapted because it gave you a greater sense of control than the single joysticks before it. Plus, over time controls became fairly standard, so a players knowledge of a FPS game became fairly easily transferrable between games.
The reason auto-aim exists though is because a joystick is a first-order input device. A mouse (zero-order input device) can map 1:1 with what your camera is doing (position), whereas a joystick is based on relative motion (velocity). Flick your mouse fast to the left, your camera rotates extremely fast to the left. Flick a joystick to the left, and you'll get some motion, but once the joystick returns to the center, you'll stop moving.
It's unfortunate that you see this as so black and white. Each type of controller has strengths and weaknesses. At the end of the day, all that matters for a game controller is does the player feel successful, and are they having fun. Joysticks are better at some things than KB/M, or even the Steam Controller. Steam Controller will be better than Joysticks at some things, and M/KB will still be superior in others.
Every controller has its strengths and weaknesses. Yes, the Wii remote and Move were very precise when it came to pointing, but it was a pain when it came to rotating the character as you couldn't do direct mapping since the players still had to face a screen. However, this is why the Move is making a comeback with regards to VR -- that problem is no longer an issue with VR since they are wearing a headset! It will be the primary controller for Morpheus. However, for day to day PS4 use, the Dualshock will still be king, and it's not because of a lack of software supporting it.
I get what everyone's argument is, that a joystick isn't as precise as other methods, which is true. Like I mention above, a joystick is a first-order input device so obviously it won't be as precise as a zero-order device. However, there are a whole lot of considerations you need to take into account beyond just precision. It's a game of trade-offs between what type of controller you use, or research, and dual-analog sticks have a good set of trade-offs for existing technology and games. Now, the Steam controller is coming along and it will have a new set of trade-offs. Maybe it will succeed, maybe not, but I do agree it's worth trying something new.
grandwizard
Member
I didn't say auto-aim was around since dual sticks were, I said it was crucial to shooters taking off on consoles. Goldeneye and Perfect Dark existed, yes, with their autoaim, but it wasn't until Halo and its control scheme and generous sticky aim that opened the floodgates to shooters on console. The dual stick design had been around for years by then, but their mix of sticky aim and magnetism made shooters fun and easy to pick up and play for a critical mass of people and opened up an entire new genre to be exploited on the huge market of the consoles. When COD came and popularized ADS and snap-to that helped even further.
If they never implemented aim assistance, shooters on a console would still be thought of as a joke like they were in the late 90s, not the dominant platform for them as they are today.
Iced_Eagle
Member
That was showing a more mouse-like style of camera movement. However, you can configure it to act more like a joystick.
There will be tons of different control schemes for games available I'm sure.
Ah, I see.
If you look at 0:47 in the video you can see it was mapped as "Joystick camera" before but was changed to gamepad+mouse hybrid. It can also emulate trackball I think.
A really good way to feel what a shooter is like without auto aim is to play with a friend in a private game, but set yourselves to the same team (as team mates don't have auto aim applied to them) and see how hard it is to get a kill.
I actually think it'd be interesting to have a console multiplayer shooter without auto aim, since it's not a totally worthless control scheme by any measure (it's just worse the KB&M), it'd just be fun to compete on who is legitimately best with a controller. Though now that I think about it, maybe that actually wouldn't be fun, I remember playing PDZ and thinking that it might not have auto aim, due to how annoyingly difficult it was to hit anything. That game sucked so bad.
Looking forward to the Steam controller anyway, it'll be interesting to see how possible it is to compete in fast FPSs like TF2 and Quake Live.
lukeskymac
Member
I'm as excited as anyone about the prospect of the touchpad being better for aim than a stick, but could we please leave this "people only play shooters on consoles because of autoaim" bullshit out?
IIRC Shadowfall has no autoaim.
IIRC Shadowfall has no autoaim.