I wish the DS4 had AA batteries. The battery life is embarrassing.
Better to keep production costs as low as possible and give us the option. Especially after seeing this.
Steam Controller trailer, $50
- Thread starter Formless
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I wish the DS4 had AA batteries. The battery life is embarrassing.
Better to keep production costs as low as possible and give us the option. Especially after seeing this.
Unfortunately no. When the controller first turns on (i.e. when it gets power from USB) it reflashes the firmware to the default mapping every time. That way you can't get stuck with a corrupted layout or anything.
a very cute dog
Member
I'm confused, but I want it.
Zeyphersan
Banned
I wouldn't say "unfortunately," given that getting stuck with a bad/unusable layout would be terrible, but that is interesting nonetheless
Thanks for your insights
So you used a default template for SS2? Or does Steam/controller remapper run on Win98?
That's my solution. I make sure these profiles are private so that the average person doesn't download them and wonder why the keys don't map to any of the defaults though, haha.
Yeah, I used the default steam controller mappings, and just changed the in-game system shock 2 mappings to feel appropriate with the controller.
EDIT: Now, if I play system shock 2 on my modern PC that has steam installed, then I can change the controller mappings at will through steam and do all sorts of funny stuff.
Also worth noting, these mappings save to your steam profile. So if you to to another PC and log in to your steam account and plug in your controller, all your mappings follow your account.
Crayon
Member
Seriously. Seriously.
"There's no point in the controller".
"There's no point in the os."
"There's no point in the machines."
The POINT is that I can play on a steam machine, on steamos, on a steam controller while you play on a self assembled pc, at a desk, with a mouse, on windows, with antivirus and we can play together. There's nothing to fight about.
The conversation about steam machines has been really defined by the lack of marketing message attached to the initiative. I find it as frustrating as it is refreshing. Frustrating thanks to the reactive braying from naysayers which goes essentially unchallenged. Refreshing because there is really no platform for them to push against. It's a kind of insanity for a company to just put out a whole system of useful shit and say "take what you can use" but that's what we have here.
Nope, no clue when it will be either. Seems like it will be limited launch to begin with.
Edit: This is all I got in an email from them: "the new Steam Hardware devices are targeted to arrive in North America and Europe this fall."
Love it, haven't really thought about the Steam push "correctly" until reading this series of posts
Zeyphersan
Banned
Hmmm, interesting. So I would just set my controller flashes to buttons that make sense in my head, then rebind the controls in the game itself to what's comfortable to play, even if it looks batshit insane
Pre-orders are refunded, no questions asked. Valve recently rolled out game refunds as well. Any game can be refunded within two weeks with less than 2 hours play time.
When this was initially being discussed, Valve showed a demo of prompts changing to your custom settings in game.
I wonder what happened to that.
Black_Stride
do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Nope.
Its a fucking godsend
Off Topic
What was that twin stick shooter shown in the trailer?
Looks like something i might enjoy with my girlfriend.
Right. Naturally I map the face buttons to A, B, X, and Y. Enter and escape to start and select.
It makes you appreciate when games let you save your controller settings under a name, I'll tell you that. It's cool to be able to save an in-game controller setting as "Steam controller" and just toggle it on or off depending on if you have the steam controller present. If the games allow it, I'll have a normal Keyboard and Mouse layout, and steam controller appropriate layout.
Assault Android Cactus?
Zeyphersan
Banned
Assault Android Cactus
Oh right, because then if I switch back to a normal kb/m everything is fuuuuuuuucked
It just wasn't feasible considering the infinite number of ways a game could store its in-game settings. Sony's solution works because the button presses were called to the system by nature of the way the PS4 works. They could change button mappings in software without a middleware solution in between the hardware and the OS inducing latency. Valve couldn't really do that outside of Steam OS because they don't have that ability with windows. So they went about everything from the opposite direction - they made the hardware itself change depending on the situation.
It's a really smart and clever way to solve their problem. Universal PC input is no easy task, as someone who has dinked around with middleware solutions for decades. I think a lot of people are going to be impressed when they get their hands on these controllers simply because they work. Like, without fail, they just work on everything.
So do I. Valve used to take random surveys about the controller when in Beta, and I would always give these extreme thorough breakdowns of what I thought worked and didn't. And I would always include a bit where I championed AA batteries because of all the reasons other people have said in this thread. It really sucks when a controller dies forever because it's rechargable batter no longer holds a charge. I like being able to replace the components of my hardware that will eventually run out and stop functioning. That, to me, is smart design.
Besides, those rechargable packs are sometimes nothing special:
Me too. Pre-ordered on Steam but now I'm wondering why. At nearly $120 for both when you can get a Shield console now at $200 and it's potentially better (who is going to be better at streaming - the GPU maker or the game platform?)? Although the Steam one will definitely be more versatile (I.E. support for AMD) - it's also a one-note platform versus the Shield console which can stream games, movies, TV, music, etc. etc.
I guess it'll be a "why not both?" situation for me. Heh.
matrix-cat
Member
Can someone explain how that 'effortless typing from a couch' works? I couldn't work out what was going on in that bit.
It looked like they were using both track pads simultaneously to type a message.
King Gilga
Member
I've never ever had to charge a controller while playing, even with the DS4's shit ass battery life.
I'm not dealing with fucking AA batteries in 2015, plain and simple.
And nothing I use uses them either, except the wiimotes I keep around for the cousins, and the tv remote.
matrix-cat
Member
King Gilga
Member
It took me all of 5 mins to replace my DS3's battery with a better one for $5 from ebay, it's not rocket science.
BannedEpisode
Member
Bought the bundle, although I was surprised there was no discount for it.
Seems very un-steam like.
Seems very un-steam like.
Ohh, then i don't know. sorry.
You're willing to order shit from Ebay and disassemble and reassemble controllers to replace their built in battery packs, but dealing with AA/AAA batteries is too large a hassle lmao? How is swapping out batteries that much more labor intensive than plugging in a USB port. It's like 15 seconds out of your day.
When you move to an appropriate text input field, a floating pop up keyboard appears on screen that has two small circular cursors on it:
The two haptic touchpads reside on large physical buttons (that is to say, they are basically touch pads that sit on a huge button so the entire thing can be pressed like a normal controller button). When you press either touchpad button, it inputs whichever key the cursor is currently over.
Now, the secret to why this feels so good is because the keyboard itself is split into two halves:
Each half of the keyboard corresponds to a 1:1 mapping on each touchpad:
You basically move your fingers over the touchpads to press where the key would be if it were actually there.
And when they no longer manufacture that battery in, say, 20 years?
matrix-cat
Member
Oh, OK. That does sound pretty cool. I'd definitely like to get my hands on one of these things at some point.
This is what they meant at Steam Dev Days when they said they realized mirroring the touch screen onto the screen and just using the touchpads your fingers were over was more wise. This feature would have originally have been mapped to the touch screen.
Crayon
Member
So... you are rolling or sliding your thumbs on the pads, and as you do so it will highlight the keys you are "touching" on the onscreen keyboard. When one of your thumbs finds the right key, you press down a bit to press the key. All this is communicated to you with little buzzing motors under the pad, kind of like how an android keyboard buzzes when you hit a key.
Yep. But it's a more nuanced explanation. A few people earlier in this topic thought you were dragging cursors around the keyboard with two fingers, which is markedly less efficient. They didn't comprehend 1:1 mapping in this instance.
Yes, with one major difference - they keys are mapped 1:1 on the touch pads. meaning the Y key is physically in the top left corner of the right touchpad. This provides a degree of proprioception in our thumbs, letting people touch type.
Also, as you roll around the keys, the haptic feedback in the touchpads let you feel as you 'click' over keys. It feels like spinning one single click up or down on your mouse wheel, kind of. So you can actually feel how many keys you just rolled over.
It's weird and pretty much unlike many other input devices out there, but it works.
King Gilga
Member
Yes? It was one time, and far far far far outweights the annoyance of having to rechange AAs every couple days.
AAs are annoying, taking them out is annoying, holding them is annoying, charging them is annoying, taking them off and putting them back in is annoying. Remembering where I put other ones is annoying, having a charger is annoying and adds clutter, having spare AAs adds clutter.
I don't need or want any of that in my life.
Comparing that to the ease of just plugging in a usb port is lol worthy.
I have to charge my ps4 controllers every other day..
My xbox one controllers last forever.
I would rather have the AA
Jzero
Member
You've never used good batteries then. I used to hate batteries as well until I started using Eneloops.
I guess 2005 was a great year then. Valve and Microsoft nailed it there, the other batteries will eventually die and be a pain to replace, with AAs it's a lot easier to replace even if the battery life isn't as great. Too bad Nintendo and Sony didn't take that route.
thoseAREmySHOES
Member
The trailer sold me, I'm in.
Ahhh cool.
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can i ask you a question about the steam controller Krejlooc, cause you very knowledgeable about it.
Umm, how do i ask this, even though i haven't touched any of the designs, the "dog" prototype seemed better because it had the four face button instead of the analogue stick.
So i guess my question what do you think about the change, if you don't mind me asking.
Sorry if this seems like a dumb and rambley question, i just really liked like the look of it (the button placement), compared to the final design.
For anyone who is curios, this is the dog prototype.
BuffetChamp
Banned
The analog stick is diagonally left to the right upper analog. Hmm. Like they took an idea from the X1 pad,reversed the stick order,but taken to another level with an all analog over to the right side. Already like the X1 pad allot so I'm gonna be buying this one when I see it. New blood and new ideas for a next gen pad, good to see Steam get this out there. I want one.
Ahhh cool.
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can i ask you a question about the steam controller Krejlooc, cause you very knowledgeable about it.
Umm, how do i ask this, even though i haven't touched any of the designs, the "dog" prototype seemed better because it had the four face button instead of the analogue stick.
So i guess my question what do you think about the change, if you don't mind me asking.
Sorry if this seems like a dumb and rambley question, i just really liked like the look of it (the button placement), compared to the final design.
For anyone who is curios, this is the dog prototype.
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:
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:
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.
Sylverstone14
Member
I'm interested, though skeptical. Hopefully I'll have a chance to try one out in the next six or so months.
Rechargeable AA batteries? We have them in 2015.
Two thumbs up. Preach.So do I. Valve used to take random surveys about the controller when in Beta, and I would always give these extreme thorough breakdowns of what I thought worked and didn't. And I would always include a bit where I championed AA batteries because of all the reasons other people have said in this thread. It really sucks when a controller dies forever because it's rechargable batter no longer holds a charge. I like being able to replace the components of my hardware that will eventually run out and stop functioning. That, to me, is smart design.
Besides, those rechargable packs are sometimes nothing special:
I mean I'll replace the built in battery packs without a problem when they die, but I'd much rather just swap from my large pool of always ready rechargeable AAs.