Steam Controller trailer, $50

I have high expectations. At the same time I expect it to have a learning curve, and why shouldn't it have one?

Like when you are start using a wheel for racing games and only used a controller before, you can't assume to be be in more control all of a sudden, in fact your probably worse at first. But with time, the benefits start to show. Therefore I expect a lot of complaints from people that don't know that.
 
So my PC is upstairs and I'd like to get the Link to play downstairs. Does the controller connect wirelessly to the Link or PC? I'm a bit concerned by the 5m range given it'd have to go through walls and floors too.
 
Looks cool but I'm sceptical. The controller looks like it may be great for playing games that usually work on keyboard+mouse, but it looks like it might be quite crap for games that are designed to work with a pad. At the very least, the button positioning looks awkward.
 
DagsJT said:
So my PC is upstairs and I'd like to get the Link to play downstairs. Does the controller connect wirelessly to the Link or PC? I'm a bit concerned by the 5m range given it'd have to go through walls and floors too.
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It connects to the dongle, but the Link might have it included so you won't need to hook the dongle itself up to that. In home streaming currently lets you hook up your controller to either the server or client pc so it'll be the same here. No need to worry about having to connect to the server pc in another room.
 
DagsJT said:
So my PC is upstairs and I'd like to get the Link to play downstairs. Does the controller connect wirelessly to the Link or PC? I'm a bit concerned by the 5m range given it'd have to go through walls and floors too.
Click to expand...

It connects to the Steam Link.
 
DagsJT said:
So my PC is upstairs and I'd like to get the Link to play downstairs. Does the controller connect wirelessly to the Link or PC? I'm a bit concerned by the 5m range given it'd have to go through walls and floors too.
Click to expand...

You can use it with both. Ideally you'll use it with the Link then.
 
Auto-Reply said:
I have high expectations. At the same time I expect it to have a learning curve, and why shouldn't it have one?
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Indeed. The controller solves very real problems and enables comfy couch play for a huge number of games that were thus far mouse and keyboard-only. Yeah there will be a learning curve but it will be well worth the effort.
 
Does anyone know what company is manufacturing this? I doubt Valve itself is actually building it. Also, any word on where it will be made (China, USA, Japan, other...)?
 
Not huge on controllers where I have to take the batteries out, so I'll probably opt for a wired version, which is not a huge deal for me. There are more important factors to me, like compatibility across established genres that may not be overly popular on Steam. If we can comfortably play a Devil May Cry on it, we'll know how much value it has as a traditional controller.
 
Earthpainting said:
Not huge on controllers where I have to take the batteries out, so I'll probably opt for a wired version, which is not a huge deal for me. There are more important factors to me, like compatibility across established genres that may not be overly popular on Steam. If we can comfortably play a Devil May Cry on it, we'll know how much value it has as a traditional controller.
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Devil May Cry should just Xinput, so yeah, should work fine as a normal controller in that instance
 
Zeyphersan said:
Thinking about all the new tech I'm going to have by the end of the year is making me giddy

New computer
New monitor
Steam VR
New TV
Steam Link
Nvidia Shield Tablet
Bunches of Steam Controllers

How am I supposed to play games now with all that on the way?
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You are about to experience as big of a jump as going from 2D to 3D was.
 
Klossen said:
Lack of d-pad is a bummer for anyone playing fighting games on PC with a controller.
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I have a friend who's super curious about how a fighting game would play with this thing. I am too, though I suspect I'll just break down and buy a fightstick before long anyway
 
Krejlooc said:
I assume the TV and monitor eat up the majority chunk of that fund?
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PC: around $2000, give or take. Going with a 980 Ti and 1TB SSD, which ups the cost
PC peripherals: Things like monitor ($800), Vive, controllers, headset, keyboard, router, etc about another $2k+
TV and receiver/speakers: about $1500

Better start saving!
 
Zeyphersan said:
PC: around $2000, give or take. Going with a 980 Ti and 1TB SSD, which ups the cost
PC peripherals: Things like monitor ($800), Vive, controllers, headset, keyboard, router, etc about another $2k+
TV and receiver/speakers: about $1500

Better start saving!
Click to expand...

I went on a VR spending spree about 2 years ago. Sometime this year, a shitload of VR equipment should actually ship to me, including the Virtuix Omni and Sixense Stems.

This should be a pretty fun year.
 
Moon_frogger said:
I can tell literally just by looking at it that I won't be using any touchpad to control movement. Might as well stick to mobile games with virtual analogs or even better, use a touchpad from a laptop to control my games. It's great for all you rightys, and even you lefties that play everything right handed. I however, am strictly left handed and any righty who thinks i can 'adapt' should try playing counterstrike with the mouse in your left hand sometime.
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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.
 
Krejlooc said:
I went on a VR spending spree about 2 years ago. Sometime this year, a shitload of VR equipment should actually ship to me, including the Virtuix Omni and Sixense Stems.

This should be a pretty fun year.
Click to expand...

You gotta do a writeup on the Omni when you've used it for a while. I'm not super into the idea, but my dad is convinced it would be great
 
Krejlooc said:
Just to make sure you understand correctly, there are two separate things which can be reconfigured. The controller itself presents itself in hardware as a keyboard and mouse, and by default, if steam isn't present, it'll revert to a default configuration (the exact keys it maps escapes me, I know the left pad is wasd, the right pad is the mouse, one of the buttons around the face is E, one is enter, one is escape, etc).

If you have steam installed, steam itself will reconfigure the controller according to your mappings. What that means is that you tell steam, "Hey, make the left trigger activate the 'E' key," and when you launch the game, steam reprograms the controller internally. That way, when you pull the trigger, it actually sends the key code for the "e" key. That trigger literally becomes the "e" key.

Now, in game, you have a separate set of mappings - the default binding. So you look up in the list and see that the "e" key maps to "use item." So when you pull the trigger, it sends the "e" key, which the game recognizes as "use item." Now, you can reconfigure the key in-game so that, say, the e key makes you fire your gun. That means when you pull the trigger, the controller sends the "e" key, which the game recognizes as "fire gun."

Or, you could do that backwards. If "fire gun" by default is the left mouse button, you can tell steam to make pulling the trigger send the "left mouse" signal, which the game would then recognize as "fire gun."

Now, since I didn't have steam on that windows 98 computer, it defaulted to the normal mappings, and what I did was just go in-game and rebind the keys. So whatever key gets sent when I pressed the left trigger, I would map that to fire, or whatever.

Now, you surely have seen that valve has integrated community key bindings for the steam controller into steam. What this means is that people will change the way steam programs the controller, under the assumption that people will be using the default key bindings for a specific game. That is, if CoD4 makes "e" the "use" key by default, and most people feel comfortable using the "b" button on the controller as the "use" command, they will make the "b" button send the "e" key command.

If you want to go one step further, sometimes what I will do is make each key on the controller send a key press that resembles the button label itself. As an example, sometimes I will tell steam, "make the left trigger send the left arrow key, make the left bumper send the L key, and make the left grip send the [ key. Then make the right trigger send the right arrow key, make the right bumper send the R key, and make the right grip send the ] key."

Then I'll go in game and remap specific uses to those keys. So like, I'll make the R key fire my gun, the L key activate my ADS, etc. That way, when the game flashes keyboard icons corresponding to actions, the label will resemble the controller. It's confusing when some games will flash "press the Q key to heal" and you look at the controller and think, 'which one of these is the Q key?"

It makes more sense when the game tells you "Press <- to heal" and you think "ah, that's my left trigger!"

Hope that makes sense.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the thorough explanation. I have experience setting up mouse and keyboard emulation profiles for my own control setup so I'm really interested in how the setting up of profiles and configs for the Steam Controller works. I base my configs on the default controls because of how you mentioned people would download them and they will work without having to do any tinkering on the game side.

Your solution for your own configs to make the buttons in-game something analogous to ones on the controller so that your in-game prompts match up is interesting. I expect the biggest complaint when the Steam Controller comes out to the masses is things like Quick Time Events and other prompts not matching directly to a button on the controller. After dealing with this kind of m/kb emulation for a few years now it is still the only thing that can annoy me now and then, an unexpected QTE that has no brain association getting you killed in the finale of a game is a real buzzkill.

An interesting solution would be if the Steam Controller configs you download from the workshop could also edit the ini or cfg files of actual games, and change the kb/m bindings around so that the prompts somewhat match to what you would think they are on the controller. I don't think this would be implemented because it would require so much specification because so many games store those things in different ways, and the possibility of downloading a config that edits your game in anyway and could mess up carefully made settings you have already.

I was actually just wondering what the layout you ended up going with for System Shock 2 was, as in which button did what and which pad did what etc. I would like to see how a game with so many bindings and functions is put onto the Controller so I could predict making my own in the future.
 
Exuro said:
It connects to the dongle, but the Link might have it included so you won't need to hook the dongle itself up to that. In home streaming currently lets you hook up your controller to either the server or client pc so it'll be the same here. No need to worry about having to connect to the server pc in another room.
Click to expand...

Link description says it has internal connection to the controller, so you shouldn't need the dongle. which is a bonus because then I could use the dongle on my actual PC, letting me use the controller on both machines
 
Zeyphersan said:
You gotta do a writeup on the Omni when you've used it for a while. I'm not super into the idea, but my dad is convinced it would be great
Click to expand...

I've used the omni already, I did a few write ups of it over on reddit a long while back. I'll be sure to give a very detailed write up when mine actually arrives. They're actually giving me mine at the virtuix hq here in houston.
 
grandwizard said:
An interesting solution would be if the Steam Controller configs you download from the workshop could also edit the ini or cfg files of actual games, and change the kb/m bindings around so that the prompts somewhat match to what you would think they are on the controller. I don't think this would be implemented because it would require so much specification because so many games store those things in different ways, and the possibility of downloading a config that edits your game in anyway and could mess up carefully made settings you have already.
Click to expand...

For really popular games, however, mod support might allow things like steam-controller specific icons popping up in place of keyboard prompts. That would come down to a game by game basis, however.

EDIT: Also worth noting, you label the buttons in the steam UI per game. So, if you're smart, you'll give the buttons labels of their commands, like "Use Item" or "Fire Gun."

That way, you can just press the steam button on the controller any time to bring up a map of the controls in case you forget what buttons do what.
 
It's nice to finally have bios level access with a controller. Been a huge pain in the pain arse when you're messing with things like the task manager and your controller suddenly stops working.
 
CO_Andy said:
It's nice to finally have bios level access with a controller. Been a huge pain in the pain arse when you're messing with things like the task manager and your controller suddenly stops working.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's something that is crazy. These things are keyboards and mice - meaning I've used the steam controller to navigate my motherboard's bios before. Haha.

These things work everywhere.
 
Krejlooc said:
Yeah, that's something that is crazy. These things are keyboards and mice - meaning I've used the steam controller to navigate my motherboard's bios before. Haha.

These things work everywhere.
Click to expand...
Apologies if this has already been asked but what's the default controls as kbm while in the OS/not in game or steam? Can you use both trackpads as coarse/fine movement for the mouse or just one? And I assume the buttons would just be things like arrow keys and enter if you're doing things in the bios? Can you customize these controls via steam? I understand that you can set controls on a game to game basis via steam, but am interested in how its used/modified for out of game applications like you've mention with the bios.

kami_sama said:
One think I need to know is where the batteries will go in. In the renders, I can't see where they are.
Click to expand...

They go behind the paddles, or at least the protoypes ones have them there.
 
Trailer is really well made. Don't know if i'm ever going to use this but i guess that when it clicks with you (after a steep learning curve) it's going to be a good universal input.
 
I'm so tempted but I'm in no rush (not that October is a rush) to drop £40 on something I won't see for months. I use Steam on my TV and one of these would be great but I'm willing to wait an extra month or two (October to Nov/Dec) to see what impressions are like before I commit.
 
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