Steam Controller Diaries

Renzatic on 15/2/2016 at 03:41

Here's another video, cuz I know you all loooooove them so much. Don't expect much. It's just me screwing around, then going crazy at the end, showing off all the neat twirls, and turn-abouts, and whateveryoucallits.

[video=youtube;ZariItPz7mQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZariItPz7mQ[/video]

...oh, I'll find you.

henke on 25/4/2016 at 17:34

I got my Steam Controller today, but I should really give it more time before writing about it, as at the moment I'm having a hard time composing anything that doesn't include the phrase "fucking piece of shit". Dark Souls 3 is difficult enough as it is, trying to play it with a new kind of controller feels like being asked to do it with one hand tied behind my back. Will try some easier games to get used to it. Portal 2 just finished downloading, let's see how that is.

Renzatic on 25/4/2016 at 21:20

First off, are you using the From recommended control schemes? If so, don't. Set it to a default gamepad template with the right pad set as a mouse.

But otherwise, yeah. Like I said, it does have something of a learning curve, and feels very, very weird the first time you play with it. The one thing I recommend you do until you find yourself acclimated to it is to scale your mouse sensitivity down, to the point it doesn't feel like you're spazzing out every time you press your thumb to the thing (you'll be turning it back up slowly the more you get used to it). Turn trackball mode on, with medium friction, friction vertical scale should be dead center, and haptics intensity medium or high (I like having some feedback to it, though YMMV). Under advanced settings, turn smoothing all the way up. Double check to make sure edge spin speed is all the way down.

It takes a bit to get used to, but once you do, you're flying. It's kind of embarrassing watching those videos I posted above, because of how much better I am with it now.

Oh, and I took the trial by fire route when I first got it. Played through the first couple levels of Serious Sam until I got decent enough.

And Abysmal, how do you set the right pad to emulate an analog pad in emulators? I've only toyed with it a bit, but so far, I haven't been able to get it to work.

henke on 26/4/2016 at 05:11

Thanks for the tips!

Yeah it does feel just as clumsy as the first time I tried playing with mouse and keyboard, or the first time with a gamepad. I'll stick with it!

Renzatic on 26/4/2016 at 15:38

My problem has always been that I'm not able to define analog input for the right pad in any emulators, because it's all done from within a window on the desktop, and the controller seems to always want to default to moving the mouse cursor there. If it uses XInput, I could probably hook up my 360 controller, define my keys, and go from there.

And Mouse Joystick isn't entirely unusable, just...weirdly floaty.

Renzatic on 26/4/2016 at 17:56

It seems that XInput only works when you're ingame. While dealing with a modal window, the right pad defaults to its usual mouselike behavior on the desktop. This means it works fine while playing something, but you can't set the right pad specifically as an analog stick.

Renzatic on 26/4/2016 at 19:07

Ha. Setting it to act like a 360 pad on the desktop worked perfectly. Who would've thunk?

henke on 27/4/2016 at 18:16

A couple of questions that you SC experts might have the answers to. I've tried googling this but I'm having a hard time expressing exactly what I'm looking for without getting all rambly, so bear with me.

1. When I start Portal 2, or Dark Souls 3, or any game I guess after having just started the computer the SC seems to work fine, but if I turn off the games and try running them again a while later it's like they don't recognize the SC. Not as a SC anyway, they seem to treat it as a mouse/keyboard. In Portal 2 the right touchpad and triggers correspond to mouse and mousebuttons, but the left thumbstick does nothing. If I go into the in-game edit keys options and try mapping move forward to moving the thumbstick forward it registers it as Up Arrow, and indeed I move forward when I press it in game, but the input is digital instead of analogue. If I press the Steam logo button to see the SC control panel it does display the thumbstick as being for movement, but in-game it doesn't work. DS3 likewise does not recognize the thumbstick. If I restart the computer the SC inputs work fine again, but obviously I don't wanna have to keep restarting all the time.

2. When I use Big Picture or the blue SC control panel, the input from thumbstick or button presses are continuous instead of one at a time. So for instance it's hard to scroll down just one entry in a list without flying down several entries, or when I press A to select Manage Game it'll immediately register the button press as also being valid for Controller Configuration, and then also the Directional Pad subentry in that screen. I kept winding up under the Directional Pad entry when I wanted to get to the controls screen where I can change the configuration and I had no idea how I got there. Likewise if I try to get back to the controls screen a press of the B button will send me flying all the way back to the top menu. If I tap the A or B buttons really fast I can manage to only go one level at a time, but it's pretty fidgetty. It's not supposed to work this way, is it? How can I change it?

Renzatic on 27/4/2016 at 23:02

Sounds like you're now getting into the one downside of the controller, which is that the software does have a tendency to bug out, and ignore your profile entirely. It seems to be something that's been happening a lot more as of late, too.

The good news is once you get into a game, and have it working, it works fine from then on out. You can turn the controller on and off while ingame, and it'll still pick up your profile. Though there are those (not nearly so rare as they used to be) occasions when you'll fire the controller up, start your game, and it defaults to some incredibly spazzy profile that you can't fix with a quick tweak from the menu. What you have to do is turn off the controller, exit the game, turn the controller back on, then jump back into the game again. You don't have to reboot your computer entirely.

One of the easiest ways to spot it is if the haptics rattle is heavier than usual while on the desktop. If it is, just turn the controller off then on again before launching your game. It's annoying as hell, and needs to be fixed, but it doesn't require a lot of effort to get around.

edit: the other way to see if it's working properly is to name your controller something. When it's doing it's thing as it should, you'll see a little badge pop up along the bottom right corner of the screen saying "Matt Controller, using configs from Renzatic". If you see that, you're golden. If not, reset it.

edit 2: for reference, here's my DS3 config. It's pretty standard stuff, with only a few things tweaked to taste.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/SCDefault.jpg) Overall Scheme

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/SCLeft1.jpg) Dpad Main
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/SCLeft2.jpg) Dpad Advanced

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/SCRight1.jpg) Thumbpad Main (I'd suggest dropping your sensitivity down to the default)
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3018396/SCRight2.jpg) Thumbpad Advanced

henke on 29/4/2016 at 04:47

Thanks Renz, simply turning it off and on did indeed fix it. And it seems the Big Picture input problem was related to it as well.