Picking up Steam with the Steam Controller?

Yo.

I'll be posting a few initial thoughts about the Steam controller in this thread. I picked one up and it arrived today, so here are my very early initial impressions.

1 - It feels nice. Reasonably sturdy feel, satisfying clicks everywhere (the triggers have 2 states, so you can press them easily and then a second action can be done when they are pressed fully and 'click'.) The dual trackpads are clickable in different areas, and the bumpers and "back bumpers" have a nice click as well.

2 - The back bumpers as I call them should be on all controllers going forward. Really smart move there as they have a natural position.

3 - The X A B Y buttons feel smaller and harder to reach. It will take some getting used to. The analog stick is also quite close to the buttons, and this area feels a bit cramped at first.

Edit - The buttons aren't really hard to reach after all. They actually are in a natural position where your thumb would rest, so I imagine that's why they are smaller as well.

4 - Rumble everywhere! The trackpads were rumbling when I was using them, the controller makes noise when you turn it on (you can customize it .) Lots of customization to say the least. Going to delve into some old-school RPGs you would normally need kb+m for to see how they play on this controller.

Will post more later after trying some different games.

Sounds interesting, Fluent. Will be interested in your findings.

Originally Posted by Fluent
Yo.

I'll be posting a few initial thoughts about the Steam controller in this thread. I picked one up and it arrived today, so here are my very early initial impressions.

1 - It feels nice. Reasonably sturdy feel, satisfying clicks everywhere (the triggers have 2 states, so you can press them easily and then a second action can be done when they are pressed fully and 'click'.) The dual trackpads are clickable in different areas, and the bumpers and "back bumpers" have a nice click as well.

2 - The back bumpers as I call them should be on all controllers going forward. Really smart move there as they have a natural position.

3 - The X A B Y buttons feel smaller and harder to reach. It will take some getting used to. The analog stick is also quite close to the buttons, and this area feels a bit cramped at first.

Edit - The buttons aren't really hard to reach after all. They actually are in a natural position where your thumb would rest, so I imagine that's why they are smaller as well.

4 - Rumble everywhere! The trackpads were rumbling when I was using them, the controller makes noise when you turn it on (you can customize it .) Lots of customization to say the least. Going to delve into some old-school RPGs you would normally need kb+m for to see how they play on this controller.

Will post more later after trying some different games.

Looks almost identical to my thoughts I posted a while back. The triggers on the back are genius. I agreed and then disagreed about the X A B Y buttons I do find them hard to reach and too small, I'd often hit 2 at once. I'm sure I'd get used to it but why? PS4 controller is by far my favorite and works great so I'll stick with it. At least for action games slower games or turn based work better on the steam controllers track pads.

Fluent I have my steam controller for a while now and use it in conjunction with the steam link so I can play on the couch downstairs away from the computer. I love it! I now play every steam game with it. It is great on turn based games, real time pause but I also use it on action and shooters. It works a treat with Skyrim/Enderal for example and I am loving it with Fallout New Vegas using the dual pads for movement, camera, aiming. My only bugbear is the battery life is finite and charging the batteries every few months or so is slightly irritating. It would be great to have an on board recharging battery. Have you tried it with Lords of Xumila?

Originally Posted by Jaguar
Sounds interesting, Fluent. Will be interested in your findings.

Good stuff. Will keep you updated.

Originally Posted by sakichop
Looks almost identical to my thoughts I posted a while back. The triggers on the back are genius. I agreed and then disagreed about the X A B Y buttons I do find them hard to reach and too small, I'd often hit 2 at once. I'm sure I'd get used to it but why? PS4 controller is by far my favorite and works great so I'll stick with it. At least for action games slower games or turn based work better on the steam controllers track pads.

Well, I purchased the Steam controller in hopes that playing old-school RPGs with it would be much easier than with a PS4 controller or some other controller. I mean, the amount of customization is just staggering, and I don't mean that lightly. I'm not sure if people have really delved into all the capabilities of the controller yet. This is a bit apparent when some games have no custom community mappings yet. But, I think I will dig in myself to the custom mapping and see how it works out.

The learning curve is definitely high, takes a lot of trial and error, but the possibilities here are vast, really vast. But to answer your question, I personally chose the SC over the Dualshock 4 because of its sheer versatility and ways to customize it. It is by far the most advanced controller on the market, and the possibilities of using it with many kb+m games is definitely there.

As for the buttons, I disagreed after my initial impression because they are placed in a very natural position for your thumb, IMO. The small buttons seem to be there to make them easier to reach, but I could see someone thinking they are too crammed or hitting one by accident if they are not used to the controller.

Will dive into a bit tonight and post more later. Stay tuned.

Originally Posted by frewtnewton
Fluent I have my steam controller for a while now and use it in conjunction with the steam link so I can play on the couch downstairs away from the computer. I love it! I now play every steam game with it. It is great on turn based games, real time pause but I also use it on action and shooters. It works a treat with Skyrim/Enderal for example and I am loving it with Fallout New Vegas using the dual pads for movement, camera, aiming. My only bugbear is the battery life is finite and charging the batteries every few months or so is slightly irritating. It would be great to have an on board recharging battery. Have you tried it with Lords of Xumila?

Man, this sounds awesome! Thanks for the positive energy.

Haven't tried it with LoX yet. Good idea, though. I fired up Wizardry 8 to see if there were any custom configs and found one user had uploaded one, but I couldn't figure out the finer details of it just yet. Will have to delve in more tonight.

I did see that games like Fallout, Fallout 2, NWN 2 and some others had custom mappings uploaded somewhere, so I'll have to check those out as well. I also fired up NWN with it and the controller responded fine, but obviously needed to be tweaked to get working well with the game.

Oh, and it is perplexing that they didn't use a lithium ion rechargeable battery. I did hear the battery life is actually very good, though, so maybe they actually got more battery life from the AA batteries in the long run. Anyway, I would have loved to have seen a rechargeable version.

Originally Posted by Fluent
Good stuff. Will keep you updated.



Well, I purchased the Steam controller in hopes that playing old-school RPGs with it would be much easier than with a PS4 controller or some other controller. I mean, the amount of customization is just staggering, and I don't mean that lightly. I'm not sure if people have really delved into all the capabilities of the controller yet. This is a bit apparent when some games have no custom community mappings yet. But, I think I will dig in myself to the custom mapping and see how it works out.

The learning curve is definitely high, takes a lot of trial and error, but the possibilities here are vast, really vast. But to answer your question, I personally chose the SC over the Dualshock 4 because of its sheer versatility and ways to customize it. It is by far the most advanced controller on the market, and the possibilities of using it with many kb+m games is definitely there.

As for the buttons, I disagreed after my initial impression because they are placed in a very natural position for your thumb, IMO. The small buttons seem to be there to make them easier to reach, but I could see someone thinking they are too crammed or hitting one by accident if they are not used to the controller.

Will dive into a bit tonight and post more later. Stay tuned.

Yeah the amount of customization is staggering almost intimidatingly so. As for the buttons it depends on hand size I would guess.

Anyway I'll add my thoughts and a link to a guide that I had posted in another thread in case it helps anyone.

Originally Posted by sakichop
I've had the steam controller since release. Initially it was a nightmare. More recently it works pretty well actually. The right side track pad works equally well for mouse pointer or "analog stick" like traditional controllers. It does usually require a profile and some fiddling to get perfect in some cases.

It's a bit of a conundrum, while it's definitely more precise than a controller it falls well short of a K&M combo. So it's not as good as a regular controller in games I want to use a controller in and not as good as k&m for games I want to use K&M in. It would be better than a regular controller in FPS and RTS but I'd never play those games with anything other than K&M, So I struggle to find a use for it.

Pros:
-Very customizable
- more precise than a controller
- the flipper button on the bottom are awesome and should immediately be added to all controllers.

Negatives:
- it's a hybrid and falls a bit short of both K&M and controller in their traditional uses.
- requires configuration for some games
- 4 primary buttons could be hard to reach depending on hand size

This is all my personal opinion ofc, so others mileage may very.

Originally Posted by sakichop
If I remember correctly you just go to controller configuration and there's an option to browse available profiles, click it, select your profile, click again and it should install.

I'm sure they have done a number of updates since I last used it though. There's a lot of settings though, I have this page bookmarked that's very good for explaining everything.

http://www.pcgamer.com/steam-controller-setup-guide/#

Thanks for the impressions, saki.

This controller is not for a casual gamer or faint of heart. Yet. Less popular games will require you to tweak the controls yourself and set up your own profile. The nice thing about this is that it's very easy to do so. Pressing the Steam button on the keyboard brings up the control layout, and you can quickly change controls here and then test them right away when you exit the menu. I have been messing with Lords of Xulima. There were a couple profiles made by community members, and I took one of them to use as a base for my own.

So far, I've been able to do some pretty neat things. I set up the left trackpad to act as a scroll wheel, so when you are in the inventory you can easily scroll through items. Also, by pressing the trackpad so it 'clicks', I have it set to run a cycle of numbers, in this case 1-2-3-4-5-6. Each number corresponds to a party member, so essentially this is a simple Tab between party members (which wasn't in the base game. If I recall correctly you had to press the number keys to access each member.)

Next, I added a mode switch to the left trackpad. By pressing the right grip (as it's officially called), it switches the mode of the trackpad. Again, you can set any button to pretty much do any of these things. In this case, the mode switch changes the trackpad for combat purposes. Now the 4 directions on the trackpad represent 4 quick slot combat abilities. You can even do more advanced things like bring up a "real" radial menu in the game. The Wizardry 8 profile had the left trackpad bring up an actual radial menu in the game, as though it were designed for it. The radial menu had various in-game options, like Inventory, Camping, Character Sheets, etc.. Amazing, really.

Back to Xulima. I tweaked a bit of the mouse movement on the right trackpad, adding high mouse acceleration and smoothing out the mouse movement. It feels really good after a bit of time with it. I mapped the A button to the herbs menu, X to Inventory, Y to the journal and B to Escape, which acts as an "exit menu" button as well as a "confirm dialogue" button when you are chatting with an NPC. Pretty neat.

Map is the back button, Combat formation is the start button. I also added a neat little feature with the right trigger. A normal press is the left mouse button, but holding the trigger for a longer press activates a double tap. In short, you can equip items and use items in the inventory easier without having to double tap the trigger (just saves a bit of trigger use in the long run. )

I'm delving deeper into it and there is just a ton you can do with this thing. It seems to have a bunch of technical things designed for game developers as well. There are more advanced features that I'd have to look into further to get a grasp of. Thankfully, there are well-written and useful "tooltips" that tell you what most features do as well, so that helps.

So far I am very impressed with it. The "downside" right now is that you probably will have to make your own profiles for less popular games. Wizardry 8 had one profile, Xulima had 2 and so on. I'm sure if you play a popular game there will be many more profiles, but for older games and what not we need to dig in and program the controller ourselves, then share the profile with others. Exporting profiles is easy, just make sure you've tested the profile a bit before sharing it.

I will export this Xulima profile when I'm done with it and let you guys test it. Still just playing around with it and getting a feel for the controller.

Oh, and the controller is noisy. The clicking is "heavy duty" clicking, lol. It feels responsive and sturdy, which is nice.

Not sure about this, but it seems at the Steam overlay doesn't work in non-Steam games. This makes it a bit more difficult to test control profiles. The controller works, though.

Anyone know how to make the overlay work in non-Steam games?

Edit - Apparently the overlay works in some non-Steam games, others not so much. All good. I am working on my first profile. Stay tuned, lots to share soon.

Working on my first "real" profile for a certain old-school RPG. Going to make a video showing off the profile in-game in a bit. Let's just say I am very, very impressed with this thing. Valve is crazy for this one!

Hope I didn't scare everyone off with walls-o-text.

A few more impressions, almost a mini-review, and I'll get right to the point.

The controller is, in short, amazing. However, there are some design quirks. The left trackpad is a little too close to the Back button and possibly the analog stick for my tastes. I end up grazing the trackpad unintentionally sometimes, and if you set the trackpad to a non-click function, you will trigger it with a graze.

It also has a learning curve in terms of using it (I'm not talking about the curve for programming it, which is higher.) The 2 new "Grip" buttons are phenomenal, but they trick my brain at times. I am used to having 2 triggers and 2 bumpers, so I end up freezing for a second when I want to push a Grip button. My first reaction is to pull a trigger. Weird, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

I think the X A B Y are actually great. I haven't pressed any of them accidentally yet, and the right thumb can access them really easily. They feel good to the touch and the smaller button size means, for my hands, there is no reaching needed at all to comfortably push them.

The trackpads feel really good as well. The trackpads themselves are almost flawless in terms of control reactivity. You can do really precise things (mouse control, etc..) with the right settings very easily. The 'clicks' on each trackpad are very heavy-duty, "clicky" and satisfying, almost too much so. I found myself using the trackpad feature more as I really like how it feels and operates, but the operation of the 'click' functions are great as well. When you can add functions to the trackpad and then different functions when you click it, well, it just gets silly in terms of what you can do with this thing.

The triggers feel nice, too. They are as reactive as you want them to be, whether with just a slight pull or a full click. I find that a slight pull, not a full click, in a game where you have to click the left mouse to move is very nice. The analog stick works well and feels good, seems like a typical, high-quality stick, and all of the finer settings of the triggers, bumpers, grips, buttons, stick, trackpads and even the built-in gyroscope thing can be fully programmed and tweaked on a per-game basis.

Overall, I can easily say that it is hands down the best controller I've ever used, both in terms of the feel of the controller itself and the incredible level of function it offers. It's very high quality and well-built all around, and the Steam integration is excellent (programming it is actually much easier than it should be thanks to Valve. The built-in "software" functions impeccably, you can quickly and easy test your control setups and bounce right back to programming it. You can also do fun things like use the controller with your desktop, assign buttons to start Steam, close Steam, etc., and basically control your PC with it if you'd like. Cool stuff .)

There is a problem with it, though. That problem with this incredible controller that Valve has is getting people to actually use it. I'm nearly convinced that it could play any kb+m game comfortably with a little bit of programming (I've already built a profile for a certain game, stay tuned and you'll see .) The thing is, since everyone will use it differently, have different comfort levels and feel with the controller, no single profile is going to work for everybody. So, you will likely need to program the games yourself. *Note - I am talking about playing old-school RPGs with it, PC strategy games and games that typically require a mouse and keyboard. This is why I bought the controller. Playing modern RPGs that have controller support will be a cinch. It's the older games you'll likely have to program the controller, or at least download someone's template and tweak it a bit to your liking. If you are cool with doing that, digging into it a bit, you will be very, very pleased. I didn't think you could actually get old-school RPGs to work on a gamepad, but like I said, I'm pretty much convinced now.

Again, they made it about as easy as possible to program while still maintaining high amounts of functionality and advanced settings. It may seem daunting at first, but a couple hours of tinkering with it and you'll be flying around and setting up your own profiles.

I mean, it's an easy 10/10 from me. Not without flaws and quirks, but the sheer impressive level of functionality and well-built feel make it the best and most versatile controller I've ever had the pleasure of using. I really hope this thing catches on and Valve continues to improve it, because no other controller will be touching it for a long time. At least not for PC gaming. I'm almost certainly going to give my Xbox wireless adapter for my PC to my old man as I don't see myself needing the 360 controller anymore.

Hope this helps you guys.

Note - I still have one huge task to do with the controller - play a sports game. Specifically, NBA 2K. I've heard it works well, but it will be interesting to play a "stick skills" game like that without, well, a right stick. You can emulate the right stick, of course, but we'll see how it goes.

If you have any questions, feel free to hit me with them! Ciao.

My first profile is about done. Takes a kb/m game and makes it work with a controller. Feels good, too.

I think one complaint will be that the trackpads are very close to the buttons and stick. I imagine a large part of that is also due to not being used to the layout yet. Years of brain programming with Xbox or PlayStation controllers needs to be undone.

Everything else is fine. No bugs, surprisingly. Considering how complex the controller and software are, that's very impressive.

Continuing to dive in and I would actually like to see more programming options. There are some very geeky restrictions, like not being able to customize the left stick click when using it as a mode shift. Again, geeky and not a huge deal, but more options would never hurt.

Now if Steam just adds Android support somehow…

My Steam Controller configuration for Neverwinter Nights is now live!

This makes the game 99% playable with the controller. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to get the Steam Overlay to work with the game, therefore the last 1% of the game, i.e. typing letters and words when saving your game or naming a character in character creation, will still require a keyboard. If someone could get the Steam Overlay working in the game or let me know how to get it working, the keyboard function could be mapped to the controller.

Anyway, I've played extensively with this profile and it's not too bad. Playing several hours of the Swordflight NWN module with it as well as extra time testing beyond that and I quite like it. It takes some time getting used to, but after some playing it certainly will replace my keyboard and mouse with this specific game.

Here is a video I made for it showing off the various features on the configuration. It also has important information that you need to know before using the configuration, so I would recommend watching it or at the very least reading the description where I outline what is needed.



Here is a direct link to the configuration. - steam://controllerconfig/neverwinter%20nights/882717779

The link doesn't work in Chrome, but if you open with Microsoft Edge, for example, it will open Steam for you and apply the configuration. You can also find the configuration in the community section.

Hope you guys and gals enjoy and feel free to let me know what you think. Ciao!

Quick update. Added the trackball function to the mouse. It feels really good. Never realized a trackball was that nice to use.

Hoping that Valve (or someone) helps add support for older versions of OpenGL. When that happens the game could be even better configured with the controller and use the Steam features like the built-in controller keyboard, radial menus and more.

There is some interesting information in this thread if anyone is interested in seeing how the older OpenGL games could work better with the Steam Controller. - http://steamcommunity.com/app/353370…1455867862697/

Update time.

I'm using the controller for all CRPGs now. The trackpads are life changing, man. The mouse feels great on the right trackpad, especially when it's set to trackball mode (which is also interesting for me because I never used a "real" trackball all that much, but now I won't make a controller profile without it! )

I'm having no issues accidentally pressing buttons or anything now, and even the issue with accidentally grazing the left trackpad is gone. I guess that is from getting used to the controller and muscle memory.

It's funny, but I even use the SC as an input device for my PC. I'm writing this post while laying in bed with a wireless keyboard on my lap. However, my mouse input is done entirely with the Steam Controller. Also kind of life-changing, especially since the controller just feels so much better to use in this position than a mouse does. The mouse will still be used at my desk, though (for now. )

The one thing I don't like right now is the quirkiness with uploading configurations. Right now you have to play with your config for 15 minutes without making any changes in order to activate uploading, but sometimes I play for an hour and it still won't let me upload it. Working with Steam to get this issue fixed, but it's a bit annoying when you're trying to share profiles and Steam is hating on you and won't let you upload it.

The Desktop configuration is pretty nice as well. I turn my Nvidia Shadowplay recording software on and off with a button push on the controller. I also open Steam Big Picture with a button press, can close Big Picture with another press and then shut off the controller easily as well. Pretty nice stuff overall. I haven't even dug into the more advanced Desktop config features, such as learning to type with the Steam keyboard thing, and haven't even touched Chords or anything more advanced yet.

Also made my first profile for an official Steam game, Ember. It is really easy to do. Hopefully they solve the issue for games that struggle with the Steam Overlay as that would make even non-Steam games and what not much easier to program.

Oh, and the batteries that were included with it are still going strong. I have been using it heavily and that is remarkable. I want to get some nice Amazon Basics rechargeable batteries soon as well for it.

Any questions on how it works or what it's like to use? I'll answer them.