SteamOS - SteamWare

I bought myself a Steam Controller as an early X-mas gift. I've only got a few hours in with it so far, but generally I like it very much. The touchpads are silky smooth and don't at all aggravate the thumb tendinitis I sometimes get from analog sticks.

Particularly for games where keyboard/mouse would otherwise be the standard, it blows analog sticks out of the water. I'm not fully adjusted yet, but I expect that by the time I get everything dialed in I'll see something like 85-90% performance compared to a mouse as opposed to 40% with dual sticks. If you're playing super-competitive PC shooters then this is obviously not the right tool for the job, but if you want a viable alternative for kb/m where you otherwise don't have one, the Steam Controller is great.

See Dandain's videos above for how to set up good configurations. Expect to have to do some homework and devote a few hours to get a configuration that you like. This is a new paradigm, and if you expect a direct, out-of-the-box replacement for your traditional controls you're going to be disappointed. There's definitely a learning curve.

I put in a few minutes on Super Meat Boy and it seemed just fine. It's definitely a better d-pad than analog sticks. I haven't tried fighters or anything like that.

The nice thing about this controller is that you can make it behave pretty much any way you want (as long as you can get the right stetting - configuration is a bit daunting and the GUI could use some work). I find that the button action on the touchpads is a little stiff so I have them activate on touch as opposed to press.

With the dual touchpads I like it better as a mouse than the touchpad on my laptop. If it worked on the normal Windows desktop I'm sure I'd use it as the primary input device in bed, on airplanes, or other mouse-unfriendly situations.

Mist_sl said:

Does the Steam controller work well as a retro game controller too? Like games where you actually just want a real d-pad?

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You can make the joystick input as a dpad or a haptic pad input as a Dpad: A haptic pad dpad can be given some extra functions. For example: On Helldivers the Dpad is used like a Dance Dance Revolution input device on the fly. It only wants Up/Down/Left/Right inputs. Diagonals will likely cause accidental failures or double inputs of up/left etc. So, with the Steampad you can tweak the dpad haptic pads to ignore diagonals. So the pad becomes hyper forgiving for this purpose instantly if you edit it, but without that setup exploration it isn't better to start. If you do not tweak the haptic pads to fit your own hand size/grip of the controller, realize you are playing with "default hand size" which might not be accurate to the way the controller fits naturally in your hand if you are larger or smaller than the default setting. If you own Helldivers, my steamcontroller config is 3rd on the list (Rethan's Bindings) if you want to see the difference after playing such a game on default.

This controller is amazing, and anyone who says otherwise doesn't want to spend the time. If you will do setup exploration, you won't regret it.

Utnayan_sl said:

So I fired this puppy up. It's working very well for me. On wireless to boot. 5ghz. No lag. Everything at 1080p streams. I'll try wired next but it's working great on wireless. Very good investment for 50 bucks. I suppose I should grab a wireless keyboard and mouse. This could be a lot of fun. The sound is actually fantastic as well. Of which I am shocked quite honestly.

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A lot of the sound issues got patched about 2 weeks post release. The next thing needs to be you letting everyone know when I get to put a Spartan Spear through your chest in CW for your entire living room to see.

I forgot I need to switch over to my 5ghz network and see if mine fairs better, I get a hiccup occasionally on the 3ghz.

Theoretically, but you aren't making full use of the 5ghz band by any margin. If there is dust in the air, you are losing bandwidth. If you have a microwave anywhere within range, you aren't going to get the full bandwidth. It's a theoretical max throughput concept on that channel, that in practical use isn't anywhere near that. You're probably capping out at 30-40mb (not Bytes, but bits) even with direct line of sight. Wired is currently just going to be better, period.

edit: there was that group in Berkley recently that had insane throughput on a wireless connection. But it was in a super controlled environment with purified air and nothing between the WAP and the device.

AC sort of caps at 100ish, but that's ignoring a lot of environmental factors, and protocol overhead. The 100mbps wired connection is going to be superior. At least on a consistent basis, whereas anytime there's ambient electrical noise you are going to see a dip in the wireless performance. The fact that AC routers even suggest that they get 300+mbps connection speed is hilarious. Yes, they can theoretically get that under absurdly rare circumstances, but the 1300mbps that they advertise is clearly nonsense.

Rezz already covered up but a good rule of thumb to remember is whatever your wired capabilities are is probably the max you will ever see or even get close to seeing. You can basically take you wired connection and half it for your wireless (this gets a little more complicated with gigabit+ but you get the idea) to even begin to think about what you might get out of wireless.

The wireless m5XX line from logitech is solid (Link) and I'm personally using I'm using a microsoft board because I like the layout and it's not "super compact" because while I don't have big hands, I'm not a goddamn lilliputian. (Link

As for trays, I personally just have it on a coffee table in the front of the TV where my media pc is at. Normally I just hit up newegg or amazon (more recently amazon to exploit prime shipping) and then do the standard filter by best rating method and start comparing. I generally do any real heavy typing and crap at my PC desk itself, and I'm usually just selecting movies or shows from the HD before hitting play and then that's normally it. I don't have any gnarly reclining option though, just a sectional couch.

I figured people would like an update to my experience with the steam controller. Here is an exhaustive list of what I've done to date with the steam controller.

Rocket League: Nothing special, but I am the highest rank I've ever been - the controller has been no barrier for performance (~800 in 2's (i just solo queue). I don't use any special bindings as rocket league is perfect as is, if your hands would get mileage out of some rebinds - they are possible.

Fallout 4: This game does not support controller/mouse simultaneous input, I played it on my steamlink and the only way to make the game launch in my other room was to keep my 360 pad plugged in so the game would launch in controller mode. I just used my time in fallout to get used to the haptic pad. When you tweak it to your liking its extremely novel, I enjoyed playing the game on the gamepad. I use vats a lot - and the controller selection is smoother for me than the default pc interface. I was most newb at setting up my games at this point.

Dark Souls 2: Scholar Edition. So dark souls allows simultaneous input, having the mouse camera control on the right haptic pad is hilariously better and super fun to play with. After setting everything up this game played better than expected - superior in fun due to the mouse camera for sure. My only issue in learning the setup was the "flick" to change lock on targets is a bit less tactile than a second joystick - but that's the only part of the gameplay that I thought about as a slight negative. After a while I'll take the camera control feeling over the flick aspect.

Grim Dawn: I've played arcanist/occultist to level 42 on veteran difficulty. I forced myself to use the controller entirely. Grim Dawn has no native gamepad support. I use the left underside paddle as my shift modifier for the face buttons. So that's how I access skills 1-8. Healing potion/mana pot on the shoulders. My right trigger is my left click if I soft pull it my character chases the cursor, if I mouse over an enemy it defaults to a simple ranged spell. If I pull the trigger fully I have the keymodifier to hold position shift or whatever it is. My left trigger is my channeled Aether Ray - its quite sweet to swing with the haptic pads. Skill wise I'm utilizing every arcanist spell but the shitty missles and only hell hound from the occultist. At first I was clearly less good, but after a few days playing with my buddies in a 3 man veteran game I probably play at like 90%+ of my mouse and keyboard proficiency, maybe a little better. Plenty sufficient that I was solo'ing lvl 47's today as 41. Occasionally I would lose track of my mouse cursor and randomly toggle ui elements like the minimap or loot filter. Playing grim dawn lounging out away from my desk is quite priceless.

The parts where there is some less efficient moments. When I die I currently mouse cursor click to hotbar 2 to start up my aura/passives then click back to hotbar 1. This is a mild annoyance, but outside binding one of the keys to figure out a hotbar change its a little less precise than how fast I would do the same process with my mouse. When you need to drag a scroll bar inside of menu systems - This too can be a little bit less than fun, and some inventory management like splitting stacks you can't replicate super fast on the controller. However - for the actual gameplay its novel as hell and my hands are way less stressed by the arpg gameplay. Being able to soft pull a shoulder trigger beats hammering mouse clicks all night.

Wolfenstein: The New Order: I think I've played about 6-10 hours of this - on the 5th (max difficulty) only with my steam controller. My objective with this game was to learn the gyro, and see if I could manage to effectively use it. Lets just say the gyro far exceeded my expectations. This one fact that best speaks to the gyro is that you can set it up so that it only activates when the right haptic pad has contact, so any time you move to the face buttons to jump or what not the gyro wont randomly be doing shit if you merely lift your thumb. Now - for the best fact. The gyro recenters its home position every single time you make new contact with the haptic pad. So you can be lounging feet up with the controller at 60 degrees - and when you touch the pad that's the home position for the gyro you can lift your thumb shift the angle of the entire gamepad and set contact again with the haptic and instantly a new home position. Its just as responsive at any angle you set as home.

Now for the gyro aiming itself, I have a hard time explaining how novel it is, It feels great - its natural and it is precise as hell compared to a second stick. I am an above average FPS player with a mouse/keyboard. I would go so far as to say that if you could play steampad (with mouse inputs) vs xbox one or ps4 controller that the steampad would win by a fucking mile, especially with any aim down sight/sniper style gameplay. Its really a good time.

One of my biggest minor annoyances - is that in games like Dark Souls 2 and Wolfenstein that allow simultaneous inputs is that the help buttons that will pop up for contextual events like picking shit up tend to toggle back and forth from gamepad to controller hotkeys as you use the combined inputs the steam controller supports all at once.

I still love the thing. The fact it can play Grim Dawn in well more than a passable way and its fun has me wicked excited for X-Com 2. Shit gonna be great.

Edit:

Helldivers: A twin stick shooter with hardcore fast paced teamplay. I really enjoy it on my steampad. The dpad is by far superior to the 360 controller, anecdotally, I was infinitely faster than my friends at Call-in DDR but that may not be controller related. I do think its fair to say that twinsticks - well are better on twinsticks. That said - the way it feels on the steampad is sufficiently tight. The extra paddles are really useful and do get some bonus points. I will play my future twinsticks on this pad none the less. Its very fun.