SteamOS

Mist_sl said:

The way they're collecting deeply personal developer feedback about games that people who like real video games play actually makes... makes... makes me think that Valve really cares about video games? This is weird. What am I feeling?

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The jaded cynic inside you is having a seizure

So haptic feedback = vibration based on where your finger is on the trackpad? So if they wanted to make it like a D pad, you slide your finger over to that quadrant, vibration makes it feel like there's a button there, and then you click the pad?

It still seems to me that you'd be far better off with a stick/D-pad on the left side. You generally use the left stick for movement and the right stick for view control. You don't need a trackpad to replace ESDF or a stick or a D-pad. But in games where you both use the right stick and the thumb buttons heavily (practically any action-platformer non-fps) you'd have to have one button act as a toggle to switch the right track from button-mode to stick-mode when you wanted to look around. And one for the left for things typically bound to the D-pad as extra buttons. That's probably what the extra rear triggers would wind up being used for.

But maybe I'm just looking at it the wrong way. The controller isn't replacing the gamepad in games made for a gamepad. It's replacing the mouse in games made for the mouse. You would never use this thing to play Arkham City. (which is a button nightmare by the end of the game. I'd like to see what one of those old control reference cards that used to come with games would look like for AC with all the shortcuts for its gadgets) Look at it this way: The most popular game on Steam is League of Legends. They needed a controller to play LOL on a couch to sell the idea of buying a steambox for the living room. And a new generation of LOL bads is born!

But anyway, don't care, I'm not playing my PC in the living room. My only interest is the idea of an OS for playing games so games run faster. It's something that people have wanted to try since the death of DOS.

My guess is that the Steam controller won't be good enough to replace the keyboard and mouse for competitive games like LoL et al. but neither will it suck at playing games like Arkham City. It will probably fall somewhere in the middle of doesn't fail at anything but masters nothing. Since Valve is trying to make the controller compatible with their entire library it seems they are trying to cast a wide net with this thing. Just my guess; I hope to be proven wrong.

Exactly - they're making a new controller that is meant to be an alternative to both gamepads and M/K, but will of course be inferior to gamepads for gamepad games, and inferior to M/K for M/K games. Game developers (except indies and themselves) have no incentive to develop with the Steam Controller as the main input device, so for those of us with M/K and gamepad available, the Steam Controller will be the inferior choice for a long time.

Maybe they can do some innovative game design which showcases the controller and makes everyone want to copy it in 5 years, but in the short-medium term we will probably still be playing with M/K and PS4/XBone controllers.

Other developers will just take ideas from this controller.

For instance, with the Occlus rift vr equipment becoming more popular, maybe this will be something they will add to that to make it a better experience.

Elerion_sl said:

but will of course be inferior to gamepads for gamepad games

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The guy who made super meat boy says the controller was on par with a 360 controller and he only prefers the 360 because of the amount of time he's already spent with it. Honestly if he can play a twitchy game like super meat boy on it and has no complaints, I have a hard time believing it's going to be inferior.

Super Meat Boy is a two button, one d-pad game. A NES controller would be better for that game than the 360.

Elerion_sl said:

Super Meat Boy is a two button, one d-pad game. A NES controller would be better for that game than the 360.

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Super meat boy has a really tight platforming gameplay though, a controller that does not react rapidly and appropriately would make it impossible to play at the highest level (watch some of the speed runs). I.E. If there was latency from the controller, or if the pads were not precise those details would be reflected in playing meatboy. Given the creator didn't have a problem with those aspects is a good thing - I'm not sure what the point of your post was precisely. But given all games to test controller latency and relative feel - meatboy is a great test game.

Mist_sl said:

The way they're collecting deeply personal developer feedback about games that people who like real video games play actually makes... makes... makes me think that Valve really cares about video games? This is weird. What am I feeling?

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Oh god...Mist was on /v/ the other day.

Dandain_sl said:

Super meat boy has a really tight platforming gameplay though, a controller that does not react rapidly and appropriately would make it impossible to play at the highest level (watch some of the speed runs). I.E. If there was latency from the controller, or if the pads were not precise those details would be reflected in playing meatboy. Given the creator didn't have a problem with those aspects is a good thing - I'm not sure what the point of your post was precisely. But given all games to test controller latency and relative feel - meatboy is a great test game.

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I have no doubts that the Steam Controller will be low latency, and I can easily see the trackpad be just as useful as the 360's d-pad or stick when playing SMB. My point was that SMB is not a typical gamepad game, due to the extremely low number of discrete inputs. As I said - SMB can be played on a NES controller, that's not the case for 99% of console releases out there. I was thinking in regards to your typical AAA console title, which is optimized for using the PS3/Xbox gamepad. The Steam Controller may be able to offer you a similar number of inputs if you tailor it to each game, but the layout will likely be inferior to the gamepad the game was designed for.

a SteamOS makes me think that my next computermightbe a winblows machine, but the one after that will certainly not be.

The king is dead, long live the king.

meStevo_sl said:

Like a modern era boot disk? I just don't see getting so much more performance from a title that warrants installing a separate OS just for that purpose. Maybe when I was in my teens/20s and wasn't able to upgrade my computer at regular intervals and was trying to eek out performance out of necessity. Not so much now, especially with as far as we can tell less than 10% of the Steam library will run on the OS.

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Plus there's that supposed "Mantle" API coming which will work in windows yeah?

will we be able to turn on the machine, log in and NOT get fucking spammed with new steam updates telling us what new games are out and what is on sale ?

Yeah, that one window of relevant ads, which can be removed with a single click and then stays gone until you for some reason reboot steam sure is annoying!

Yeah, I'll never bother with a dual-boot on my machine. That's just too much hassle for a little extra performance. Anymore, I don't care about getting 100fps instead of 80fps in a game. But, once the Steam OS can 100% replace Windows with all the same functionality and program compatibility, I'll be happy to make the switch. Not having to pay $100 for a new version of Windows every few years will be nice.