That was my first impression too, Johnny, but the Steam store page for the controller, under Hardware Specifications - Requirements says “A Steam Machine or other computer capable of running Steam Big Picture Mode, in order to view, edit, save, and share Steam Controller mappings.”
I personally don’t use BPM because it’s one of the shittiest UIs I’ve seen but after further reading it seems that if your computer can run BPM it can use a Steam Controller; can anyone confirm that I have that correct?
The reason I’m asking is because this would be a purchase for my nephew, who lives hundreds of miles away from me. I don’t want to waste my money or his time if he wouldn’t be able to use the thing due to not having a Steam Machine.
My sister is gonna have him check tomorrow on whether or not their computer will run Steam in BPM, btw.
You don’t need a steam machine. Just any windows/Mac PC with Steam installed. You do need to run Steam big Picture mode to load community profiles and edit your configuration.
It’s pretty seamless, IMHO.
Here’s how I do it.
Push the Steam button on the steam controller. Controller makes a little sound (configurable) and turns on. I then push the steam button again, and Steam launches into BPM.
I navigate to my game in BPM and hit play/modify gamepad, what have you.
Once I’m done playing, I hold down the Steam button on the controller, and choose exit BPM. BPM then goes away, I’m back the desktop and the controller automatically turns off.
I’d recommend trying out the top community profiles for whatever you’re playing right now, and just look through the profile. See what they’re doing. Play the game and see if things make sense, and why.
I just got a Steam Controller and boy do I feel buyers remorse. I absolutely can not get it to work with X-Com. There doesn’t appear to be any way to actually configure the controller to do anything.
I can’t seem to make any configuration changes and I can’t seem to load any user templates for the controller.
First (and this should be made clearer to owners - although ti is mentioned) you need ot be running the Steam beta client. Go to properties on Steam and opt in to the beta client.
Make sure you are launching the game from BPM as well. There is a “configure your controller” option in the game menu, when selecting it on bpm. You can download community profiles or create your own from there.
You can also do this in game, at any time, by hitting the steam button on the controller to take you to the Steam overlay, from there you can configure your gamepad. You ca also turn on game pad overlay mode. This shows you what each action on your controller is outputting. Helps when creating a new configuration.
The gamepad also works on your windows desktop, and you can configure this mode in the controllers menu on Steam BPM. I’ve started using the gamepad for relaxed youtube surfing.
I’ve been playing SC 2’s new Legacy of Void campaign with mouse and keyboard, to see how I play with those, I’m going to build a profile tonight and will report back.
Yeah, they *really *need to make this more clear. Most people are just going to plug the thing in and try to configure it as a regular game controller, and fail miserably. Like I did.
I kinda like the thing, but haven’t found a really good use for it, yet. I tried to make it work with Elite Dangerous, but the intersection of a really complicated controller and a really complicated game is a *really * complex control scheme. There are a bunch of user-made schemes, and I haven’t yet found one I like.
So, I ordered the Steam Controller directly from Steam a week ago. Today I got an email that it was ready to ship, but that they haven’t actually handed the package over to FedEx yet. I’m of course used to the turn-around time of Amazon, but this seems really weird in this day and age that it took them a week to get around to putting the dingus in a box. It doesn’t take eBay merchants that long, and some of those people are pretty damned busy, too.
I suppose I could have just bought the thing from Amazon, where I would have saved a $8 shipping fee, but if given a choice I do like to buy directly from the company making the thing. But if Steam is having to lovingly handcraft each one and seal the carton with a kiss, how come Amazon can just fire one at me with a day’s notice? Well, yeah, I mean it has a lot to do with appalling labor practices. I’m aware of that. Still, though, Steam has like three physical products they have to actually take off a shelf and push out the door. Their logistics burden is a lot lower.
Mind you, it’s not like I actually need the damned thing soon. I just picked this month to budget for it. But it’s suddenly weird the first time in years I find myself waiting more than a week for something I didn’t buy from overseas.
Shipping can be really random. I’ve had times where I pre-ordered something off Amazon, and said “Nah, I don’t need it day of or anything, just send it to me free.” (I’m one of the 12 people left in the continental US that doesn’t pay for Prime) No worries, right? The game should arrive, get packed up in a couple of days, and shipped to me.
So I got kinda cranky when it took them TEN DAYS to bother putting the dumb thing in another box and dropping it in the UPS pickup bin. Cranky enough that I actually complained and they gave me a $10 credit.
I got a $10 credit without having to ask when it turned out they could not deliver Fallout 4 to me on the release date. I figured they dealt with a lot of release date delivery angst. Best to get ahead of it. I didn’t feel like my grievance had been righteous, but I didn’t exactly feel guilty taking their credit either.
I’m pretty disappointed with the controller, now. I’ve been playing Fallout 4, and I’ve found that it’s just far easier to use the keyboard and mouse to play it. The touchpad on the controller is too… jumpy, or something. I found myself getting sick from trying to use it to play.
For fallout 4 I’ve had great success setting the right track pad as “mouse-like joystick”. If you’re doing full mouse controls on it, play around with the smoothing. Fallout has never been the best with mouse input unfortunately - which is why I’m using the mouse-like joystick setting (this translates the haptic pad mouse-like movement into analog stick commands so it makes it look to the game as though you are using a standard gamepad but you get a lot better control on the right pad over an analog stick).
I find it infinitely better than a right analog stick, but obviously not as good as a mouse (full mouse controls on the right pad are even better, but with this game…) which is give and take, but given the atrocious state of the rest of the menus with mouse and keyboard, I lived with it.
A couple of years on - how are folks liking this? The link and controller are on sale at Amazon today for 15 and 35 bucks respectively. Presuming that I have no intention of abandoning console gaming, is it still worth getting?
I like the Link- being able to stream my PC to my huge-ass TV is really nice.
The controller, on the other hand… gives me a convenient remote on-button for the Link. I never use it for anything other than that. I just can’t get used to the touchpad.
