So this is new (Steam Controller)

[Dralnalak]

Tommy Refenes of Super Meat Boy has a detailed analysis of the testing he got to do with Valve on their new controller posted on Gamasutra. He goes into detail about how the current controller prototype feels. As someone who also feels that good vs. bad controls make or break a game, I found his analysis an interesting read.

[agentwiggles]

I'm very skeptical. Don't get me wrong - I think it looks cool, and I understand what they're trying to do with it. But it's a major departure from what I'm used to, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, it's definitely got a lot of potential negatives.

The Xbox 360 controller is one of my favorites of all time, and the fact that many PC games have been supporting it (even to the point where it's the recommended way to play certain games) has been a major point in its favor. If they had made this controller with the added touch features and stuck to a similar layout (two thumbsticks, non-shitty D-Pad, shoulder/face buttons), I would be on board immediately, but the trackpads, while cool conceptually, just don't do much for me. Have you ever tried to play a platformer on a touch screen (ala League of Evil, Cheeseman, and similar android games)? It just doesn't have the response and physical feel that a controller does, and that's where I see this thing going wrong.

Edit: I will say that I feel a little better after reading the article linked above, but I'm still skeptical. Just a little less so now.

[Zhil]

The Xbox 360 controller is one of my favorites of all time, and the fact that many PC games have been supporting it

You mean to say: PC games all support it, but no other controllers, so you have to go and get third party software to be able to play any other brand of controller :/

Fuck the x360 controller, it made devs lazy.

[Mikko_blu]

It's kind of really ugly for a controller. I applaud valve for trying to be innovative, but to be completely honest, it seems like a little too much.

[agentwiggles]

You mean to say: PC games all support it, but no other controllers, so you have to go and get third party software to be able to play any other brand of controller :/

Fuck the x360 controller, it made devs lazy.

I don't have any issue with it since it's a well-designed controller which I like. Sure, it's theoretically ideal to support whatever controller the end user wants to use, but the 360 controller has a big edge on the competition given that its supported by MS and has already gained purchase as a go-to gamepad for PC given its ease of use and wide availability - especially since many gamers are already going to have one in their house.

Right or wrong, its a good controller, and I don't have to fuck around with anything to use it, so, concessions to perfect-world scenarios aside, I'm pretty happy with the current situation with regard to the growing, default case support of the controller for many PC games.

[FlowerChild]

Fuck the x360 controller, it made devs lazy.

You say "lazy", I say more time to work on other stuff :P

[Sarudak]

You say "lazy", I say more time to work on other stuff :P

And by other stuff you mean like the actual game? :P

[jakerman999]

You say "lazy", I say more time to work on other stuff :P

For an independent developer, or a really small studio, I completely agree. If they support xbox controllers at all it's more than expected, and users can turn to third party software to make other controllers compatible.

But for large studios that make triple A games? I highly doubt that time management is the only or even a large concern in regards to controller support. I spent three days (coding for about 14 hours total) making a virtual controller that remapped inputs from the signals given by the controller I already had. I'm confident a seasoned programmer with some experience in hardware and drivers could have done so in half the time, and without taking anything away from the designers. More likely reason's for only supporting Xbox controllers are deals with Microsoft, or because the libraries were readily available.

But everything other than my own code is pure speculation(read: theoretical wankery). I don't know what it's like for 50+ people to work on a project at once. I'm probably missing something.

[Zhil]

You say "lazy", I say more time to work on other stuff :P

So, fuck all consumers with better controllers than the x360 controller? Fuck all consumers with old controllers? That's a bit harsh. If you go by that, they could start making games that only support NVidia. More time to make a good game, right?

My point is just that I consider how gamers physically handle your game (through input), vitally important. It's one of the areas where I would say more is better. You want to make it easy for them to find the best way to control the game. That means writing your input code as free of assumptions as possible, allow simple configuration of controls (most games these days don't allow you to remap the controller).

Big part of the reason why Counter-Strike was so big, was because it even allowed a scripting system for the controls, so players could write their own macro's. I used to play it at a decent level and we were ALL running custom configs to allow all sorts of interactions with the game.

And yeah, as you can tell, this is a pretty big deal for me :). I find core user interaction with the game just as important as game-play, so, to me, there's no "better" place to spend the time. The "other stuff" is going to be less important and probably meaningless video tweaks. It's just silly that most games these days feature multi-page video config screens, but don't allow a simple button remap.

[FlowerChild]

Depends on the game man (like if you're making a flight sim, then yeah, supporting various controllers is key), but if I'm willing to consider ditching something as important multiplayer for my own game, then yes, I'm more than happy to ditch support for rudder pedals :P

I agree that tight controls are extremely important, but I think there's a limit to how far you're willing to go in supporting anything before it starts detracting from other aspects of a game.

One of the big advantages of developing for consoles vs PC (and I've done both professionally) is that you're dealing with standardized hardware and thus can focus on designing and creating a solid player experience on a single know hardware configuration. Yes, options are often nice for the player, but hell on developers.

And come on man...you can't see them working on anything better than graphic settings? You know better than that. How about anything else in the game? It's not like making a game of any size leaves you with oodles of time to just devote to your options menu. Are you under the impression that most teams have a dedicated options programmer whose only task is to deal with stuff like that? I've never seen that be the case in practice.

I think calling anything in game dev other that not producing anything at all "lazy" to be harsh. You seem to be looking at this from a player perspective where you want to be able to use any controller you like. I'm looking at it from a dev perspective where I view any form of standardization that allows me to focus on other things (like actual gameplay) with a "thank the gods" attitude.

[delax]

Something I think will be very interesting is how many ways you can customize touchpads/touchscreens compared to preset buttons, and that it could be changed on the fly.

Use left pad as like a left stick, responsive to touch, and the right pad as a d-pad, responsive to clicks.
Go into a menu, now the pad is a dial to move the selection up and down, with higher precision towards the edges.
Switch to manual sword mode, now the right pad is gesture sensitive allowing you to control the movement of a sword by making similar movements on the pad.

... I don't know, that's just off the top of my head, but the simple possibilities are much larger than with a pair of joysticks


If we're judging by their most recent product, DotA 2*, don't go expecting a perfect product first thing and they won't either.
A long 90% working beta period sounds like just the thing, tweaks and user input is a must.
Hell, if it really is as moddable as they say they want it to be they could release literal patches to fix/update your hardware (or at least provide freely available official directions to do so) as they go along.
I doubt that major physical patches are feasible though...

footnote:
*A terrible comparison on several levels: game vs controller, f2p vs paid, update vs innovate, automatically collects data on problems vs user manually sends data on problems, etc. But it makes my point about the beta period.

[MoRmEnGiL]

Regarding the gamepad thing, for some people (like me) the xbox controller is hideous and would not touch it with a ten foot pole. I seriously cannot play with that thing. Instead I use a usb adapter for my trusty playstation 2 controllers, and would not change this for anything in the world. So if that controller doesn't work, and it's not a keyboard and mouse friendly game, I just cannot play it at all. And I know I'm not the only one in this, plenty of people dislike the xbox controller.

So it all boils down to saving time vs angering a portion of your potential players. At this level, it's all about numbers. Is it a big time investment? How important is not having people being vocal about their anger against you? What is their number? What is the company's policy and public image?

From a pure developer's standpoint, or a pure gamer's standpoint, things are simple, but the big picture is a bit more complicated.

And tbh, having a potentially great game, with tight design and interesting mechanics, and not being able to enjoy it for something as stupid as a controller is such a waste, that I find it infuriating. But, of course, perfectly understandable for small devs or indies, I'm not unreasonable. Thank god for joytokey, that little prog has saved me from extreme rage :P

[Ethinolicbob]

So I just watched a demo of this controller for some pretty standard PC games and I will say it was not what I expected. I had already made up my mind before and shunned the controller, now I'm not to sure.

[agentwiggles]

Very cool video, definitely gives a better idea of what they were going for with the twin trackpad idea, and showcases why that kind of system could be a boon for PC gamers.