Valve demonstrates Steam Controller [video]
joystiq.com
joystiq.com
The problem for me is that the analog sticks are velocity-based; ie. you don't get to control the position directly, you can only control the first derivative of the position, the velocity. That means instead of just moving the controller where you want to go, you have to move in the direction you want to go and hold it there for just the right amount of time.
I'm amazed that so many people can do this so well, because no matter how much time I play I still suck at it. It just feels so clumsy.
So the idea of being able to use a handheld controller that isn't velocity-based really appeals to me, though I do worry a bit that the active area is so small.
People have already modded controllers with a trackball, and it works great for the most part, bringing the best of both worlds together, yet Sony and Microsoft still insist on using analog sticks...
Granted, it doesn't reach console levels of use on most days, but I only clean it once every month or so, and even then it's easy - Logitech has a simple system to pop the ball out and cleaning it is very easy and fast.
Using a trackball is definitely not a major chore.
Seriously? You should have stopped at "velocity-based"
1. See how he always lift his right hand thumb to reproduce the same movement, sometimes three times, just to go through the screen (in Civ5).
2. Also the fact that buttons get mapped like a "pie chart" on the trackpads could have been a good idea, but we need buttons. We forget the luxury of having buttons with all those new tactile screens because we want more tactile surface, but for a controller we hold in our hands, we need some feedbacks bellow our fingers. This is really a bad idea...
3. I'll have to admit that it looks like a better alternative than joysticks for FPS games.
EDIT: As someone else pointed out, if you get two controllers : a valve one for FPS, RTS, games that works well with it, and a Xbox/PS4 controller for the rest, then it's a very good thing.
I still want to see a platformer and a fighting game since the best mapping is a little unclear. (Though these a) won't be showstoppers and b) are likely to be workable.) Humans are adaptable and if this controller is reasonably usable in all the main gaming genres then very quickly you'll see people get really, really good at using it.
Remember that this guy played with the controller for a long time and his job is to make it look like as good as possible.
So yeah, the controller seems ABSOLUTELY fine for a controller (and probably more precise in some cases than a "regular" controller), but please, let's not fool ourselves, this is NOT a PC gaming experience - i.e. this is very far from the level of control a MOUSE provides.
It's better than any other couch-options, but the controls in Civ still looked frustrating instead of fun.
For example, my macbook track pad takes velocity into account. Something like that could make a big difference for covering large distances. I'm withholding judgment until I try one.
But then I play FPS with a trackball now, so it doesn't seem so alien to me.
I.e., if I move my finger across the whole steam controller right pad, then the sensitivity should be high enough to move across the whole screen in that motion while still allowing enough accuracy to click where I want.
Who really thought Valve making a controller would make an unusable one? This was never a concern. The concern here is that it might work well with FPS, RTS etc... (or good enough)... but might not work as good as button based controllers for other genres.
However, playing a FPS on anything but a Oculus Rift or equivalent is going to feel quaint in a few months.
If by ratcheting you mean the repeated movements to look around, that is very similar to moving a mouse with a low sensitivity settings.
It's intended to take the gaming pc (and by, extension steam) out of the man-cave and into the living room to compete with consoles. This requires providing people with an ability for people to play FPS and RTS decently with a controller, rather than a mouse, or they are going to stick with their man caves and mice.
Also I guess difficulty in singleplayer games would have to take the control scheme into account.
You might be interested in looking at Tommy Refenes thoughts on his testing of the steam controller prototype. He discusses using it to play his difficult platformer Super Meat Boy:
http://tommyrefenes.tumblr.com/post/62476523677/my-time-with...
If you were to ask me to choose between Steam Controller and a 360
controller, I would choose 360. Don’t take that as slight to the controller
though because it’s more about the comfort of familiarity over
functionality. I would choose a 360 controller because I have several
thousand hours experience using it, however if tomorrow all game controllers
were wiped off the earth and the only option was the Steam Controller, I
don’t think this would be a bad thing. In fact, I don’t think gaming would
miss a beat.2. Something as simple as putting one tiny raised dot at each of the 4 main positions would make a huge difference.
I couldn't watch the entire video because of my connection but note that he did say it was in "legacy" mode, i.e. the game has not been modified at all for the controller and the controller has likely not been changed from whatever it's default configuration is. If you use a mouse or trackpad on their default configuration things will generally be difficult if they're not what you're used to. I've gotten so accustomed to the acceleration on my trackpad that there are many things I can do on it without thinking that I would struggle with on my trackball or laser mouse. I agree that this particular set up as they've shown looks very awkward. What could make it great though– assuming no modification to the game– is to treat it like an inverted ThinkPad trackpoint. If it feels just right and the acceleration is either customizable or perfectly tuned, I think it could be a lot of fun and avoid the trackpad/mouspad-too-small issue.
> 2
I imagine this will come up during the beta and probably result in something close to what you suggest. Either a dot like on F/J keys or a small dimple.
As an exaggerated counterpoint: imagine operating a buttonless, flat "haptic" vibrating keyboard in a moving vehicle, and contrast with a conveniental keyboard.
Hmmm. You could do that yourself at home with a little Sugru...
I don't know. I've tried using two hands on a big trackpad once and it just gets confusing. Maybe with more practice but I felt like it was more a brain confused problem than a material one.
There is no reason a touch pad can't be as accurate and natural as at least a trackball, which could already probably let you play Civ from your couch.. or quake
Until I actually have the controller in my hand, I can't make that assumption at all.
Even talking about competitive FPSes or DOTA sort of gets it wrong. Among the few games Valve prominently displayed in their announcement were Europa Universalis and Football Manager, turn-based mouse-driven games. That is where this controller should shine. It allows you to sit back and relax while playing thoughtful games that would be impossible with the typical gamepad.
The main problem with a controller-based "mouse" (and it shows in the video) is that you control the cursor with only your thumb rather than your full hand gently set down on your desktop. I guess we'll never obtain a perfect alternative to the mouse. And the Steam controller will probably leave both joystick users and mouse users somehow frustrated because it tries to be both at the same time. But considering the variety of Steam's library, it was probably Valve's only solution. Anyway, like this comment, everything still remains speculation until you've tried it yourself (for a reasonable amount of time).
1) is straightforward, if you don't have enough input buttons you're out of luck. A problem for games like SC2 and WoW.
2) this problem forces you to use acceleration for input, which is commonly accepted to ruin precision (reproducibility) because you lose the easy mapping between inches and pixels.
I'll use Team Fortress 2 (an FPS) as an example for this. First, if 180 degrees takes more than 1 swipe, the controls are effectively unusable. The demonstration indicates this may be the case.
You need to be able to flip 180 degrees to check your back, as well as make other large and fast movements like those required by rocket jumping. At the same time, you also need the ability to make very small aim adjustments. It's guaranteed that the trackpad will be weak somewhere along this variety of movements.
It's unsurprising that it will be a poor replacement for mouse and keyboard, but existing controllers have demonstrated that people are fine with sacrificing resolution of controls for other advantages like relative simplicity and easily playing with friends.
Also, flipping the camera 180 degrees can be achieved with a button press. I think I remember Need For Speed having this feature, though they didn't allow you to flip the car, just the camera. Anyway, I think pressing a button to flip 180 is an acceptable solution given the constraints of the controller.
Yep, I just wanted to explain why it isn't :) Having to click rather than press a key is a big downside, but if I remember correctly SC2 already has a keybind mode that limits you to a subset of the full qwerty keyboard. World of Warcraft is a good example of a PC game that uses a huge swathe of keyboard, players often have 30-60 unique keybinds.
My point about the 180 was that you need a wide range of different motions. Sometimes it'll be 170, sometimes 145, etc, sometimes only 2.4 degrees, and if a mouse user uses 1 swipe when you need 2 or 3 you're toast. A common tactic for Scouts in TF2 is to stay in the air above your head, which from experience is basically impossible to beat on a trackpad.
I'm looking forward to the Steambox/Steam controller, if only because I have quite a few Steam games accumulated and the biggest reason for me to avoid consoles is that I'd be forced to buy multiple copies of games.
Because Valve's first effort doesn't completely replace a mouse? That seems a bit defeatist.
"control the cursor with only your thumb rather than your full hand "
Control with the thumb vs hand isn't the problem so much as that thumbs are not pointy like mouse lasers. Valve should look at adding a tiny fingertip digitizer.
Of course they are still lacking proper text entry and sitting out motion input (i.e. the big innovation in the last 10 years), voice input (the big innovation over the last 5 years) and telepresence isn't going to be a core feature unlike all the competition. And of course they are going to be the most expensive option with the least bang for the buck.
The mouse was patented in 1947. Since then is has not been bettered. Valve are not the first to try.
Is that really what they're going for?
I don't think you should view the Steam Controller as the controller to end all controllers. From that point of view, I'm sure it will fail, and people will be disappointed.
Instead, it's a controller that makes PC games playable from the couch. It won't be quite as good as a mouse and keyboard for games that were designed around those. It probably won't be quite as good as a standard console controller for games that were designed around those (you don't have the physical buttons to roll your fingers over to hit particular combos quickly). But it should make both types of games playable on a single controller.
And once it's out, who knows. Maybe people will be able to design games specifically for this type of controller, and there will be some games that are best played on it.
I keep hoping for something like the nunchuck controller on the Wii where the nunchuk can keep track of its absolute coordinates and you then can do fine movement in the center of the box and large movement on the outer edges.
exactly! This doesn't look very ergonomic. I can't imagine playing for hours with this controller.
It also reminds me about how CS:GO was originally supposed to allow true cross-platform play (PC against console) but Valve scrapped that support because they couldn't work out a reasonable way to patch on consoles due to "patch scheduling" on PS3.
A full speed try-to-do-the-best-you-can FPS aiming demo would be welcome.
For me it seems like FPS with this controller will be somewhere between Xbox/PS3 controller and mouse+keyboard.
Then when people visit their blog articles, they see watermarked videos and think they're exclusives.
Valve's controller does seem to be a good 1/2 step for mouse/keyboard replacement, eg very good accuracy, but maybe not the best of all worlds. Also able to do controller based games but not quite as good as a real controller.
to me it's a sign that they hope to help developers support console versions by making a control system that will work well for games designed for mouse and keyboard, if not as well as a mouse and keyboard. But to be honest, standard controllers on games not designed for them are quite bad. Moving a "mouse" pointer replacement with a controller is not good. So I think it will be good in that regard. It'll also be better than a keyboard and have MUCH better support than a logitech controller for games that want controllers.
So I see it as a good middle ground. And I think this will allow game devs to support both more easily. It's not the tactic I would take to make games work on both, but I think it's a good approach even if it isn't going to be the best of either world.
However, if it IS as good as the next gen console controllers and it does better than them at mouse/keyboard then it's a big win.
With as few moving parts as they typically have, console controllers already experience durability issues for less... hygienic, players. With trackballs that issue is compounded, even if you make them easily removable so you can clean them (just having to clean them at all would be more of a hassle than people are use to).
This clearly does not appear to be at the same accuracy and speed level as the combination of a mouse and keyboard. There may be a console controller that can approach, equal or exceed the speed and accuracy of a mouse and keyboard, but this doesn't seem to be it.
Addition: I suspect that every steambox will have USB ports available for whatever controller, keyboard and mouse floats your boat.
but it'd be fun.
In fact, many mobile games already use similar control layouts.