Comment on The Steam controller was ahead of its time
dualpad@lemmy.zip 2 weeks agoHow did you use the touchpad. My approach has been to adjust the sensitivity of the touchpad until an edge to edge swipe does a 180, and for gyro having a 90 degree rotation of the controller do 675 degree rotation in game for first person and 450 degrees for third person. Made it a consistent aim experience no matter what game I played as long as the mouse input in the game was good and didn’t do things like emulate a joystick causing negative acceleration.
And for the right touchpad I set a dpad modeshift with an inverted outer ring bind so clicking up, down, left, right, center output different inputs so I didn’t have to reach down to the facebuttons as often. And depending on the game I’d set up a chord so holding the left grip and clicking would output a different set of 5 inputs.
And I just saved the template so I didn’t need to set it up all the time.
Liked it for Doom Eternal, since I could activate gyro, swipe the camera to quickly turn, and click to swap between weapons every shot to bypass reloading all on the right touchpad.
And pvp games like The Finals clicking the right pad to switch through gadgets and using the touchpad to quickly turn and activate gyro, and not feeling like my inputs were too slow versus mouse users. And not having to bother with aim assist.
noobdoomguy8658@feddit.org 1 week ago
Mind sharing the setup, please? I’ve played The Finals on my Steam Deck and gave the trackpads+gyro a fair try, but couldn’t land a scheme that made me really comfortable and let me perform well at the same time - lots of unintentional clicks as well as not pressing shoulder buttons to activate the modifier.
Having a trackpad act like a touch-sensitive dpad with gyro felt very close to perfect, though. Just couldn’t tweak the entire scheme well enough.
dualpad@lemmy.zip 1 week ago
I uploaded the config for the Steam Controller with the name “Dualpad with Gyro Updated…”
Problem is that if you try to use the config on the Steam Deck I don’t think it’ll work the same way, since on the Steam Deck trackpad click is set up through soft press as opposed to the physical click that the Steam Controller uses.
I did play around with trying to set up something similar in the past on the Deck touchpads and did it through action layers imgur.com/…/steam-deck-dpad-modeshift-workaround-…
noobdoomguy8658@feddit.org 5 days ago
Thanks for the explanations and demos!
Yeah, I find myself gravitating towards this kind of setup every time I want gyro and (at least) five more buttons on one of the trackpads. Kinda glad to see I’m on something that seems to have some proven record.
Can’t wrap my mind around the difference between modeshifting and action layers, though. The former seems much easier to use, but somehow doesn’t work that consistently for me, so yeah, I end up doing what you’re showing.
Were you yourself ever able to adjust to this kind of scheme on Steam Deck? It seems to be working well for me for some time, but there’s moments when I somehow get lost in the inputs despite knowing them to a degree that I don’t have to think about them at all.
Some games doing a poor job at mixed input doesn’t help either: things like prompts rapidly switching between that of MKB and controller, or the game not allowing you to switch on the fly, etc.
dualpad@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Action Layer
So action layers is like a copy of your default controller config that you can switch to and have the changes you want made to it. Example of how I use this is in the Finals is when I play light I have it set up so left touchpad click is dash/grapple compared to the default config I use for medium and heavy where left touchpad click is crouch as opposed a specialization. I switch between my light and medium/heavy controller set by holding down the select button. Action Layer is similar and I’ll use it for temporarily switching between configs. Example is if I hold down the left bumper going to an action layer where my right trackpad is outputting a right joystick to make selecting from the conversation wheel easier and when let go reverts back to the default where right trackpad is a mouse.
Modeshift
Modeshifts are similar but more reliable when it comes to in game actions. So use cases of modeshifts might be having the trackpad when clicked modeshift into a dpad, and it’ll revert back to a regular trackpad afterwards. Or when the left trigger is fully pulled it modeshifts into a different gyro sensitivity that is lower than what the gyro is normally, which comes in useful if a game doesn’t offer aim sensitivity adjustments for ADS.
Chords
Chords are similar to modeshifts and I use them to add on additional functions on top of the modeshift. Like if I have the trackpad modeshift into a dpad on a click with the inputs 1,2,3,4 mapped to it. Then I might set up a chord, so that when the left grip is held and the trackpad is clicked the inputs are 5,6,7,8. Or in some games like the Finals sprinting can take you out of ADS and I bind the sprint button on the outer edge. So I’ll set a chord so that when I am holding down the left trigger to aim the outer edge become an empty bind so I don’t take myself out of aiming by accident. If you find yourself accidentally triggering things on the dpad modeshift you can set up a chord that returns an empty bind to help. Like in the Finals I found myself sometimes accidentally reloading (left click) or meleeing (center click) on the touchpad when I was firing a gun and interrupting it during tense moments, so I set up a chord so that when I am holding down the right trigger the left click which normally outputs reload and center click which is melee turns into an empty bind that outputs nothing.
As for the Steam Deck and fps. I find myself playing more hack and slash and platformers on the Deck, since I haven’t found the touchpads ergonomic for my hands. I’ve found the touchpad experience feels like a downgrade compared to the Steam Controller touchpads, since the location is better on the Steam Controller. I also found the concave circular shape of the steam controller touchpads to be more consistent when it comes to swiping the camera to turn 180 as shown in this demo. With Deck I found I was only able to replicate it adjusting the rotation until it went from corner to corner, but did not find it comfortable.
Yeah that has been an annoyance for a long time. And even worse when there is no mixed input support. When that happens if the game allows sprint and walk to be set to a hold as opposed to a toggle I will use soft presses to set up a pseudo analog experience.