The Steam Universe is Expanding in 2014 (steambox?)

[MaccabeanRebel]

I love this idea. I hope it gets an adapter where you can use it on consoles and then we can see how it compares to say a normal 360 controller

 

[Liquid]

that controller cannot possibly be cheap. $80?

 

[daze23]

peep this:

they bound WASD to the left pad for movement, and clicking the left pad to Space for jump. pretty standard stuff. but they were also able to bound L Shift to the outer ring of the left pad for running. that's cool cause it gets past the issue where you need to push some other key to run when using WASD. I'm not sure if you have to click on that outer ring or not, but I would prefer it just know that if I'm that far out there, I want to run. then it would closely mimic how an analog stick works. xinput games do that already, but usually it's really hard to map that kind of stuff with PC games that don't have controller support. and again, the ability to share configurations will really make this easier than ever

 

[daze23]

Super Meat Boy dev:

http://tommyrefenes.tumblr.com/post/62476523677/my-time-with-the-steam-controller

My time with the Steam Controller

When I started Super Meat Boy, I knew that proper controls would be the make or break for the game. I’m very picky about controls in games, to the point if the game doesn’t control well, I don’t care who makes it or what it is, I will stop playing it. I often get asked which formulas I used for movement, friction, air physics, etc. in Super Meat Boy. Truth is, there are no formulas…it’s just a big huge hack. I spent two months on the controls for SMB to get them perfect. Everything from the weird “friction” that happens when you change directions in the air to the 200MS delay that happens when you’re on a wall and pull away is based on how it feels to me when I play it. None of these formulas are based on physics concepts, they are 100% based on feel.

When it comes to hardware I’m, again, very picky. We have a Razer controller that Shannon bought a while back that has strange buttons that click weird. I refuse to play with it. I hated playing the PS3 when it first came out because the SixAxis had no DualShock in them and were too light. I didn’t fully play any PS3 games until I bought a DualShock3 SixAxis controller. I didn’t even bother with the Ouya controller because if other people are reporting latency problems, I know for a fact I will experience them.

I need to press a button, feel good pressing it, and have it react accordingly on the screen. So, ladies and gentlemen… if I say I’m sensitive to controllers you will agree.

The Steam Controller (or whatever it’s officially called) is strange. Where your thumbs normally rest when holding a controller, there are just the two little circular track pads just like what you see in the pictures. In the center you have your A,B,X,Y buttons surrounding what I was told would be a touch screen display at some point. The touchpad / screen in the center of the controller wasn’t enabled so I can’t really speak on that. The A,B,X,Y buttons surrounding the touch screen seemed to be used more for your standard “Back” button configuration. Think of them not as A,B,X,Y but additional buttons that can perform some functionality. You obviously wouldn’t play a game with those buttons being your primary action buttons. You use the left and right circle pads as your primary inputs.

On top of the controller you have your standard Left/Right Bumpers and Left/Right Triggers, they work and feel as you would expect. On the back of the controller are two additional triggers that you can hit with your fingers naturally by just squeezing your hand but aren’t so sensitive that the act of holding the controller depresses the buttons.

The controller I held was a 3D printed functional prototype. It is thicker than an Xbox 360 controller at the base where the sides of the controller rest in your palms. The weight is about the same. I didn’t feel as if the controller was too heavy or too light. I did notice the bulk of the controller, but only as a differentiation from the PS3 controller I’ve been playing with recently (GTA5) and the 360 controller I use for PC gaming. The bulk didn’t bother me.

After becoming familiar with the controller I started to play Meat Boy. I played from muscle memory so the more advanced tactics were being used (wall slide, jump height curving, etc). At first I noticed significant lag, and thought to myself “Oh shyt, I’m going to have to tell them that their controller is laggy and bad”. They told me the latency was very low so I figured it had to be the TV because without a low latency “Game Mode” most reflex driven games are totally unplayable. Sure enough, I got into the settings of the TV, turned on Game Mode, and the real play session began.

The configuration they had set up was simple enough. The left circle pad acted as the directional buttons, the right acted as a big giant jump button. The big problem with touch pads/ touch screens is you never know when you are actually over a button or pressing it. Valve has tried to rectify this by having some adjustable haptic feedback fire when you press one of the circle pads. Throughout my play session the haptic feedback helped with the problem, but wasn’t enough to solve it.

The circle pads were configured so that they could be touched to register input. Having input register without a firm, familiar press feels weird and the reason being is that it was set to both touch AND press. You could make Meat Boy move right by pressing on the pad, but he would also move when my thumb rested on the pad. This naturally didn’t happen often, but did happen enough to be noticeable. Once I pointed this out one of the engineers (I’m sorry for not remembering your name, I’m horrible with names…true story I constantly called my ex-girlfriend Jessica instead of Lindsay. Jessica is her sisters name. It was for no other reason than I’m terrible with remembering and saying names…I could describe your face and what you were wearing to a sketch artist and the cops would pick you up in like 2 minutes…that’s where my memory is allocated…) he went back to his desk and updated the firmware to only react on press. Once this happened the controller felt like a controller. Pressing directional buttons made sense and I felt a greater sense of control.

One drawback to undefined physical buttons is that your thumbs need tactile contact in order to accurately know what button you are pressing. As the engineers and I were talking about this, the idea of little nubs being on the controller that would be noticeable enough where your thumbs would find them, but not so abrasive that the circle pads couldn’t comfortably used in mouse / trackpad mode came about. They had been thought of prior to my being there, but weren’t on the controller I was using. I expressed that they needed to be put in. They might show up in some form after my feedback…so…you’re welcome Valve / Valve customers.

The button configuration worked fine for SMB, I was able to get to the Salt factory no problem. I was able to sequence break C.H.A.D. by getting the keys before he could do his attacks. I was even able to do the bandaid the super fast way in the second level of the hospital shown here (though I didn’t wait on the platform above the bandaid, I always fall straight through): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=JHJsnXRb_Es#t=1392

I was able to play Meat Boy the way Meat Boy can be played on an advanced level (and I’m rusty at it). The right circle button was the jump button and we had both Triggers mapped to the Run button just like a regular Xbox 360 controller. We also had the Run button mapped to the back trigger buttons I mentioned before that can be pressed with your fingers on the back of the pad. This worked great but did lead to a bit of hand cramping. I think this is due more to the way you use the run button in Meat Boy and not the design of the controller or the buttons.

But that’s Meat Boy, I wanted to see how it would do with a game where multiple inputs were required. Naturally, I requested Spelunky. Spelunky requires Whip, Jump, Bomb, and Rope buttons. We configured the controller to play like an Xbox controller. So the left circle pad was once again used for the directional buttons, and the right circle pad was used as A, B, X, Y buttons in the orientation that you find on an Xbox Controller.

I played through Spelunky and the controller worked great. As I was playing I was describing to the engineers the twitch movements that go into Spelunky. Anyone that’s played it knows what I’m talking about, but to explain further there are often times in Spelunky where you will find yourself in a situation where you will panic and need to compensate. For example, lets say you are jumping on a platform, below it are spikes, above you is a bat. If the bat hits you, you’ll die because you’ll fall into the spikes. If you try to jump on the bat, chances are you’ll hit the bat and fall and possibly die. So in situations like this you find yourself tap jumping with air compensation to whip a bat while still staying on this one tile platform. The Steam controller handled this just fine. The nubs I mentioned above would have solidified the platforming experience better, but again, those might get thrown in as they approach final hardware. I got to the Ice Caves and then a stupid Skeleton knocked me off a platform to my death…then I attempted a daily run and died immediately…pretty much the standard Spelunky play through.

If you were to ask me if I would play games with the Steam Controller…I would say yes. 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. I’m excited to see what final hardware feels like because I think with the upcoming iterations of the controller we’ll see something that is different, but still feels good.

TL;DR; Great Start, needs some improvements, but I could play any game I wanted with it just fine.

 

[The Phoenix]

I love the effort. I'm not going to sit here and speculate and say this or that about it. Yes, seeing that controller gives me a little bit of pause, but thats only because we have had the same type of controller going back to the days of the original Nintendo. Yeah, the controllers and shyt have evolved over the years, but they usually were the same with more buttons added. This seems like something familiar, yet odd and different. Kinda like some of those buildings and shyt in Dubai.

But again, regardless of all that, I think the most important thing here is that this doesn't feel like some plain ole money grab. This really seems like they give a damn and are trying. I'm down with that. I'll give it a shot. Hey, if it turns out to be terrible, we can always just turn on one of the consoles we've always had or just go back to playing on the PC.

I wonder if we'll be able to make our own custom Steamboxes though? Hmmmmm.

 

[daze23]

 

[daze23]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...the_Steam_Controller_Heres_what_they_said.php

Select game developers used the Steam Controller. Here's what they said

Out of all of Valve Software's announcements about bringing Steam to the living room, today's Steam Controller was the only one that anyone could really get their eyes on.

And once you get your eyes on it, you realize immediately that this is a different kind of controller. Weeks ago, select developers were actually able to get their hands on this odd-looking, stickless wonder. And according to developers we've heard from who've actually used the controller, it's different with a purpose.

Dan Tabar is an indie game developer at Planetoid Pioneers studio Data Realms, and he was one of several indie developers who had hands-on demos with the controller at Valve's Bellevue, WA headquarters on Labor Day this year.

What he described was an extremely flexible, mappable controller -- perhaps the most flexible control option this side of a keyboard and mouse setup -- that offers generous tactile feedback.

"[Valve is] really trying to think things through," said Tabar. "They're asking, 'Do we really need thumbsticks? Why are the fingers on the back [of the traditional controller] not doing anything? Why not have paddles there?' The thing I find most exciting is that Valve is just rethinking it. We're totally going to be making Planetoid Pioneers with this controller in mind," he said.

During Valve's demo to him and several other indie developers, he was able to play Gearbox's Borderlands. "It hasn't been optimized, and wasn't actually built for [the Steam Controller]," he said. "Its controls were just mapped onto it. The haptic feedback was going crazy, but I'm sure they'll address that. The controllers we were using were literally fresh off the 3D press."

So far, Tabar has no word on when game developers will be able to get their hands on Steam Controllers so they can start making optimized games with them. But he did explain what he found out about it while there.

He said areas on the trackpad can be configured to have multiple button inputs. For example, the very top edge of a trackpad can be mapped to the keyboard's Shift+W, making your character in a first-person game run.

Tabar said the configuration map for the controller allows you to do "pretty much anything." For example, developers can slice up a pad into quarters, each one representing a different input, or even into eight radial sections, again, each section representing whatever you want, mapping to key combinations, or to the mouse.

The most prominent, and for some developers and players off-putting feature of the controller are those circular trackpads. But developers who we spoke with essentially said to drop your expectations of what a trackpad is capable (or not capable) of.

"These are not like laptop trackpads," Tabar said. "Everyone is like, 'Oh we're replacing thumbsticks with trackpads, oh shyt.' [laughs] But this is not at all like a laptop trackpad. It just feels good. It's a challenge to verbally describe it.

"When [your thumb] moves toward the outer zone of the trackpad, you can feel that. [The zones on the trackpad] are independent of each other," he added.

Other notable features of the controller include the shoulder and trigger buttons, and the paddles on the back side. There's also that touch screen in the middle of the controller.

"As a gamer, I don't know if that touch screen is exciting, per se. But as a developer, it's really cool. You can swipe and do gesture motions on the little screen." That screen is a physical button too, offering a tactile "click" for players, an advantage over typical touch screens and pads.

"It doesn't feel like a trackpad"

Chris Remo, designer and writer at The Cave developer Double Fine had a hands-on of the Steam Controller at the San Francisco studio.

Remo played a couple different games: Double Fine's upcoming point-and-click adventure gameBroken Age and the already-released platform-adventure game The Cave.

"We just plugged it in, and it worked," he said. "We didn't have special support for it or anything. It worked really, really well. I was really impressed with the mouse imitation. It doesn't feel like a trackpad."

Remo said the controller has a tiny speaker in it that offers audio feedback – a subtle "tick" sound that increases and decreases in speed (he compared it to the Wheel of Fortune wheel's sound), depending on how you use the track pad. If you "fling" your thumb across the trackpad – if it's mapped to the mouse – the ticking increases in speed, and slows down as the virtual momentum of your action slows.

"It sounds like there's actually a mechanical device in there, which really makes it feel mechanical, but not in a clunky way," Remo said. "It just feels really high-tech and precise. … I can't stand trackpads on laptops, and this felt really good to me. There was almost no learning curve as far as accuracy goes."

On Twitter, Ichiro Lambe with AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! developer Dejobaan Games also said the haptic feedback of Valve's new controller was a highlight of the device.

"It feels like you're moving your thumbs over a rough surface, though it's all virtual," Lambe said. "From a tech standpoint, think about something that can click whenever you tell it to... Simple example: you move your finger 1 inch up, and it ticks 10 times...You flick it up, and it starts ticking, like you've spun a wheel."

Remo added that he doesn't really consider the pads to be "trackpads," which, to players and developers, often represent poor feedback. "This is just the opposite of that," he said.

"I don't know if this would necessarily be my first choice for a first-person shooter, because I'm such a mouse-and-keyboard guy normally, but I'd also really like to try it," he said.

 

[Kodie]

the trackpad is also a clickable button. with that combination it could basically function, and kinda feel, like a d-pad. it's one button, but it would know where on the trackpad you're pressing it

edit: same with the right pad. it could basically function as the RS and the X Y A B buttons

The left pad as a dpad is no problem but the right pad as xyab is not so hot in my opinion. Still, I'm getting one day 1.

 

[daze23]

The left pad as a dpad is no problem but the right pad as xyab is not so hot in my opinion. Still, I'm getting one day 1.

I think the SMB dev's idea about having some 'nubs' is good. I don't expect this controller to be the best for every situation. there's no shortage of controllers with a d-pad and traditional face buttons out there. I'm more interested in how this thing does with games that controllers have traditionally been bad at, like strategy and most point-and-click type games. and how it performs compared to a mouse/kb in first person games

 

[Jax]

This is what we've been waiting for

 

[Grizzly]

Looks cool. If anything they could come out with a dual stick controller later down the line and leave everybody satisfied.

 

[Fatboi1]

When does this controller come out?? I rather not wait all the way until next year to try it out.

 

[daze23]

When does this controller come out?? I rather not wait all the way until next year to try it out.

they said they're sending out 300 with the beta/prototype Steam Machines "this year" (I guess sometime after Oct 25th). I doubt we'll see retail before next year though

 

[TheGodling]

People used to think analog sticks were a gimmicky idea that could never work better than the D-pad. People will always complain about changes without waiting on their first experience with it.

 

[infamousred]

everyone knows the thing looks like garbage, but if you can't see the potential in this controller, you must not be a gamer. it's the perfect solution to not having to use a mouse, while still getting about the same kind of input. the only thing i'm worried about, is the price, with that little touchpad screen. besides that, i think we should all be excited about this. any competition is good, especially when you're talking about a company like valve.