bubble, clog and tangle free! just like my intestines!
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I gotta hand it to Valve on this one. They finally solved the PC controller problem.
When I had a job porting a game from 360 to PC in 2005, one of the things I did was to manually make a list of commonly used controllers and their mappings. Every PC game needed to have its own list and most games didnāt really bother to even try. In 2006 Microsoft introduced the Games For Windows initiative which I briefly hoped would solve this, but this was the Vista-era nadir of Microsoftās competence, and of course they only made things worse by introducing an inadequate competing standard, XInput.
It had been a pet peeve of mine in the 15 years since that the problem seemed easily solvable with a bit of coordination, but nobody in a position of leadership cared
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How did Xinput make things worse? Nearly everything had standardized Xinput controller support from 2010 on.
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xinput was good because it was a standard but suddenly you just threw years and years of dinput controllers out, unless you also go through the trouble of supporting them
Iām sure thereās other nonsense relating to having to go through xinput for non-standard interfaces
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It merely created more work for developers. Now they needed to support both XInput and DirectInput to support any controller out there, instead of just DirectInput. (Alternatively, it saved work for developers who decided they only had time to support XInput, at the expense of the majority of Windows users who had a different controller.)
The usual knock on XInput is that it was really inflexible: it assumed the controller had exactly the buttons and thumbsticks of the 360 controller. This seems to have been an overcorrection from DirectInput, which is an overcomplicated API because it supports all manner of bizarre flight simulator joysticks.
But the really absurd thing is that Playstation controllers do have exactly the same layout as Xbox controllers, but they continued to use DirectInput. I suspect the reason was that using XInput wouldāve resulted in games showing Xbox-controller face button icons.
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They donāt āuse DInputā theyāre just HID compliant so Windows handles them with DInput.
XInput is Microsoft software explicitly intended only for licensed Xbox controller peripherals. Other MFRs adding XInput support either pay out to MS or are skirting some legality.
The newer Windows.Gaming.Input API does include support for some other pads including the DS4 but is entangled in UWP, and like Appleās first party controller support, immediately out of date as soon as itās shipped.
I love Steam Input but itās really not a magic bullet. Iām glad generalized options like it and ReWASD are around to solve the Windows XInput Problem for common console and legacy PC controllers but unless youāre all-in on Steam itās just another platform-locked feature thatās only conditionally additive.
Reminder to any gamepad-heads here that the widely used community gamepad mapping db can always use your help, and if you have something missing from the data Iām glad to walk you through contributing.
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canāt you just run any game under steam and get the overlay and controller stuff?
(i agree with what youāre saying here)
sure, yeah. a lot of games require their own launcher though, and then you have to hope the overlay works (thereās yet more software to fix this, OSOL, GloSC) and xinput hooking (on Windows) works, have to elevate steamās privileges to match any subsequent processes, and since profiles are tied to your account you have to be online, etc etc. steam also likes to silently crash in the background when running non-steam games, taking Steam Input with it. the reason itās not got more significant buy-in is you have to (at minimum) ship xinput as well and/or generic gamepad support for Mac/Linux anyway, because you simply canāt, by Valveās own account, depend on Steam Input being present and functional.
i like it! but itās got problems. in an ideal world it would be a standalone library, as is itās too tightly coupled to Big Picture.
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I have been yelling about this since the Steam controller and Steam input launched/was in the beta client (I am permanently in the beta client because I have brain problems)
itās incredibly good but itās absolutely asinine that the Steamcon is a fucking paperweight unless you have Steam running
at least they fixed having to go into big picture modeā¦ by windowing the BPM interface pages for controller configuration (I opened the configuration to try out flick stick in a game and I had to alt-tab to get the window back, which if I wasnāt on my desktop machine, is just a dealbreaker)
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Could you guys suggest me a good alternative to Ps4 Dualshock controller, maybe a bit cheaper than the original?
Thanks!
For a PS4 or PC?
PS4! (but if it could work also for pc, the better)
most of the good options will run as or more expensive, i think yr best bet would be to pick whatever compatible Hori pad best serves yr needs
You might be able to get a DS4 pretty cheap in Black Friday sales this year. Iād at least keep an eye on those before buying anything.
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The ānewā Xbox controller is remarkably more comfortable for me because they made the sides flare out less. It reminds me of the original Moto X where engineers actually measured peopleās hands and made something easy for the median person to hold. You would be hard pressed to tell it by looking but it made me realize the Xbox One pad requires me to curl my hand more than is comfortable.
Plastics are also nicer with bumps on the underside and triggers to break surface tension without adding rubber. D-Pad is very tactile and easy to do diagonals on, and I like the faceted dish they brought over from the Elite controller. The bumpers are also improved and more tactile. The only glossy plastic is on the base of the thumbsticks and the face buttons - bumpers and triggers are now matte.
Theyāre $40 at Best Buy this week if anyone needs a PC/iOS/Android controller.
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Are the grips different than the revised Elite controller? I noticed significant shape changes in that one.
I think they are the same. My partnerās Elite Series 2 is on its way back from being RMAād for stick drift (
) but Iāll let you know. IIRC it is the same shape but with the texturized plastic instead of the rubber.
Unfortunately the stick tension is exactly the same as the Xbox One as far as I can tell. I would prefer the Elite Series 2ās Xbox 360 tight setting.
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Iām shocked at how tight even the loosest setting is on the Elite 2! I get snapback (opposite direction registered after I release due to the stick bouncing back) if Iām not careful
yeah I actually wound up selling mine (for what I paid for it, so not bad) between the snapback, the original high cost, the inability to pair to multiple devices, and reports of drift (though Iāve never experienced drift on any console ever due to my extremely ginger touch), it didnāt seem worth it
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Iāll tell you though Iām a fiend for metal-coated thumbsticks now, nothing bugs me more than the grinding against the bowl edges every plastic stick quickly develops. Replacing my PS4 controllerās thumbsticks with metal ones significantly helped, but theyāre still only half as smooth as the Elite sticks.