Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steam Controller

store.steampowered.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 370 posts

Re: Steam Controller

#281

Post by dragonwriter »

icebraining wrote: post #44
ivarious wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason that using mouse is more precise is not because of its shape, but because we use at least all of our palm to use it while with controllers you only have one thumb to connect the stick with your body.

I disagree. I think the reason is more fundamental: with a mouse, you're doing a direct translation (distance in pad → distance on screen), while with a gamepad you're doing an indirect translation (distance in stick → velocity in screen). This is harder, because you're essentially forced to calculate (in a low conscious way, of course) distance/speed to know for how much time you should turn the stick.

> I think the reason is more fundamental: with a mouse, you're doing a direct translation (distance in pad → distance on screen), while with a gamepad you're doing an indirect translation (distance in stick → velocity in screen).

There's no fundamental reason this has to be the case, of course; if the developer wanted to, they could use stick input as position rather than velocity. Conceptually, this is no different than using a high resolution trackball.

Re: Steam Controller

#282

Post by jwpeddle »

gcb0 wrote: post #271
jjkmk wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using Counter Strike as the flag ship FPS for Valve there currently aren't any professional players using a trackball: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AkghPvIh7ZVwdGZ...

As a trackball heavy user (i use both thumb and index ones, with both hands) I avoid playing FPS without a mouse! the thumbs trackball is more precise. But still not good. A good and cheap microsoft mouse is always with me when i'm playing FPSs. Also, even if the control wasn't an issue, no trackball has more than 300DPI. EVER. The minimum for mouses is 400. I don't know why that is. But even the overly expensive Ken…

no trackball has more than 300DPI

My 1600DPI L-Trac disagrees.

Re: Steam Controller

#283

Post by bentcorner »

anonymous wrote: post #234
paulgerhardt wrote: post #170

I got to hold one of these a few months ago. It's solid. The ergonomics are there. The same designer[1] was previously at {one of the other three very large gaming console manufacturers} and knows a thing or two about controllers. My understanding is it will be significantly more accurate than traditional joysticks and competitive with a mouse (with a mouse you have a single 'large' plane of motion, with this, you ha…

I don't see how my right thumb could be as precise as moving the mouse, which I do with all 5 of my fingers (for tiny movements) or from my shoulder (for larger movements). If thumb touchpads were good for FPS games, how come nobody is playing them with their thumb on their laptop's touchpad? Maybe I'm just old, but I don't see myself ever being able to use this.

> how come nobody is playing them with their thumb on their laptop's touchpad?

Touchpads (and mice) don't work like thumbsticks.

Touchpads/mice measure a vector with the size equal to distance traveled. Thumbsticks measure a vector with a size equal to the deflection from center.

Thumbsticks are terrible for mousing tasks (e.g., moving a virtual cursor [rts games]), and mice/touchpads are terrible for thumbstick tasks (e.g., playing a racing/flying game).

Re: Steam Controller

#284

Post by nacs »

dfrey wrote: post #195
rjtavares wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first game they show a sreenshot of is Civilization. I'm sure RTS was one of the main genres they tested the controller with. From the announcement: > Even the older titles in the catalog and the ones which were not built with controller support. (We’ve fooled those older games into thinking they’re being played with a keyboard and mouse, but we’ve designed a gamepad that’s nothing like either one of those device…

Civilization is a turn based strategy game. The "RT" (real-time) part is what really makes gamepads unsuitable for RTS. I play Starcraft 2 and I can't imagine how you could possibly select individual units and pull them back when they are taking damage. Show me someone doing blink stalker micro with a gamepad and I will eat my words.

>I play Starcraft 2 and I can't imagine how you could possibly select individual units and pull them back when they are taking damage

You're not really arguing whether the Steam controller is bad -- you're simply saying any gamepad would be bad for Starcraft/RTS.

This is likely never going to change -- unless an RTS is designed from the early stages of development to be usable on gamepads, no gamepad will ever be acceptable for a game like Starcraft that requires 40+ actions per minute at the very lowest levels of play and 300-500 actions per minute by the professional level players. I doubt that there will ever be any controller better suited for a high-micro RTS than the keyboard/mouse combo (except perhaps some kind of direct brain-signals-to-game-input method in the not so near future ).

Re: Steam Controller

#285

Post by gpmcadam »

I'm a bit miffed regarding all of the hype for what is essentially, at this point, vapour-ware.

Also, why have Valve bothered to spread the announcement over 5 days? Surely this whole deal would've been more beneficial to be a keynote style announcement with some actual demos of the tech in question?

As great a product as it may be, in my opinion there's an awful lot of excitement surrounding the announcement that Valve will eventually announce something ... next year ... probably.

I think I'll reserve my judgement on all of this until I can actually use it, or at least see it in use.

Re: Steam Controller

#286

Post by __david__ »

xanderstrike wrote: post #252
amalcon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all . Lenovo still provides eraser nub-style pointers on many models. I personally find them to be more accurate at high speeds than a touchpad. I actually have no idea how people can use touchpads. You need a huge one to be able to go corner-to-corner in one swipe and still have reasonable accuracy.

I've played 1000+ hours of Minecraft on my Thinkpad. That would be torture with a touchpad but it's a joy with the nub (which is basically a very small joystick). Why they went with touchpads over traditional dual-joystick input with community managed zero configuration mouse-keyboard emulation I really don't understand.

And I've played a fair amount of Minecraft on my MacBook. I find the trackpad to be quite nice. I've gotten to where I can play most FPS games and feel like I'm very close to where I would be if I were using a mouse.

Re: Steam Controller

#287

Post by vertex-four »

romaniv wrote: post #243
nilkn wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Valve is effectively turning its back on the games (and gamers) that allowed it succeed despite competition from consoles. I don't see how they are turning their backs on anyone just because they're venturing into a new market segment. The current system, where people have both gaming PCs and separate gaming consoles, doesn't make a modicum of sense practically. It's just a vestige of old monopolies and corporate c…

I don't see how they are turning their backs on anyone just because they're venturing into a new market segment. Same way Microsoft turned its back on PC game(r)s with it's "Games for Windows" brand, which really is "Games for XBox shabbily ported to Windows". I thought one of the points of the Steam machines is that they're not locked down at all. Will it run games not distributed through Steam?

> Will it run games not distributed through Steam?

Given that SteamOS is supposedly an open, Linux-based platform, I don't see why it wouldn't? It's pretty much just a standard Linux system that boots into a full-screen entertainment interface (an extension of Big Picture mode) by default.

Switch into the desktop interface (there'll be a key combo), download and install whatever you want, and add it into Steam as a non-Steam game so you can launch it from Big Picture mode.

Also, you could install another OS on it and dual-boot quite easily if you wanted. It's a PC.

Re: Steam Controller

#288

Post by dragonwriter »

ProblemFactory wrote: post #226
zanny wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any game with a PC version that is vetted as a competitive esport will find its pc version, with superior and portable control interfaces, to be the choice for competition. See: CoD, Battlefield, Quake, etc. All prefer exact aiming with a mouse over fudging analog input sticks with aim assist. By your wording, no, console gamers don't use keyboards / mice, because the games they play on consoles are not compatible wi…

The major difference between a mouse and a controller stick is the type of input. Mouse is a pointing input - for a movement of 1 unit, your view changes by 1 unit. If you stop moving the mouse, your view stops moving. Controller stick is a velocity input - for a movement of 1 unit, your view starts moving at a speed of 1 unit. If you bring the stick back to center, your view stops moving. It could be that the Steam…

There's no reason you can't use a mouse a velocity input and a stick as a position input; either one is returning a value in a two-dimensional space -- treating that value as "position" or "velocity" is a matter of what the receiving software does with the input, not the input itself.

Joystick calibration utilities, for instance, tend to take stick position as a position input, and ISTR a number of PC sims that preferred joystick input but could use a mouse like a non-auto-centering joystick.

Re: Steam Controller

#289

Post by foobarian »

bentcorner wrote: post #283
anonymous wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how my right thumb could be as precise as moving the mouse, which I do with all 5 of my fingers (for tiny movements) or from my shoulder (for larger movements). If thumb touchpads were good for FPS games, how come nobody is playing them with their thumb on their laptop's touchpad? Maybe I'm just old, but I don't see myself ever being able to use this.

> how come nobody is playing them with their thumb on their laptop's touchpad? Touchpads (and mice) don't work like thumbsticks. Touchpads/mice measure a vector with the size equal to distance traveled. Thumbsticks measure a vector with a size equal to the deflection from center. Thumbsticks are terrible for mousing tasks (e.g., moving a virtual cursor [rts games]), and mice/touchpads are terrible for thumbstick task…

Actually raw touchpad output does work like that, it's just adapted to drive a mouse cursor. Imagine a touchpad mode where the position of the mouse cursor on screen gets mapped to the position of the finger on the pad.

Re: Steam Controller

#290

Post by NoodleIncident »

gpmcadam wrote: post #285

I'm a bit miffed regarding all of the hype for what is essentially, at this point, vapour-ware. Also, why have Valve bothered to spread the announcement over 5 days? Surely this whole deal would've been more beneficial to be a keynote style announcement with some actual demos of the tech in question? As great a product as it may be, in my opinion there's an awful lot of excitement surrounding the announcement that Va…

Sign up for the hardware beta then. This isn't vaporware.
Post reply on HN