151–160 of 370 posts
I love how Valve is making me say "I want a Steam machine!" in 2013.
Personally, I am keenly interested in a better, more standardized and streamlined gaming PC, but I'm not at all interested in yet another game console with limited controls, centralized publisher model and locked down OS. (And please, don't insult your intelligence by saying something along the lines of "but you can always plug keyboard in". It's not a matter of what you plug into the system, it's a matter of what UI design the system encourages.)
I'm actually pretty optimistic about this. It's a big divergence from current couch input schemes, and the open nature of it might mean that it'll be improved for ergonomics and whatnot. It's got some interesting promise. Best of all, worst case, I can fall back to my trusty 360 controllers and use those without a hitch, so even if this is a disaster, it doesn't sink the platform (as can be the case with other platfo…
I would say I am optimistic as well because, having been a dedicated "Big Picture" user for the past few months, it is clear Valve has put a lot of thought into this transition. However, what bothered me about the controller is that it doesn't seem to actually be that different. I don't see how this markedly improves over current controllers and their integration. The key genres for which the current controllers don'…
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 devices.)
(Yes, i know Civ isn't an RTS, but it is a strategy game that is unplayable on a stardard controller)
I'm actually pretty optimistic about this. It's a big divergence from current couch input schemes, and the open nature of it might mean that it'll be improved for ergonomics and whatnot. It's got some interesting promise. Best of all, worst case, I can fall back to my trusty 360 controllers and use those without a hitch, so even if this is a disaster, it doesn't sink the platform (as can be the case with other platfo…
I would say I am optimistic as well because, having been a dedicated "Big Picture" user for the past few months, it is clear Valve has put a lot of thought into this transition. However, what bothered me about the controller is that it doesn't seem to actually be that different. I don't see how this markedly improves over current controllers and their integration. The key genres for which the current controllers don'…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Furthermore, it is a hell of a lot easier to play quake with a trackpoint than a trackpad.
I have to guess that these trackpads will act like joysticks for fpsen. Keep your finger on the left side to move left, etc. Maybe I'm wrong though.
"You can’t make a sentence into a question by just putting a question-mark at the end." err "You can’t make a sentence into a question by just putting a question-mark at the end?" <--- it's a question now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the challenge is Valve is trying to create one-size-fits-all inputs with those trackpads. They have to work as joysticks and pointing devices, since Valve sells both console games and PC games on their platform. As a PC gamer, I'm super-excited for this gamepad because it will beat the ever-loving-crap out of a joystick for games that depend on a pointing-device (strategy, RTS, no-aim-assist-FPS games). It mi…
The nice thing is that a high-DPI trackpad can act as both a relative-input joystick (movement based on how far from center you are) and an absolute-input pointing device (movement based on absolute position in the device's input field). Joysticks can do this, too, but their DPI is frequently nowhere even close to acceptable for this kind of work - they tend to be somewhere in the 200-400 DPI range, when your average…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you scroll? Do use scroll bars?
On thinkpads you can press the middle mouse button (below the spacebar) then press the trackpoint up or down. I have always usually done this, but also remapped the trackpad to be entirely a "scrollpad"
Yep, and you can also click and release the middle mouse button, then separately mouse up or down. Interestingly, I have only been able to get either this OR the press then scroll behavior you described working on Windows (by toggling a setting), but in Linux you can have both enabled at the same time.