The Steam Universe is Expanding in 2014...

[Candescence]

Well, if there are games that require that kind of complexity, a small touch screen likely wouldn't be nearly enough. The controller as it is already exceeds the functionality of any other traditional controller with the trackpads (which, precision aside, can also emulate buttons) and the two buttons on the back of the controller. Valve are also talking about crowdsourcing optimal button mappings and having up to 16 Steam Controllers able to connect, which puts pretty much every console to shame, though I wonder how the hell anyone would be able to make use of it.

 

Still, I sincerely doubt Valve will just put in a Steam button and a start and select buttons, they'll probably have a more cost-effective alternative to the touch screen.

 

 

Also, at the same Steam Dev Days event (Day 1 out of 2 so far), there were other cool stuff making the rounds. You can get most of the info on NeoGAF.

• Steam has 75 million active users, 10 million more than it was roughly three months ago. That's quite the jump.
• Valve is working with various partners to make OpenGL development much easier, with developing good tools - a lot of the reason why many devs avoid OpenGL is the lack of good tools compared to DirectX, and Valve is working on that problem, including the most complete OpenGL debugger and complier to date - this is a huge deal, since this is the most requested tool.
• Valve showed its own experimental virtual reality headset tech, which was designed to show what kind of experience could be shown in VR. People who've tried it say Valve's VR headset is even better than the newest model of the Oculus Rift, codenamed Crystal Cove. It's not a consumer product, though, just an R&D demonstration.
• Everyone who attended the event gets a Gigabyte Steam Machine. A high-end one. Holy shit.
• Lots of Source 2 talk during the first day, no concrete details, aside from the fact that Source 2 is built natively on OpenGL, with Lunix support out of the box. Valve have pretty much completely discarded DirectX, folks, this is a big deal.
• Valve wants to get rid of Steam Greenlight. Not because it's not useful, but it's because Steam is evolving.
• At the end of Day 1, Valve displayed a message: "The Steam Universe is expanding." This could mean virtually anything. I'm personally hoping for a full-on demonstration of Source 2 - if it's anything as revolutionary as the original Source Engine, this would be the perfect time to show off how awesome OpenGL can be. With Unlimited Detail as the renderer. I can dream, damn it.

[Gabz Girl]

Bit disappointed that they have gone for various Steamboxes with various price tags instead of sticking with just one. Might as well just buy a regular ol' PC. =/

[MegasonicZX]

Wait, they want to get rid of steam greenlight, wouldn't that  basically get rid of the chance for a person to get a game on there?

[Candescence]

Bit disappointed that they have gone for various Steamboxes with various price tags instead of sticking with just one. Might as well just buy a regular ol' PC. =/

Well, they're for a bit of a different audience, to be fair, they're for people who want to play PC games in the living room. Any regular PC user would probably just download SteamOS and buy the Steam Controller separately, or if they want a new PC, buy or build on. Hell, I'm waiting on a whole bunch of parts for my new PC case to be delivered.

 

 

Wait, they want to get rid of steam greenlight, wouldn't that  basically get rid of the chance for a person to get a game on there?

I think they mean they're working on a replacement, basically. Greenlight has its problems, and Valve knows it.

[PSI Wind]

Bit disappointed that they have gone for various Steamboxes with various price tags instead of sticking with just one. Might as well just buy a regular ol' PC. =/

Yeah, and they're still pretty expensive. Maybe I'll get the controller, but I'll stick with my own computer.

[PaddyFancy]

The Escapist reports, the Alienware Steam Machine is meant to last a year. It cannot be upgraded or customized, but to counter that new models will be released every year to keep up with the demands of newer games.

 

PC gamers probably won't have to spend that much money upgrading to play the latest game. Buy a Steam Machine for $500 and regardless it probably can't play current games depending on how cheap the model is to others, and in a years time if you want the latest games you might have to spend another $500, perhaps the old Steam Machine will act as a deposit but I doubt it can be traded straight up.

 

Nah. I could literally buy a gaming PC, and use it for playing games, but also browse the internet, write in Word, design in Photoshop etc. Steam Machine I think we all established is more limited than a fecking purpose-built games console from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131507-Alienware-Steam-Machines-Cant-Be-Upgraded

[Candescence]

New Steam Controller prototype design!

 

 

 

The design is somewhat more standard. Note that the buttons on the left side isn't technically a D-Pad, they're basically the same quadrant buttons from the original prototype that were supposed to represent the touch screen, though, technically, they could work as a D-Pad anyway. As well, according to Cooljerk over at Retro:

 

• The triggers in the new prototype are analog-based, the old ones were digital.
• All versions of the steam controller have 6-axis motion control, even the old protos. They're just disabled at the moment. A future firmware update will enable them once the API is ready. 

[Kaze no Klonoa]

 

New Steam Controller prototype design!

 

 

 

The design is somewhat more standard. Note that the buttons on the left side isn't technically a D-Pad, they're basically the same quadrant buttons from the original prototype that were supposed to represent the touch screen, though, technically, they could work as a D-Pad anyway. As well, according to Cooljerk over at Retro:

 

• The triggers in the new prototype are analog-based, the old ones were digital.
• All versions of the steam controller have 6-axis motion control, even the old protos. They're just disabled at the moment. A future firmware update will enable them once the API is ready. 

 

In my opinion it still feels like it's going to be a uncomfortable controller.

[VO.SUPER]

It looks kinda like a set of speakers attached together.

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

honestly, this whole plan sounds like a trainwreck(and its not the first time either)

Problem with licensing out a console to several producers is that the quality varies from model to model, and the creators get a whole less product, I mean this isnt the first time this was tried, it was tried before, and that company(which I can not remember at this moment) was driven bankrupt. Now mind you steam isnt going to go bankrupt, but this trainwreck definately wont help its image

[PSI Wind]

The new controller definitely looks better. 

[Candescence]

For people who don't like the 'd-pad', Cooljerk over at Retro explains how the trackpads are the D-Pads, not the arrow buttons, from personal experience actually using the Steam Controller:
 
 

 

the difference being a cell phone screen is touch activated and provides no tactile feedback aside from vibrations, where the touchpads can be switch activated to provide a real, literal, physical button depressing.

In other words, the difference between sliding over glass with every slightes contact being represented as input, and depressing an actual button on the left side of the pad to move left, with only that button being depressed being recognized as input.

Which is a pretty huge difference.


Because they're not directions as separate buttons. They're a cluster of 4 buttons that are labeled with directions. And I explained why they "need" to be like that - because a d-pad resides in that location on most other controllers and developers/beta testers demanded a consistent labeling scheme to make on-screen prompts match in games with legacy support.

EDIT: To explain better, because people honestly still sound confused about how the touchpads work and feel (and because a number of people parrot incorrect inferences about the way the touchpads feel based off of visual inspection -- I.e. "the pad can't be used for fighting games very well"):



The two touchpads are actually two dish-shaped giant buttons that physically depress. They have the throw of an average playstation or xbox or nintendo or sega controller button, to the touch, when you depress them, they feel like giant, concave buttons in the center of the controller where your thumbs rest. The surface of these buttons is a capacitive touchpad, meaning that these two buttons can tell where your fingers are on the button.

These two buttons are attached to powerful and advanced actuators that provide haptic feedback. Most people don't fully understand what haptic feedback is - the most complex haptic feedback that most people have felt is rumble from a controller or phone, which is blunt and not directed. The haptic feedback in these touchpads is much more advanced - in addition to being able to set duration and strength, you can also set sound and direction of feedback. So, where in a typical controller you feel blunt rumble - a sort of blob of haptic feedback that just occurs in every direction in your hand - these touchpads give you localized rumble that only each thumb feels, and that rumble has direction.

There appears to be a lot of myth and misunderstanding about how this haptic feedback feels to the user. I'll admit my previous vocabulary in talks (not necessarily on this board) may not have conveyed the sensation these cause well enough, so I'll be more deliberate with my words. You don't feel buttons or shapes with this haptic feedback - haptic feedback won't make you believe there is a smaller, circular button residing in the top portion of the right touchpad where the triangle button would reside on a playstation pad. Haptic feedback isn't that advanced yet.

What haptic feedback can make you feel, however, is inertia and motion. You've no doubt heard people lament about how good the right touchpad feels as a replacement for the mouse, because when they swipe their finger across it, they feel like the pad is spinning in that direction. They can feel it spinning, they hear it spinning. Their thumb feels like it's in a trackball, and that trackball is rotating in the socket. That's the direction of the haptic feedback. By vibrating localized portions of the pad in concert, and moving the areas that are vibrating, it can simulate the feeling of inertia. Given the dished shape of the pads, this translates, in our heads, to the feeling of controlling a ball. We can spin the ball in any direction we wish, and we'll swear we're feeling a physical ball spinning in the direction our thumb swiped.

Haptic feedback is not the solution to making you feel like you're depressing a button. But the good news is that the thing this haptic feedback is occurring on is a button. A large one that takes up the amount of space that d-pad or analog stick would. Even better is that the same effect we use to make us believe we are spinning a ball with our thumbs can be clubbed and shortened to feel like we are rocking a ball around a pivot. Doing so is very simple to do, and valve's own legacy support already includes this. When I move my thumb the left side of the left pad, I feel like the pad is rocking to the left. I feel like it's shifted and now my thumb is slightly tilting the entire pad to the left, like a rocker d-pad would feel.

Now here's the current problem - valve's legacy support accepts input upon contact with the touchpad. In other words, it ignores the fact that they are buttons, and instead activates upon contact. So, while I still can feel the pad rocking in place, it's too slippery and I can't rest my thumb anywhere without recording input.

The good news is that A) valve has a mode in beta where you need to press the button to activate input, turning the touchpad into a large, physical d-pad that they demoed to the super meatboy devs, and devs like myself are making the preference for an activator switch heard and, at least recently on the steamOS dev forum, they said they're working on bringing such a mode to public.

To conclude, when you combine the need to physically depress the button to activate input, combined with the ability to make it feel as though you are rocking the touchpad around a central pivot, along with the physical groves on the touchpad that you use to orient yourself, you find functionality that is as good as any d-pad out there. I know, I've tried it myself. I've done tests using this setup in native mode. It honestly works.

Anybody bitching because those 4 buttons in a diamond formation, labeled up, down, left, and right, won't feel like, say, the sega saturn d-pad and thus won't be suitable for platformers or fighting games or whatever are missing the point. You already HAVE a d-pad of that quality right in front of you. This stuff is still in development, that's why it's not in stores right now. The kinda of kinks I'm describing are precisely why it's in beta, so they can be ironed out by launch.

tl;dr: the touchpads can actually be superb d-pads, and everything you want the 4 buttons to be.

 

[Candescence]

So, my controller came in about a week earlier than expected, and I've been fiddling around with it. So far, I quite like it. The actual ergonomics are similar to the PS4 controller (and thus a bit of a step back from the Xbone when it comes to reaching for the lower controls) except for the way the controller naturally curves the tips of your thumbs towards the trackpads, which I didn't even notice at first, which is good. All the buttons and the pads are nice and responsive, though some of them are a bit loud for my tastes when pressed. 

As for how it actually handles, I haven't quite gotten the settings I best like to say for sure when it comes to FPS/TPS games (my main test subjects being TF2 and Warframe, which both delightfully have button prompts/icons for the controller), but it's certainly a step up from dual-analog, and the gyro helps a bit. But the mouse-region setting for certain games is absolutely fantastic, I've been testing it with CrossCode, and while it does take some getting used to, I'm loving it so far. Hell, I'm actually using the right pad as the fire button, it just feels way more intuitive than the shoulder, which is hilarious, since using the stick clicks on a regular controller for anything essential or the most used functions is basically unthinkable.

So, pretty good so far, and I'm eager about the possibilities. The grip buttons alone are absolutely fantastic, using the face buttons for jumping just seems so... Archaic, now. Now, if only there was direct Unity integration...