PS3 Controller for Mac 10.8.x

[Shake_The_Bottle]

I have a regular PS3 controller (SixAxis Dualshock 3) and am having trouble hooking it up (wired or Bluetooth) to my iMac. So far, all I can do is jump (in Portal 2) by pressing the 'select' button. :) Any tips? Thanks.

[adezero]

plug it into your comp with the usb cable. press the PS button for 2 seconds. done.

[M8torr]

I am able to connect the PS3 Controller with the Macbook Pro OS X 10.8 via USB Cable and Bluetooth. It is recognized by Steam Big Picture. But inside Left 4 Dead 2 it just doesn't work at all. I have tried configuring it on the Options and once you start playing it the characters walk in circles without letting you play. Does anyone know how to correct this?

[Creamy_Man_Salad]

I'm having the exact same problem with Borderlands 2. the controller works fine going through big picture mode and even worked for Castle Crashers also.

[A Retired Ninja]

Same problem, though I'm rather happy that Big Picture mode at least works fairly well with the PS3 controller for me (only problem is triangle and square are swapped). Perhaps the fact that Valve included support for the PS3 controller in Big Picture mode suggests that they might eventually add support for Source games on Mac. But... Valve time.

I own ControllerMate, and it allows pretty good support for many games, though you have to program the inputs (some premade button maps can be found on forums). And since Borderlands 2 has an aim assist toggle built in, it works quite well in conjunction with ControllerMate.

[Mr. JOKE]

connect controller with the usb cable. press the PS button for 2 seconds

[gwen tingson]

Mine doesnt work at all lol I got all hyped for nothing.

[TheBeerded1der]

I am having the exact same issue in Portal 2 on my Mac. Gamepad Companion is semi working for me, but I think that if I really want it to work I am going to be messing around with it for hours. Any other quick fixes out there?

[TheBeerded1der]

Originally posted by Joke(ITA):

connect controller with the usb cable. press the PS button for 2 seconds

It's not a matter of the PS3 controller not working at all. As has been mentioned, it works fine in the Big Picture mode for browsing, but the second you try to play a game like Portal 2, L4D, TF2 or anything like that it fails to work. There has to be some sort of fix out there for this!?

[RadioGnome1971]

I think the best fix would be for Valve to realise the PS3 controller works natively on OS-X. So just like the x-Box controller being the most probable controller on a PC, on a Mac you might expect a ps3 controller.

As they both have exactly the same buttons and sticks, it is not that you have to invent a whole new control layout to make things work. Only the input has to be mapped differently, something.

Hope Valve fixes this, so lets all keep reminding Valve to do this for us... (post this to keep the discussion alive)

[BRA\\\]

We need a way to select the controller type manually because Portal 2 (and other source games I guess) fail at detecting it correctly and default to Xinput.

My Dualshock 3 is connected over Bluetooth or USB. The drivers that come with OSX are working perfectly because I can navigate the Big Picture menu's. I've set up all the buttons again in the Big Picture settings and saved/published the profile just to be sure.

When I start Portal 2 from Big Picture the controls are all messed up. The strangest thing is ,when I look at the controller settings inside the game, it showns an xbox controller even though I never connected one.

So, Big Picture is correctly detecting the controller type (DX for Dualshock?) and shows a generic image at the settings menu. Portal fails at detecting the controller type and defaults to Xinput showing a xbox controller instead.

[F!NN]

I'm also planning to use Steam with it's new Big Picture mode and a PS3 controller.

Valve: Please work on getting this controller to function properly in-game!

[BRA\\\]

I tried out Big Picture with my Dualshock and it worked perfeclty, no configuration required. So I assumed that at least all the Source games that say they have full controller support would be playable. They aren't, so don't get your hopes up.

[Shake_The_Bottle]

Originally posted by adezero:

plug it into your comp with the usb cable. press the PS button for 2 seconds. done.

Alright, I got my Dualshock working fine in Big Picture on my Mac. (10.8.x) Here's the problem: when I launch a game, like Portal 2, then it "loses" my configurations and goes back to not working. If possible, I think that your controller configurations that you set up on Big Picture should be "imported" into the game with you.

[BRA\\\]

Originally posted by Shake_The_Bottle:

I think that your controller configurations that you set up on Big Picture should be "imported" into the game with you.

Unfortunately that's not possible because there is no standard for defining game controls. Though you would expect that 2 products of the same company would have some consistency in how they handle these controllers. If they can't even get that right in-house, imagine how hard it would be to export the configuration to 3rd party games.

[Zapp Brannigan]

I've dug up controller.360.cfg that pre-configs the controller for games. Must be in every game that's available for the consoles/windows/OSX. It's used with a cfg file that also sets up the graphics based on certain baselines. Point being if this can be modified to match the PS3 controller input IDs, we are good to go. Anyone have any idea how OS X sees the PS3 buttons?

I'll try n find the 'big picture' profile as otherwise how on earth does that work straight off the bat. Not sure if you noticed: the button overlays show 360 buttons not PS3 ones. Why the profile for the big picture works seamlessly despite this short coming and the games not. No idea.

STEAM SUPPORT - it's going to take me ages to work this out, any chance a dev can knock up a controller.ps3.cfg file for us? You work with all platforms and are way for familiar with this.