Voyage to Farland: Big Picture, Controllers, Linux & SteamOS

This mini-guide gives information about the latest release (v 2.3.2) with changes for Steam's Big Picture mode as well as important information for Linux and SteamOS (Steam Machine) users.

Quick Start

The latest version of Voyage to Farland adds some features that are useful for Steam's Big Picture mode.

• Bundled Java for Linux and SteamOS
  
• Automatically opens in fullscreen when launched from Big Picture mode
  
• Full controller support
  
• Launch options for remapping controller buttons, setting volumes, etc.

Here's an animated GIF to show you the default game controller mappings (you can change these in the Settings by pressing the Left Trigger)



Note: you may want to remap the A and B buttons since the above mapping mimics an SNES or Nintendo DS controller.

How to Save and Quit the Game with a Controller

One thing that may not be obvious is how to quit the game when playing with a controller. But it's pretty easy.

1) Save and Quit to go back to the Start Menu


Tap the Save/Revert button to open the menu and select "Save and Quit" then "Yes". This will play a little music, save your game progress and drop you back into the Start Menu.

Note that there's one quirk in the game in that if you decide to cancel the "Save and Quit", you do so by hitting Backout (as in Inventory/Backout). Or you could just select "No"...

2) From the Start Menu, tap Save/Revert again to open the "Quit" screen


This takes you to the special "Quit" screen where you can use the DPAD to select "Yes", hit the Attack/Select button and leave the game completely.


Note that when playing the game with a keyboard, you can instantly quit and save the game at any time by hitting Escape and selecting "Yes" to quit. This auto-saves your progress and leaves the game completely.

However, when playing with a controller due to the more limited inputs (buttons), you have to quit the game with the Save/Revert method above.

But actually since Voyage to Farland auto-saves your progress periodically you never have to worry about completely losing your progress, even if you have to quit the game using the controller's Guide button through Steam.

Voyage to Farland is now bundled with Java for Linux & SteamOS

Since SteamOS doesn't have an easy way for a user to install Java (which Voyage to Farland requires), the new default Linux build for the game will include a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) in the game download.

This will allow Voyage to run "out of the box" on SteamOS.

Other Linux users, however, may prefer to use their own installed version of Java. In that case, you can choose the "beta" build with the title:

"v2.3.2 Game only, no Java Runtime"

Note that it's not actually a beta build - it's the exact same build of the game as the default download, just without the bundled Java for Linux/SteamOS. But the Steam client only allows access to these alternate builds through the "betas" tab, so...

On a desktop OS, right-click on Voyage to Farland in the Steam client and select Properties and the the Betas tab to choose the build without a bundled JRE.

Or if you don't care either way, just stick with the default build (although note that it will take an additional 100MB on your harddisk for the JRE).

Playing with only a controller

While previous versions of Voyage to Farland have had partial controller support built in, the latest update (v 2.3.2) makes some improvements to reach full controller support.

As long as your gamepad or controller has a DPAD, four control buttons as well as left shoulder, right shoulder and back/start (or select) buttons, you should be able to launch, play, OWN!, save and quit in the game.


One minor change is that the default position for the Save/Revert functions and the Toggle Map functions have been swapped in the latest version.

If you have an XBOX360 style controller (or Steam Controller), you can also bring up the game's Settings menu by hitting the Left Trigger. This will allow you to change button mappings to your liking.

A/B or B/A??

For instance, on an SNES style controller, these Mystery Dungeon games typically use the right-most button (which is A on the controller) for the Attack/Select and they use the bottom-most button (which is B on an SNES style controller) for the Inventory/Backout function.

Since this is sort of backwards from the XBOX360 controller layout and SteamOS'es normal menu navigation, you may wish to remap the A & B buttons. Just hit the Left Trigger to open up the Settings, use the DPAD to go down to Attack/Select and tap the controller button you prefer, then do the same for the Inventory/Backout function and any other functions you would like to remap.

Hitting the Left Trigger button again will exit back to the game and save your button mappings for the current game and all future games.

Launch Options for Linux, SteamOS and Mac OSX

For this latest version, launch options have also been added. This will allow you to remap controller buttons and tweak a few other settings with Steam's "Launch Options".

Note: currently these options only work with the Linux, SteamOS and Mac OSX versions of the game. For the Windows version, you can always change settings with the keyboard or edit a special launch file and place it in the game directory for Voyage to Farland. For information about that Windows launch file, see the section "Launch Options for Windows".

Here are the launch options you can use with Voyage to Farland

Options to map controller buttons

• -Datt=N where N is the number for the button on your controller you would like to use for the Attack/Select function
  
• -Dinv=N where N is the number for the button on your controller you would like to use for the Inventory/Backout function
  
• -Ddash=N where N is the number for the button on your controller you would like to use for the Dash function (hold while using DPAD to dash along hallways or across rooms, or to swap spaces with an NPC)
  
• -Drota=N where N is the number for the button on your controller you would like to use for the Rotate function (hold while using DPAD to change direction without moving or using a turn, also to sort items in the Inventory menu)
  
• -Ddiag=N where N is the number for the button on your controller you would like to use for the Diagonal function (restricts movement to diagonals - hold while using DPAD for controllers where getting precise diagonal movement is difficult)
  
• -Dfire=N where N is the number for the button on your controller you would like to use for the Fire function (tap this to fire an equipped projectile, i.e. Steel Shot in the game)
  
• -Drevx=N where N is the number for the button on your controller you would like to use for the Save/Revert function (opens a menu to save the game and exit back to the start menu, also to revert to human form after drinking a monster vial, and finally to quit the game from the start "Go Forth" menu)
  
• -Dtmap=N where N is the number for the button on your controller you would like to use for the Toggle Map function (tap this to toggle the translucent overlay map on/off)

Options to set Music and Sound Effects Volume

• -Dmusv=N where N is a number from 0 to 10 for Background Music Volume
  
• -Dsfxv=N where N is a number from 0 to 10 for Sound Effects Volume

Other Options

• -Dshct=yes diagnostic option to display (messy) information about how the game sees your controller (you might want to temporarily use this for example if the game doesn't recognize the controller "axis" for the left trigger button. you can then set the axis using the ltax option below)
  
• -Dstth=N where N is the "threshold" for your controller's left trigger "axis" (by default this is 0.9 so that you must press the left trigger nine tenths of the way in to open the Settings menu)
  
• -Dltax=N where N is the "axis" (see shct option above) for the left trigger button on your controller (note that this may be different for various controllers and is in fact different for an XBOX360 controller on Windows and Linux - axis 4 for the former and axis 2 for the latter!?)
  
• -Dcthk=yes enables a special "controller hack" option that disallows right/left movement to change pages in the Inventory menu, since the DPAD on XBOX360 and clone controllers make it too easy to mistakenly hit right/left when you're trying to just go up and down in the menu) this can also be turned on/off from the Settings menu opened with Left Trigger assuming your controller has trigger buttons.
  
• -Dbpo=yes by default when the game launches from Steam's Big Picture mode, it will open in fullscreen - this option will override that behavior and the game will launch in either windowed or fullscreen according to the saved preferences.

As an example, if you add this in the Steam client's launch options for Voyage to Farland...

-Datt=1 -Dinv=2 -Dmusv=5

it will launch the game with button 1 for Attack/Select, button 2 for Inventory/Backout and set the game's background music volume to 5 (50% of max volume). Those button mappings may make more sense if you're used to the XBOX360 controller with A being the main "select" button and B being the main "Go Back" button.

Launch Options for Windows

For the Windows version of Voyage to Farland, Steam's "Launch Options" unfortunately will not work.

Instead, you can edit a file named "Voyage.l4j.ini" and place it in the game's install directory (typically "c:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/SteamApps/common/Voyage to Farland/" on Windows).

You can use all of the options listed in the previous section by putting them in the file like this for example:

# Launch4j runtime config for Voyage to Farland (Voyage.exe)
-Datt=1
-Dinv=2
-Dmusv=5

The example config file above would remap button 1 to be Attack/Select and button 2 to be Inventory/Backout (which may make more sense for gamers with an XBOX360 or clone controller or gamers not "hardwired" to the old Nintendo DS or SNES button layout). The config file will also override the Music Volume to be 5 - or 50% of the maximum volume.