Steam Deck's emulation of mouse wheel via trackpad not working correctly

[Sinister Design]

Hi! Steam Support encouraged me to start a thread here with the expectation that some Valve devs might take notice.

I am the developer behind Telepath Tactics Liberated, a well-reviewed SRPG made in Unity. The game recently received a "playable" mark for Steam Deck, and I've been making changes to further improve the experience.

As of today's patch, the game is coded to exhibit a certain behavior when spinning the mouse wheel when a gamepad is being used to control the game. This behavior works perfectly when I use an actual mouse wheel alongside an XBox 360 gamepad in Windows--however, when using my Steam Deck's trackpad to emulate a mouse wheel, it does not trigger the behavior at all.

This is the case whether I leave the track pad's mouse wheel motion set to circular or change it to horizontal. Making the appropriate motion on the track pad does produce haptic feedback; it just doesn't replicate the actual mouse wheel behavior in-game. It seems that this must be an issue with emulating the mouse wheel; perhaps in Unity specifically?

[ugafan]

I don't own Telepath Tactics Liberated, so I have no way to test that game specifically, but Scroll Wheel is working in other games.

Have you added clockwise and counter clockwise commands?

[[KAMI] RedWyvern]

Sorry if this is too simple, but in Desktop Mode I replaced mouse wheel emulation with swipe gestures in mouse wheel mode as the former did not work anymore.
This was a few weeks ago and might not be relevant.

[Sinister Design]

Originally posted by ugafan:

Have you added clockwise and counter clockwise commands?

Nothing so complicated as that. Spinning the mouse wheel gives focus to the actions bar and scrolls through the buttons there. The direction the wheel is spun merely changes the direction in which the game scrolls through the buttons.

Originally posted by KAMI RedWyvern:

Sorry if this is too simple, but in Desktop Mode I replaced mouse wheel emulation with swipe gestures in mouse wheel mode as the former did not work anymore.

Not only is this not too simple, I have no actual idea what "swipe gestures in mouse wheel mode" refers to 😅

[ugafan]

Originally posted by Sinister Design:

Nothing so complicated as that. Spinning the mouse wheel gives focus to the actions bar and scrolls through the buttons there. The direction the wheel is spun merely changes the direction in which the game scrolls through the buttons.

What I mean is, when you're setting up the configuration in steam input, you have to add scroll wheel up and down as clockwise and counterclockwise commands. If you don't add the commands, you'll feel the haptic feedback but it won't do anything in game because you haven't told it what the commands are.

[[KAMI] RedWyvern]

Originally posted by Sinister Design:

Not only is this not too simple, I have no actual idea what "swipe gestures in mouse wheel mode" refers to 😅

It's a different Steam Input option that can emulate vertical or horizontal scroll wheels, which I switched to in Desktop Mode because I had problems with the scroll wheel emulation.
But this was double clicks from a GUI configured layout, not game development related.

[Sinister Design]

Originally posted by ugafan:

What I mean is, when you're setting up the configuration in steam input, you have to add scroll wheel up and down as clockwise and counterclockwise commands. If you don't add the commands, you'll feel the haptic feedback but it won't do anything in game because you haven't told it what the commands are.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that rebinding controls on the Steam Deck won't do anything unless the game you're playing has integrated the Steam Input API?

[ugafan]

You can rebind controls on the Stem Deck whether the game has integrated Steam Input API support or not.

When you set the left trackpad behavior to scroll wheel, it will not scroll up and down by default. Click on clockwise command and add scroll wheel up. Click on counter clockwise command and add scroll wheel down.

[Sinister Design]

Ah, okay: I was looking in Quick Settings and not seeing any option to add commands to the trackpad--I didn't realize there was a separate settings menu. Bit of a confusing UI choice there, Valve. Anyway, I just went back and dug through the regular settings and found it, and it is now working. Thanks for your help!