Getting FFXI working through Steam Link with controller

[solesaver]

So, I spent way to long trying to get this working yesterday, frankly with no help from the various threads that came up in the various google searches I tried. So I thought I'd retrospective the gotcha's that I hit and how I fixed them in the hopes that someone else who hits these issues might find this post and actually get answers.

This is all going to assume A) You can get through registration and set-up for normal steam PC play and B) You can get other games and controllers working normally through your Steam Link.

Additional caveat, I'm on a pretty standard Windows 10 installation up to date as of June 2020. Who knows what will change as time passes. Also, some things I did may be unnecessary; I didn't exhaustively rule out the variants of the things that worked.

I hit 3 major issues trying to get set up:

1) Steam Link does *not* like UAC, but FFXI will trigger it.

Unfortunately there isn't a good solution here, I searched. Some of the tips that other people suggested with powershell or regedit might work, but I'm no super user. I'm not comfortable messing with that stuff. As a normal windows user you have two options: 1) Disable UAC (not recommended). There are plenty of tutorials out there on how to do this if you choose to. A) Launch Steam as an administrator (also not recommended, but more recommended than option B). Just fully close steam and find wherever your steam client is installed. Right-click->Launch as administrator.

Whatever you do, you basically just need to get FFXI to not trigger UAC as it will mess with other things. I highly recommend that whatever you choose to do you do *just* for launching FFXI, UAC is an important security measure that should not be circumvented unless necessary.

2) Controller input does not work through Steam Link

The easier answer is to just not go through Steam Link, but that wasn't an option for me and may not be for other people. So here's what *I* did to get it working, there may be variants that also work. There's kinda 3 pieces to the puzzle.

First, directly on the PC where the game is installed, "Play" FFXI, but "Launch FINAL FANTASY XI Config Utility" instead of the game when prompted. Click "Gamepad Settings" in the bottom left and then the "XInput (F)" button in the "Predefined Setups" section along the right. You might be able to tweak this from the default, but I didn't. You won't be able to change the "Directional Control Devices" or "Test Gamepad" because nothing I tried would get this config utility to recognize controller input. That doesn't mean the game won't though.

Next through your Steam Link go to the game's landing page and select its Controller Configuration section like you would for any other game. There aren't currently any community loadouts to choose, but you should choose the option that treats it like a generic game pad. The important part is that the buttons get treated as A, B, X, Y and the like. Here too, you may be able to tweak the configuration. I did not though.

Finally, and this is critical, you *must* launch the game while "Big Picture" mode is on. It's only in this Steam interface that the controller configuration is plumbed through to the game as far as I can tell.

3) Failed to initialize Direct3D (aka is your modern computer not up to spec to play this 20 year old game?)

The game is wrong, but something about launching through the Steam Link messed with the graphics initialization for me. Also frustratingly all my searches led to people running into issues with "Windower" which for a n00bie (like me) reference is a 3rd party plug-in for the game. Not a thing I'm intending to mess with.

I'm not sure what was going on with this, but here's what I did to get it to work. Some steps, again, may not be necessary. In order to keep the controller working you still must launch from "Big Picture" mode, *but* it cannot be launched from Big Picture mode initialized from connecting to Steam Link. I'm really not sure what's going on here, this is already an edit of my initial idea of what I did to get it working, and maybe tomorrow something else will or will not work. Best I can tell as of right now is that you have to launch the game from Big Picture mode on your PC, go through all the sign in and launch process, then connect your steam link to the already running game. This should keep your controller working while bypassing the Direct3D bug. (PS if someone from the Steam or FFXI teams has any idea what's going on here that would be a great thing to clarify or even better, fix...

Hope that helps save someone else a lot of time if they try to do this too. One last minor gotcha that I hit. The game seems to lose network connection during the opening cinematic? I recommend watching the cinematic on youtube or something and just turning it off in game from the config app. Best of luck!

[Clown]

solesaver ty for the post i was trying all night to fig out the controller not working through the steam link box i am trying to use as well have not try the have bigscreen running and loging in and all that before turning on the link box ima try it now only thing i could get to work be for is if i press the select button and force it to act as mouse then i could move the arrow but not click or get buttons to work and i was about to try program i use on other games called anti micerow that force games that do not have controller setting or options to use a controller and kinda funny is it has a option once u set key to buttons on setup at bottom to force administrator so if i find a work around or if you have not updated this post let me know and i will do the same ty