Controller Support

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Menus seem to ignore controller and there are no settings, but it works in game. Almost. Why is everything mapped except the basic attack?

I set up a Steam Input config for the demo that uses the WASD KBM interface for controls. It seems to work reasonably well, and my partner and I have played on it for a couple hours.

steam://controllerconfig/2992820/3256701332

Most of this is pretty normal and clear from the preview. Abilities Q and E are mapped twice for people who have under-buttons mapped to the stick clicks. Note the Back->Tab mapping, as that's used to confirm map changes instead of waiting for the countdown.

Hold Dpad-Down for free mousing with RS. Mouse mode also changes the AXYB face buttons to 1234 for ability slot selecting, RB to Middle Click for marking, and LB to Left Alt for the "show extra info" help text a few abilities have. Double-tap-and-hold Dpad-Down for "edit mode" where the game lets you rearrange your abilities.

[Troy Muni]

Messaggio originale di Tyrian Mollusk:

Menus seem to ignore controller and there are no settings, but it works in game. Almost. Why is everything mapped except the basic attack?

I set up a Steam Input config for the demo that uses the WASD KBM interface for controls. It seems to work reasonably well, and my partner and I have played on it for a couple hours.

steam://controllerconfig/2992820/3256701332

Most of this is pretty normal and clear from the preview. Abilities Q and E are mapped twice for people who have under-buttons mapped to the stick clicks. Note the Back->Tab mapping, as that's used to confirm map changes instead of waiting for the countdown.

Hold Dpad-Down for free mousing with RS. Mouse mode also changes the AXYB face buttons to 1234 for ability slot selecting, RB to Middle Click for marking, and LB to Left Alt for the "show extra info" help text a few abilities have. Double-tap-and-hold Dpad-Down for "edit mode" where the game lets you rearrange your abilities.

Just use Steam to map the buttons to whatever you want. I just did myself while going through the tutorial. Set up the controller as wasd and you should only need to change 3 or so of the buttons. I got rid of the fov adjustment since I'll never use that or can just touch my mouse for it.

Also if you have an elite or pro controller variant (i.e. - PS5 Dual Sense Edge, like me), you need to use a data rated USB cable. Otherwise, Steam loses the connection.

Steam's controller support works perfectly, so they don't need to add controller support. It will likely be much worse if they do. So many games end up being ruined when devs rush to put in controller support because then, you can't use Steam. Steam's has been around and refined for years. Learn to use it and you can re-use the layouts for multiple games.

[Tyrian Mollusk]

It's really weird to pedantically explain Steam Input while quoting the Steam Input config I shared for the game, which is a lot more than only needing to change 3 or so of the buttons.

Messaggio originale di Troy Muni:

Steam's controller support works perfectly, so they don't need to add controller support.

It does not work perfectly, because you have 8-way movement instead of analog, and targeting is awkward and has some definite issues, like the small screen area you can usefully use (especially with the abilities taking mouse inputs, so you need to be careful not to cross that space). Plus other things, like the lack of connection to game mode/menu changes. It works adequately, but proper in-game support should be better and doesn't usually prevent using a kbm Steam Input config if the devs do so badly you need to redo the whole thing, like with Synthetik.

Steam's has been around and refined for years. Learn to use it and you can re-use the layouts for multiple games.

Steam Input is full of major longstanding bugs and broken-by-design issues, like when they broke the layer stack and then just changed the documentation to call the broken behavior intended, among a host of other things. Mouse positioning has been just going to the wrong screen positions for months now. You still can't prevent already pressed buttons triggering as though newly pressed when layers change. Don't even get me started on the random false events it can reliably throw to break your config state, which I reported in extensive detail years ago now. "Refined?" That's just rich. I work a lot with Steam Input across many games, and it is a huge headache even before you get into the downright sadistically bad new UI for building configs. I wish it were refined. It's gotten significantly worse. This many years and you still can't even open a simple test/log mode to see what's happening instead of just guessing based on in-game response. "Refined." Hah.

And that's all not even getting into that devs should want their game to work somewhere other than Steam, like the huge console market, and they do need to put in the work for good controller handling and not just hand-wave it off to Steam Input. This isn't an incompetent, long anti-controller developer like GW2's Areanet, with a complex game that would take actually skillful UX design. This is a simple top-down action game that clearly already has controller support partially built.

But devs should build controller support with tools like Steam Input in mind, and make sure to always smoothly accept any inputs regardless of source, so a user can mix available controller and kbm inputs for the best experience. Too many games are modal and need to switch their UI every time they think the input device changes, or even just block switching, which all really gets in the way when you want a simple thing like analog movement and unmolested mouse aiming. And devs should watch how their players enjoy the game and take notice of ways they can do their UI better.

[Lizard Smoothie]

Hi Tyrian,

Sorry for causing the confusion, Shape of Dream does not support controllers at the moment.

The behavior you're seeing in-game is leftover of what we experimented with controller support. We are in progress of researching and experimenting into how we can support controllers in a fun and user-friendly manner.

When we add controller support we will make sure we let you know via Steam Announcements and on our Discord.

Best regards,
Lizard Smoothie

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Messaggio originale di Lizard Smoothie:

The behavior you're seeing in-game is leftover of what we experimented with controller support. We are in progress of researching and experimenting into how we can support controllers in a fun and user-friendly manner.

Ah, ok. You should definitely disable the broken support, because the store page says the game works with controller, and you will get very confused and unhappy players when they can't make sense of what's going on in-play, especially since having no basic is crippling. First impressions are important, and many players won't bother to give a game a second chance if it gives a bad experience. If you don't disable it, I would suggest at least setting X to do the basic attack for now.

Well, I do suggest trying the Steam Input config I linked above, as an option for how the game can play. Obviously, if there were real controller support, or if the game notified Steam Input when you were in a mousing situation (menus, shop selection, edit mode, map view), the switch to and from mouse mode could be automatic instead of using dpad-down.

If you add such Steam Input notification (a nice feature games rarely use, since it doesn't do anything for their non-Steam markets/platforms), let me know here and I'll upload a new config that uses it :)

[Lizard Smoothie]

Storefront gamepad support is certainly a mistake on our part, we have removed the claim from the page, thanks for the heads up!
Also when we get time, we'll look into the config and see what insights we can gather from it.

Best regards,
Lizard Smoothie

[Lizard Smoothie]

Hi again, we've just added experimental gamepad support in our game. Please check it out and let us know if you have any feedback you'd like to share about it.

Thanks for playing!

[Tyrian Mollusk]

Messaggio originale di Lizard Smoothie:

Hi again, we've just added experimental gamepad support in our game.

Yeah, I saw that update. I gave it a couple solo runs with the gun and sword characters, and frankly, this form of controller play removes way too much gameplay for my taste. You've made it so you can't even use the right stick and just rely on the game to do all your aiming and target selection (I know RS works, but you can't actually use it with dodge and basic on face buttons). Preferring controller doesn't mean we don't want to actually play our games, or that we're infants who can't handle basic play.

I know there's a lot of top-down style games out there finding success from removing our gameplay, but that isn't how the game plays on kbm, so I personally think you probably need to decide if this is a gameplay game or a watch-your-upgrades-fight game, not make it one way on kbm and the other on controller.

Also, the general gameplay feels clunky and awkward when you're just stuck letting the game decide who gets hit by what (even besides things like the frontal shield just picking a direction and staying there). Maybe with remapping the play can be more compatible with RS, and feel somewhat less forcibly automated, but I haven't tried that yet, since Steam Input switching buttons around makes menus very confusing (A and B in particular--the ones we most need to move).

B for basic isn't normal. X would be more normal if you want a face button for that.

Rifle's Precision Shot ability plays badly. Either releasing or re-activating should fire, not only the basic attack mapping, and I have to say that being locked in place while it charges does not work with the gameplay you've designed at all. Bosses, especially, don't just let you stand there doing nothing, and things that don't work with boss fights are unusable in the game, since boss fights are the core threat you have to work around.

Please just get rid of white-tier chaos drops. The numbers are annoyingly small, and it hurts even being asked to look at and allocate such a bad reward. Bad rewards aren't rewarding or fun: they're just missed opportunities.

[Lizard Smoothie]

Thank you for the detailed insights! The control scheme seems to clearly miss certain part of the user base, and about the game design suggestions, you've raised very valid points. We'll see what we can do in the future.

Meanwhile, if you have any ideas how we could've done gamepad controls better, we could really use some help from the players so please feel free to share with us! Gamepad control is in beta and we're still experimenting to improve the control scheme further.

In our research and experiments to port our game's MOBA-like controls to gamepad, with 4 active skills and a basic attack each requiring aim plus a dodge skill we're struggling to find a better way than providing at least a layer of abstraction to the users in form of auto-targeting.

Also we've considered adding a feature that lets you attack by simply aiming so you get freedom on your right thumb, but since basic attacks are different in traditional sense of roguelikes, where MOBA-like attacks stop the player briefly each attack, this sometimes felt janky when you needed to quickly cast a skill in the direction you want. We'd be more than happy if you gave us some ideas and suggestions about this :)

Again, thank you for sharing us such detailed insights, and we hope to hear back from you.
Have a good one!

[Lizard Smoothie]

Hi again, we've pushed some changes that should address some of the issues you've had. Please check them out and feel free to leave us more suggestions if you'd like.