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glass Apr 11, 2016 @ 6:15am

will this have controller support?

Will I be able to use a controller, or is this keyboard/mouse only?

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Originally posted by ChiriVulpes:

Originally posted by SUPERIOR MAN OF WONGUS WORDS:
....How's this feature coming along?

[Updated as of Runekeeper release, Dec 2024.]

Controller support still hasn't been started yet, as it requires a few other things being finished, and I'm the only dev on our (very small) team working on that stuff. The main thing that it depends on is the very old UI system being replaced. At this point, the Crafting dialog is the only thing remaining of it, though. When that has been converted over to the new system (could be another year since this is still more of a hobby project and I like to add new features as I pull stuff over to the new system), then I can start on controller support. Actually doing the controller support shouldn't take too long, it's just the rate of pulling stuff to the new systems that takes forever.

For reference, I'll write up a "little" roadmap of major stuff I've been doing over the updates as I've slowly inched closer and closer to controller support:

2.0 Wayward Beta (April 22nd, 2016)
Everything is in the old system. Controller support is planned for long term.

2.3 "Expression" (March 31st, 2017)
This was the first major update that I was on the team. My first foray into Wayward UI was making the character editor.

2.5 "Kinship" (December 22nd, 2017)
I reimplemented all "menus" across the game (think: pause menu, options menu, main menu, mods menu, etc) to use a new UI system. This new UI system out of the box supported using keyboard controls to navigate between UI elements. The plan at this point was to port every in-game element over the next update or two. Unfortunately... I underestimated just how much that was.

2.6 "Mercantile" (June 29th, 2018)
- Ported stats, messages, and the menu bar over to the new UI. Ported the help popups into a help menu.
- Added support for new UI "dialogs" — ie, the little black in-game windows that can be dragged around. These dialogs lay the groundwork for keyboard & controller-navigable in-game UI. At this point, only dialogs for Quick Settings, Messages, and a new dialog "Notes" have been made.

2.7 "Deserted Trials" (December 22nd, 2018)
- Ported the skill & milestone dialogs over to the new UI, with a bunch of enhancements as per usual.
- Added a "questing" system that the Starter Quest mod was redesigned with, thereby porting that over to a new dialog.

2.8 "Odds & Ends" (October 26th, 2019)
Started work on a replacement crafting system & crafting dialog. This was too complex and couldn't make it in in this update, and I haven't been able to get back to it since then and at this point crafting has diverged enough that it might need to be entirely redone. The rest of my time this update was spent on a new "Milestone Modifier" system.

2.9 "Seafarer" (July 25th, 2020)
- Added a new "inspection" system to eventually replace all the old in-game tooltips. Most tooltips in the game were converted over to this system, save for items and crafting recipes. This would be necessary to complete for controller support as it was another thing baked into the old UI source code.
- Added support for input "macros" (this would later be renamed to input "sequences"), allowing "double tap" to be added as a context menu binding. These input macros will allow much more in the way of controller bindings.

2.10 "Seafarer+" (April 16th, 2021)
- Converted item & crafting/dismantle tooltips over to the new inspection system.
- The rest of my "big project" time this update was spent on the temperature system and the replacement treasure hunting system.

2.11 "Horizons" (December 24th, 2021)
- Added support for drag'n'drop to sort icons and dividers around in the "menu bar" — the 10 or so white icons at the top of the in-game screen. This technology will allow converting over inventory dialogs to the new UI system, as inventory dialogs require item drag'n'drop to sort and move them.
- My time this update was mostly spent on polishing the existing UI and adding new stuff rather than porting old stuff over.

2.12 "Wheels & Wetlands" (September 30th, 2022)
- My biggest change yet — the "actions" system was completely redone and ported into the new UI. Right clicking on the world and on items now opens a new UI context menu listing all available actions. "Quickslots" is now the "Action bar", and there's a whole drawer of all possible actions that you can put on each slot. You can also have up to 48 slots. There are a ton of system changes under the hood to facilitate this stuff.
- The equipment dialog has been moved to the new UI. The entire system of equipment and how players interact with it has been reworked.
- Binding displays now appear as keycaps and iconography. This will be an important change to support controller iconography down the line.
- A less obvious change that happened as a result of these changes this update is that there's now a new-UI way of displaying drag'n'drop items.

2.13 "Beacon's Call" (May 6th, 2023)
Again, this was mostly a polish update for me — most of the stuff I had done the previous update needed cleaning up and general improvement. On top of that I also did a pass over much of the in-game UI to hopefully make it more approachable for new players.

2.14 "Runekeeper" (December 14th, 2024)
- Inventory/container dialogs were ported over to the new UI, and were the biggest source of bugs and edge cases the UI has ever had because I also added item stacking and made a lot of changes specifically so that the UI would be performant.
- Many other polish-related changes were made this update, but I don't think very many of them will directly impact controller support.

Future stuff:

2.15 "Next" (Coming 2025, ideally)
- I'm hoping to finish the crafting system rework and port over the crafting dialog this update, which will be the last thing left in the old UI at this point, which finally paves the way for controller support to be started on. It's unlikely that controller support will be in this update because there's a lot of other things that need to be done around the same time.

2.16 "Next Next" (Coming 2026, ideally)
This update should be us finally leaving early access. We might squeeze in a second, smaller major update between Runekeeper and this update, not sure yet. The plans for this version are dungeons and controller support and other things that have been preventing us from leaving early access forever. At this point it will have been ten years, which sucks, but we will get there!

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Showing 1-15 of 64 comments

Drathy [developer] Apr 11, 2016 @ 10:41pm

We do have plans for controller support for sure; however, on the first Early Access release, Wayward will support: Keyboard, Mouse, and Touch/Tap.

H8ff0000 Nov 27, 2016 @ 11:10pm

Originally posted by Drathy:
We do have plans for controller support for sure; however, on the first Early Access release, Wayward will support: Keyboard, Mouse, and Touch/Tap.

Will play if this is ever added :)

Del_Duio Nov 29, 2016 @ 1:39pm

+1 for controller support. It looks great but I'll buy it if it's added.

H8ff0000 Dec 5, 2016 @ 12:25pm

Drathy, can you confirm that controller support will be implemented by the full release? When a game doesn't include controller support by then I will likely remove it from my list. I don't want another Starbound, where I am eagerly looking forward to the support being added, and they promise it will be at various points, and it never happens.

Drathy [developer] Dec 5, 2016 @ 4:11pm

Sorry @H8ff0000 - I never promise anything for that reason. I can't predict the future with Wayward, so I can't confirm when this will be added. Even so, my stance remains the same as months ago, "We do have plans for controller support for sure".

H8ff0000 May 11, 2017 @ 2:15am

It's now been over a year (13 months exactly since this thread was started), so now might be a good time to see where you guys are at. Has there been any progress on this? The demand is certainly there, and this game screams controller from the first time you lay eyes on it.

Drathy [developer] May 11, 2017 @ 8:29am

Unfortunately, simply put, it's not a priority, based on player feedback/response. It commonly gets added as a wishlist item, but it's usually pretty rarely voted on/commented on: http://steamcommunity.com/app/379210/discussions/0/1318836262657142382/
https://poll.ly/#/GgOABNxz

It's currently slated for 1.0 as per our todo: https://trello.com/b/PWX1Hpjn/wayward-todo

Sorry for the wait :(

Last edited by Drathy; May 11, 2017 @ 3:47pm

LadyOberon has Wayward

Jun 29, 2017 @ 8:46am

+1 for controller support

Milouze Aug 15, 2017 @ 6:55am

I want to play this game with a controller. Will do my best to promote this feature

Leveled_up has Wayward

Aug 28, 2017 @ 9:55am

"Unfortunately, simply put, it's not a priority"

For ♥♥♥♥'s Sake - Obviously we would like controller support. People who didn't buy it because there's no controller support (like me) aren't as likely to give input on what it needs as much as people who've already played it (because they were impartial), so of course it'll be skewed that way.

#10

Tack

Oct 3, 2017 @ 11:24pm

You just need a steam controller! I have one and the setup I made today works great! I have all quick slots 1-0 and - and =

Also shift-right click for quick transfer. Have move and a wait. The steam controller really is great if you want customizable controller support on any game.

Last edited by Tack; Oct 3, 2017 @ 11:26pm

#11

ChiriVulpes [developer] Oct 13, 2017 @ 10:38pm

For anyone else frustrated for there not being official controller support, keep in mind that we're a very small team and that controller support in a game like this is more than just mapping keys to buttons. We have reorderable inventories, you can inspect tiles not in front of you to get more information about them, tooltips, context menus, text inputs, etc. This is a gigantic project that will need a lot of time.

With that being said, I am currently rewriting the UI in the game, starting with the main menu and working my way into the rest of the game. I can't promise a time that we can say that the game officially supports controllers, but I can say that progress towards it is being made. Sorry again for the wait, but I promise it will be worth it. =)

#12