DFO Controller config

[Serin9X]

steam://controllerconfig/495910/1404616214

I've seen this question in a few places. How do I play DFO with a controller? Well, the game being on Steam actually makes this really easy but Steam's configuration settings are kind of... obtuse? I'll go with obtuse.

So I've made this configuration as a baseline for anyone who wants it. This assumes an Xbox-style controller (which most controllers on Windows are, or pretend to be) but should be portable to other controller types. The idea here is to let people know what the Steam controller configuration can do.

The only in-game change that needs to be made is that Skill2 cannot be the spacebar. The spacebar has to do too many other things. For me, I changed it to Left_Alt. It can be anything though and you just change what the B-button is set to on the base-level action layer to match it. I've also changed my in-game movement controls to the numpad arrows instead of the directional arrows just in case that caused weird issues. This may not actually be necessary, but I did it anyway.

The biggest problem with using a controller with DFO is that DFO doesn't support modified keystrokes. So shift+B for instance, isn't a thing. You get Shift, or you get B, but you can't have both at the same time. But with Steam we can mimic the behavior using action layers. So in this config, I've set up LB, RB, and RT to function the same way. They change how the face buttons are mapped while they're held down. This gives you easy access to both 6-button hotbars. The quickslots for items (default 1-6) are handled with a radial menu on the left analog stick. I set this to require clicking the stick after selecting the one you want so that I don't sneeze and burn a potion or something. I thought that might be annoying.

Currently LT and the right stick just do nothing. But that leaves room for people to put whatever they want there with the rest of the setup as a template. Hopefully this helps people like me who wanted to play this with a controller but couldn't penetrate Steam's configurations.

steam://controllerconfig/495910/1404616214

EDIT: Tried to make the steam links in to nice URLs for you, but apparently that's a no-no.
--------------
Baseline config:
D-pad -
- Up: numpad_8
- Left: numpad_4
- Right: numpad_6
- Down: numpad_2

Left stick -
- Radial menu: 6 buttons (1 - 6)

Right stick - Unused
Back button - Spacebar
Start button - Esc

Face buttons-
- A: C
- B: Left_Alt
- X: X
- Y: Z

w/LB -
- A: A
- B: S
- X: Q
- Y: W

w/RB -
- A: D
- B: F
- X: E
- Y: R

w/RT -
- A: G
- B: H
- X: T
- Y: Y

Face buttons are configured so that each grouping represents a third of the hotbar block. LB grabs the first two buttons on each row, RB the middle, RT the last. I tried at first to have them set up in nice lines, but I didn't like how that felt intuitively with the game's UI.

[Fastjack]

Hi,

nice guide. But i can't get it to work. The Game is not accepting the controls. I can write even in Notepad with the Controller now, but DFO is ignoring my Controller :( Tried Xbox One and PS4 Controller so far. Any Ideas?

[Serin9X]

Can you type in the in-game chat with the bound buttons? What that sounds like is that Steam isn't activating your controller configuration when you run the game.

Try this. From within the game switch to your Steam overlay and set the controller profile from there. That should associate the config with the game if that's Steam's hiccup.

Personally I dislike my controller doing things outside of games so I've disabled all of the Steam controller desktop integrations. It was doing really strange things in other games (like bringing up the soft keyboard when I clicked the right stick whether or not I was in a game).

[Fastjack]

I can't write in-game chat. And i didn't find a way to choose a controller profile from steam overlay. Where did you find it?

[Serin9X]

If you can't write to the in-game chat with those bindings then it's definitely Steam not associating the config with the game.

From within the game open the Steam overlay (shift+tab is the default) and hit Controller Configuration from the menu on the left. It may give you the option to import a config from here but probably not. My advice would be to test it with something simple like binding the d-pad buttons only, switching back to the game, and seeing if that worked. If it does then go ahead and configure it manually from there. This isn't a thing you SHOULD have to do, but you might have to anyway because sometimes Steam is just special like that.

[Fastjack]

I still can't find the controller config in overlay. But i got it working now, just have to run steam as admin :)
Thank you for your support :)

[Serin9X]

That's a weird fix, but I'm glad you got it working :)

[Higgens]

i am runing steam in admin but i cant bring up the overlay when the game is on screen. its like the game isnt running in steam

[Serin9X]

As long as you ran the game through Steam you should be able to bring up the overlay. Double check you're pushing the right key combination. I've had a few games that didn't take kindly to the default shift+tab combo and had to rebind it.

[Sayeth]

The configuration helped me a lot, but wanted to know something about the action layers on steam. I changed for example LB into the action layer to change A B X Y, but releasing RB doesn't bring me to the default keybinds. Do I have to set the layers in some particular way?

[Serin9X]

You want to set the action layer triggers to be Hold Action Layers with Toggle set to Off. This will change the behavior of the action layer switch to only apply when the button is held down and immediately stop when you release the button.

[Sayeth]

Originally posted by Serin9X:

You want to set the action layer triggers to be Hold Action Layers with Toggle set to Off. This will change the behavior of the action layer switch to only apply when the button is held down and immediately stop when you release the button.

Was confused about the command hold because steam is in my native language and it wasn't clear! Thank you so much :)

[RøughshødWinner]

Originally posted by Serin9X:

steam://controllerconfig/495910/1404616214

I've seen this question in a few places. How do I play DFO with a controller? Well, the game being on Steam actually makes this really easy but Steam's configuration settings are kind of... obtuse? I'll go with obtuse.

So I've made this configuration as a baseline for anyone who wants it. This assumes an Xbox-style controller (which most controllers on Windows are, or pretend to be) but should be portable to other controller types. The idea here is to let people know what the Steam controller configuration can do.

The only in-game change that needs to be made is that Skill2 cannot be the spacebar. The spacebar has to do too many other things. For me, I changed it to Left_Alt. It can be anything though and you just change what the B-button is set to on the base-level action layer to match it. I've also changed my in-game movement controls to the numpad arrows instead of the directional arrows just in case that caused weird issues. This may not actually be necessary, but I did it anyway.

The biggest problem with using a controller with DFO is that DFO doesn't support modified keystrokes. So shift+B for instance, isn't a thing. You get Shift, or you get B, but you can't have both at the same time. But with Steam we can mimic the behavior using action layers. So in this config, I've set up LB, RB, and RT to function the same way. They change how the face buttons are mapped while they're held down. This gives you easy access to both 6-button hotbars. The quickslots for items (default 1-6) are handled with a radial menu on the left analog stick. I set this to require clicking the stick after selecting the one you want so that I don't sneeze and burn a potion or something. I thought that might be annoying.

Currently LT and the right stick just do nothing. But that leaves room for people to put whatever they want there with the rest of the setup as a template. Hopefully this helps people like me who wanted to play this with a controller but couldn't penetrate Steam's configurations.

steam://controllerconfig/495910/1404616214

EDIT: Tried to make the steam links in to nice URLs for you, but apparently that's a no-no.
--------------
Baseline config:
D-pad -
- Up: numpad_8
- Left: numpad_4
- Right: numpad_6
- Down: numpad_2

Left stick -
- Radial menu: 6 buttons (1 - 6)

Right stick - Unused
Back button - Spacebar
Start button - Esc

Face buttons-
- A: C
- B: Left_Alt
- X: X
- Y: Z

w/LB -
- A: A
- B: S
- X: Q
- Y: W

w/RB -
- A: D
- B: F
- X: E
- Y: R

w/RT -
- A: G
- B: H
- X: T
- Y: Y

Face buttons are configured so that each grouping represents a third of the hotbar block. LB grabs the first two buttons on each row, RB the middle, RT the last. I tried at first to have them set up in nice lines, but I didn't like how that felt intuitively with the game's UI.

Idk if you’re still around, but it’s worth a shot.

Regarding this: I have this set up exactly as you’ve described and I’m strictly using Steam’s controller support, but when I get in-game I’m only able to move, I can’t use any of the buttons to do anything. Do you know why this might be happening?

[Serin9X]

Idk if you’re still around, but it’s worth a shot.

Regarding this: I have this set up exactly as you’ve described and I’m strictly using Steam’s controller support, but when I get in-game I’m only able to move, I can’t use any of the buttons to do anything. Do you know why this might be happening?

Hmm... That sounds like your in-game controls may not be bound properly. With the exception of the movement keys which I re-bound to the numpad arrows and Skill2 which just cannot be the spacebar, the other keybindings should be the defaults.

Double check that your in-game keybindings match up with the keys you've bound to the Steam controller. If they do, try opening a chat window in-game and see if the controller buttons correspond to the keys they're supposed to correspond to. Since most of them are just letters this will at least tell you if the controller config is being detected properly.

[RøughshødWinner]

I have the keybindings set like you described, but I don't have numpad arrows on this computer. I'm still able to move, but I'm not able to type in chat with the buttons whatsoever. I just straight up used your link to set up the controller config, so I know that's fine.

I think the issue is that the game won't recognize my specific configuration and is defaulting to the one steam sets up to purely use the left stick as arrow keys for browsing. That seems fairly straightforward, but I have no idea how to change this and make the game start using the other configuration. Any thoughts there?

[Serin9X]

This is going to sound stupid as hell, but you need to run Steam as an administrator. I just checked this on my own machine. I'd forgotten about it because I'd more or less disabled UAC popups on my older one (that I wrote this on originally) so I didn't think of it. DFO runs itself as administrator for some reason and this creates permission issues with remapping the controller. If you run Steam as administrator this problem goes away.