*FULL CONTROLLER SUPPORT*

[Vegasskill]

...THE game store page shows.

This game does not have FULL controller support! Just tested it with an Xbox series X controller. No vibration, buttons are not working. I can only walk and look around with an Xbox controller.
So please remove the erroneous information. This game is for M+K only.

[Herr Dethnout]

Half-Life itself has a full controller support, but Valve decided to made the ingame joystick support + steam input configuration in order to support modern controllers.

You need to enable Steam Input and select the default configuration (You probably need to change the right joystick since the default config has a "joystick mouse" option as default.

As a side note, the joystick support ONLY works with Half-Life, other GoldSrc games doesn't work and relies fully on Steam Input.

[Vegasskill]

Thanks, it works. ...but it is not a FULL CONTROLLER SUPPORT.

What means FULL? It's self-explanatory, right? It means that every function of the controller is used, including vibrations. Steam input does not have forced feedback in this game.

It's simply emulation of mouse and keyboard converted to a controller. It is not FULL support.

[Foxpup]

"Full controller support" simply means that all game functions (including the menus etc) are usable with only the controller's analog controls and buttons, and a keyboard and/or mouse is not required to play the game. Supporting all ancillary functions of any given controller is neither feasible nor useful, as controller functions beyond simple analog/digital input are far too varied among controller types and often don't even make sense for most games: you'll find that very few first-person shooters allow you to configure the rotation range of a steering wheel controller, for instance.

[Vegasskill]

Originally posted by Foxpup:

Supporting all ancillary functions of any given controller is neither feasible nor useful, as controller functions beyond simple analog/digital input are far too varied among controller types

What??? Today, every controller uses Xinput driver to function. Even cheap controllers that you can buy anywhere use that. Only Sony has its drivers that's why not every game supports Dual Sense or Dualshock 4 natively.

So yes. You may have dozens of different controllers around but if they use Xinput driver they will be compatible with every game even from the year 2008! That's 16 years back!

I will say again. No! This game does not have FULL controller support. It has only partial support that is achieved through Steam drivers that do emulation of mouse and keyboard.

I will give you an example of a few games that indeed have the FULL controller support:

- Ratchet and Clank
- Tome Rider (all 3 games from the survivor line)
- dead space (all games, even the original version from 2008)
- Bioshock games
- Sekiro
- Elden ring
- Uncharted
- The last of US
- Deus EX
- SOMA
- Amnesia (every game)
- RDR 2
- GTA games
- Cyberpunk
- Horizon zero dawn

All these^ have FULL support though Xinput driver. Even if you buy some cheap controller on Amazon that has Xinput support it will work just like the Xbox one controller. Because Xinput is universal since Windows Vista.

Half-life 1 do not use Xinput driver so the game will not work with controller. Only if you enable Steam controller emulation it will work. Yes, it's better than nothing but calling it the FULL support is simply not true.

[GraphicalRanger]

On SteamDeck everything was working yesterday... now i cant walk forward or backwards with controller or steam deck controller - infuriating ... ill try reinstall!

[Herr Dethnout]

Originally posted by Vegasskill:

Thanks, it works. ...but it is not a FULL CONTROLLER SUPPORT.

What means FULL? It's self-explanatory, right? It means that every function of the controller is used, including vibrations. Steam input does not have forced feedback in this game.

It's simply emulation of mouse and keyboard converted to a controller. It is not FULL support.

As I said before, the game uses the actual in-game joystick support for the Joysticks (is not emulation), and the game can support full controller. But this game was released in 1998, Xinput didn't existed and the controller support relies on DirectInput, the Joysticks works, but some things are not supported in DirectInput like analog triggers.

Also, any change of the controller configuration needs to be made on the .cfg file (joystick.cfg or controller.cfg in 25 Anniversary) in order to work, as there's no ingame configuration. For that reason, Valve decided to use Steam Input so it can have a better support and easy configuration.

[Vegasskill]

Originally posted by Herr Dethnout:

But this game was released in 1998,

The first, original version of the game, yes in 1998. But not this game.

This game^. The game that we are talking about was released on STEAM in 2013. Over 10 years ago.
At that time Windows 7 was already wide spread.
Xbox 360 was quite old. Xbox One was just around the corner. Xinput was around for years already.
This game may look like the 1998 version, but under the hood, it went through many modifications to work on modern systems. Multi-core CPUs, modern GPUs, and modern OS like Windows 10 or 11.

Obviously, adding Xinput support was not one of those modifications.