Portal with a Steam Controller

[Falenore]

It's a bit awkward.

I've played Portal 2 on the PS3 and Portal on the PC. I would expect that playing Portal on the Steam Machine would bit at least a bit similar to playing it on any other console (similar controls). It is in a sense, but it's also a bit funky.

It looks like I'm drunk while playing Portal on the Steam Machine due to the controls. >.>

Basically, the normal PC controls for Portal are mapped to the various buttons on the Steam Controller. For the most part, the actual buttons aren't bad. Left Click from your mouse is the Right Bottom Bumper (placing a blue portal), and Right click is the Left Bottom Bumper (orange portal). E for picking up objects, is the Right Top Bumper. Space (jump) is the Back Left Bumper. (Plus there are additional controls, but those are the most used ones.)

Those don't bother me, and can be remapped if need be. It's moving around and looking that are a bit awkward.

On a normal joystick controller (like I used for Portal 2 on the PS3), left stick will move you, and right will look around. Portal on the Steam Machine is the same way. However, because it's mapped from a PC game where you use a mouse to look around, you have to pick up your thumb after looking, then drop your thumb back down on the pad to continue looking. Similar to, say, controlling a mouse on a lap top. Move a bit, get to the edge of the touch pad, then have to pick up your finger/thumb go to the other side of the pad, drop it again, and continue to move.

You don't get a smooth motion when looking around. If you leave your thumb on the edge of the pad while looking, it'll very, very slowly move the camera.

Additionally, your thumb does not move in a single direction from left to right when moving across the pad. It has a tenancy to move slightly up-right as well because of the way our hands are designed. So, if you are trying to quickly turn around, your camera will end up pointing up at the ceiling. I can see issues with this for FPS games. >.< It's difficult to retrain your thumb to not move up when going to the right. Maybe a different sized hand has less issues (mine are a bit small).

As for the actual movement with the left pad, it's less of an issue. However, you CANNOT rest your hand on that pad between movements because you will end up moving, even if you are precisely centered. Which means, as a console gamer, it's odd to try to hover your thumb over the pad while you say, wait for a floating platform to move you over deadly water, and then place your thumb down on the correct place on the pad to move off of the platform. I ended up walking backwards a few times instead because I dropped my thumb too low on the pad.

And the last little bit, it was a bit weird to get Portal to start playing as well. The mouse wanted to use the mouse from the SteamOS instead of the one in Portal so you were unable to click anything. It took mashing a few other buttons to get the Portal cursor to pop up (I don't even remember the buttons I pushed). I'd like to see, instead of a mouse, just have the game highlight options as you move your thumb up or down on the left pad. Of course, this is a PC game being converted to a console, so it would take a bit of software changes for that to happen. Future games that are specifically designed with the Steam Machine in mind, I'm hoping, would have a better selection screen at start up.

I'll update more as I move through the game. If I get around to it, I'll try recording a video of game play to better show the difficulties with movement.

[Moondog548]

Very well put: the troubles with using the touch pads for movement.

[Falenore]

Another thing I noticed, your right thumb had more natural movement between lower left part of the touch pad and the upper right.

It's not as natural to move your mouse between the upper left and lower right. You end up lifting your palm off of the controller to move your thumb to the lower right even.

As such, whenever I needed to turn around, I always turned to the right in the game because it was faster and easier. Trying to turn to the left was very slow (unless I wanted to end up looking at the floor).

I think slightly tilting the pad would help. Instead of it being oriented like +, it would be more like X, though not quite that extreme. That way the horizontal direction is more in line with your thumb's natural movements. Looking down or up would be a bit more difficult, but up and down are generally less important than left and right in a 3D game.

Pushing the top left part of the pad into the controller and lifting the bottom right up into your hand may help as well, as you would be able to easier reach the top left and pull your thumb back for the bottom right. It would also help to prevent the tip of your thumb trying to touch the pad and use it (if your skin isn't touching the pad, it won't work. If your nails are a bit long, you lose contact - I need to cut my nails!).

The same can be applied to the left touch pad (just reverse all lefts and rights). I noticed with the left touch pad, movements are jerky. It's not smooth. So, if you are trying to just inch forward, you'll end up quite a bit more forward than you mean to. I think this is due to the left pad acting as a digital instead of analog joystick. You lose a lot of the smoothness.

I have no idea how much will change in the design of the controller. If molds and such are already made and it's too expensive to re-design and re-create the molds, we may not see a change in the overall design of the controller. Some small parts (such as the functionality of the pads) may just be software or hardware related for the controller instead of design related, which are much more likely to be changed.

[Moondog548]

Yeah that is a very real and big deal. They need to include a calibration for the touch pads since even just "typing" I was constantly having the problem of having my thumb "right" when I was trying for "down".

[Sullen Secret]

Thanks for this feedback. It helps those of us who can't try the controller, yet, to have an idea of what it's like. I think that games with first person camera control should have the pads set up like joysticks instead of a laptop mouse. Also, the center resting position is an excellent point. I wouldn't want to have to always look at the controller when I'm ready to move again. As for the directions of the pads, I totally get what you're saying, but how obvious would it be to people that the controller was designed that way? Should they mark the directions of the pads so that people immediately understand?

[Falenore]

I was playing around with a PS and Xbox controller to see how the joysticks feel compared to the touch pad on the steam controller.

I realized a couple of things. Both the PS and Xbox controllers have the joysticks positioned in such a way that moving from left to right or right to left feels not only natural, but it's easier to go exactly horizontal without accidentally going diagonal.

For example, on all of the PS controllers, the joystick is positioned low on the controller and it's natural for your thumb to rest at that position without needing to stretch. On an Xbox controller (I only have an old corded one that we use for connecting to our PC), the right is low and the left is high. The low right one feels more natural, but the high left one isn't bad either, though you do have to change your hand's position a bit to use it as well as the top bumpers.

The Steam controller picked a position (going by the center of the touch pad where your thumb is supposed to naturally rest), directly between those two points (between low and high). This is part of what causes your thumb to go on a diagonal.

The pad is also set deep into the controller, causing your thumb to reach a bit across your hand. Joysticks naturally stick out of a controller so your thumb is raised up and you don't have to reach as far.

The touch pads are also very large. About an inch and a half in diameter. The range of movement on a joystick is a lot smaller. Closer to an inch or less. This means you have to move your thumb a lot further with the touch pad to get the same result from a joystick. Even a PS4 controller has a smaller movement range than a PS3 controller. With that large touch pad, you end up stretching your thumb a lot more to reach the far corner and move your thumb up to it's tip to reach the near corner. You can only reposition your hand so far to do it as the large handles get in the way or you have to move your hand off of the controller (thus have less control) to get the near spot.

So, a few recommendations on design based on this:

- Smaller touch pad, maybe only an inch in diameter or less.
- Move the touch pads closer to the bottom of the controller, maybe where those two buttons near the long button are. Yes, it's a similar setup to a PS controller, but your thumb feels more comfortable there.
- Lift the touch pads out of the controller. This will make for a bigger, bulkier controller, but it would also make it feel more comfortable.
- Smaller handles. Those large handles prevent players from moving their hands towards the buttons in the center as well as fully utilizing the touch pads. It also makes it more difficult for kids to use the controller.

I like the idea of touch pads on a controller for actually playing the game, but the design could use some work if you are going to play a game for longer than 10 minutes without getting frustrated with it.

There are some software issues that could be ironed out (such as smoother movement with the left touch pad - it acts like a D-pad instead of a joystick). But a lot of that comes from just remapping PC games to use a console system and controller. I'd like to see a game specifically designed for this system and controller to see how it fairs.

[Liberate]

I think the best suggestion would be to make the handles smaller. If you designed the pads any smaller, haptic feedback would cause all sorts of directional input (especially people with big hands/big thumbs). Moving both pads to the bottom (or closer) would likely cause a button relocation on the controller for even more inconvenience. As I've started to get used to the controller, I've found that it's easier to use A, B, X and Y realistically during gameplay by using the bottom portion of my thumbprint while my thumb tip hits the button so that I still maintain full control of movement without neglecting it (as a PC gamer, I find this vital for playing PC games). Elevating the pads might make it difficult to reliably use the buttons in the center of the controller, and it's probably most convenient to keep the pads closer to the board of the controller for the sensors' sake.

The more I use it, the more it grows on me. It's harder to find legitimate feedback for change when the controller uses two large trackpads for movement. Any slight change to the design could drastically alter the entire controller. And it could either turn out very bad or very good. I currently just can't envision a good in-between without turning at least one pad into a stick. But I am all for the implementation of "directional divots" (similar to that of a D-Pad etched on the pad) so that my thumb has a guideline for how much in a given direction my character is moving.

Though I do agree, it does need some ironing out. I have problems with the controller giving too much feedback -- or not enough -- at any given time (which is simply solved by unplugging/replugging) but it's a huge inconvenience as I should have TOTAL control over movements (based on mouse sensitivity preferences), not partially controller dictated.

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by Liberate:

I think the best suggestion would be to make the handles smaller. If you designed the pads any smaller, haptic feedback would cause all sorts of directional input (especially people with big hands/big thumbs). Moving both pads to the bottom (or closer) would likely cause a button relocation on the controller for even more inconvenience. As I've started to get used to the controller, I've found that it's easier to use A, B, X and Y realistically during gameplay by using the bottom portion of my thumbprint while my thumb tip hits the button so that I still maintain full control of movement without neglecting it (as a PC gamer, I find this vital for playing PC games). Elevating the pads might make it difficult to reliably use the buttons in the center of the controller, and it's probably most convenient to keep the pads closer to the board of the controller for the sensors' sake.

The more I use it, the more it grows on me. It's harder to find legitimate feedback for change when the controller uses two large trackpads for movement. Any slight change to the design could drastically alter the entire controller. And it could either turn out very bad or very good. I currently just can't envision a good in-between without turning at least one pad into a stick. But I am all for the implementation of "directional divots" (similar to that of a D-Pad etched on the pad) so that my thumb has a guideline for how much in a given direction my character is moving.

Though I do agree, it does need some ironing out. I have problems with the controller giving too much feedback -- or not enough -- at any given time (which is simply solved by unplugging/replugging) but it's a huge inconvenience as I should have TOTAL control over movements (based on mouse sensitivity preferences), not partially controller dictated.

I've noticed a few other testers (as well as Tommy Refenes, a dev on Super Meat Boy) recommended adding some kind of guiding divots, or bumps, or lines, to the pads to help orient up/down/left/right. Also, I think I remember seeing in the pictures of Valve's earlier prototypes that some of them actually did have lines on them. Perhaps Valve took them out just to see what testers thought about it?

I'm not a tester, but I think some kind of tactile marks would really help, not only for when the pad is used as 4 separate buttons, but also when it's used as a mouse, as Jlewis326 mentioned, to get directional awareness spot on.

Other than that, the only physical improvements to the controller I would like to see, in terms of comfortability and improving the thumbs' natural movements, would be to orient the handles so that the thumbs, when pointed up, are as parallel to each other as possible. This goes back to Jlewis326's point about whether the location of the pad is at 0 degrees horizontal, 45 degrees, or 90 degrees (+ vs x) for the thumb. If the thumbs are parallel to each other (ie 90 degrees from horizontal), then the "up" on the pad will be the "true up", and the "right" the "true right", if that makes sense.

Also, I liked Jlewis326's recommendation in this thread about having a more gripping material (like rubber) on the sides of the handle to reduce slippage. Other than that, I think Valve should look into tweaking the ergonomics of the controller, but it needs to keep the controller's general layout.

PS - I've heard from other testers that you can 1) set the left pad so that movement needs you to click down on the pad (so you can rest your thumb on it without triggering movement) and 2) you can set the "outer ring modifier" on the right pad to do a continuous turn when looking (so you don't have to keep repeatedly picking up your thumb and dragging it across the pad).