Steam Deck Controller Guide: samrocketman layout

This guide goes in-depth on how to use samrocketman's controller layout to get the most out of Endless Sky on the Steam Deck.

Introduction

While Endless Sky is designed only for keyboard/mouse controls, thanks to Steam Input we can create controller layouts for a game like ES. Several config sets have been made for several different controller types, from your typical Xbox/Playstation controllers, to Steam Controllers, to now the Steam Deck.

While it is very possible to play and enjoy Endless Sky on the Steam Deck, you’ll have several different options of player-made layouts to choose from. All of these configurations can be hard to understand, since Endless Sky’s game design simply doesn’t conform to controller layouts. Thanks to Steam Input and features like trackpads, mode shifts, and on-screen menus, we can expand the Steam Deck controller’s options to meet the demands of Endless Sky. No layout I have found is simple to grasp, though, and as a newbie I felt like a guide would be of great help. So… why not make one myself?

Why samrocketman?

There are several Steam Deck controller layouts available for Endless Sky. Why choose samrocketman’s? After all, it doesn’t appear to be the most popular or most used option. (I imagine this could be explained that the older a layout is, the more time it has had to rack up playtime and upvotes to get it up the list.)

Three reasons:

• Not only has samrocketman made a Steam Deck controller layout, they also made a fork of Endless Sky itself.
  
  https://github.com/samrocketman/endless-sky
  
  This version, which pulls from the main version, includes features and plugins not found from the original. It also has a launcher build for Linux, and includes instructions specific for Steam Deck.
  
  One of the features key to samrocketman’s fork ties into their controller layout. It includes the plugin mouse control steering by CAPTAIN. This allows you to steer your ship with the mouse (the ship turns itself to wherever the mouse is pointing). This can be used on Steam Deck as well.
  
  With samrocketman’s controller layout and the use of this plugin, included in the fork, you have two options for steering.
  
  
• Key to getting Endless Sky functional on Steam Deck is the use of Touch Menus. This allows you to use the trackpads on the Steam Deck, when they are being touched, to bring up menus on screen that allow you to select from various different options. Some configs use radial menus (think weapon select in various games), or a grid-based layout.
  
  I appreciate that samrocketman’s config has a robust 12-key grid touch menu. Others use smaller radial menus.
  
  
• Some of the configs available don’t have the inputs labeled. Samrocketman’s config does. Super helpful.

Setting Up

First, install Endless Sky from the Steam Store.

Once it’s installed, we need to download the controller layout. This is found on the game’s main page, the controller button next to the settings button.



This will show you the Current Layout. Press A to select it, showing you a list of the pre-installed Templates from Valve. Press R1 to switch to Community Layouts.

This shows the list of compatible controller layouts. (By default, it shows only those compatible with Steam Deck, which includes Steam Controller layouts as well. You can press X to see all layouts, like those designed for Xbox or Playstation.)

As of the writing of this guide, V3 of samrocketman endless sky steam deck layout is fourth from the list. Download it. And maybe upvote it, if you like it?

Finally, we want to get samrocketman’s ES fork set up. Follow the instructions listed at the beginning of the launcher file:

https://github.com/samrocketman/endless-sky/blob/mining-complete-plugins/launch-es.sh

Note: The fork launcher will periodically pull updates for the game. When this happens, you’ll see a black screen with the Steam Deck UI options at the bottom. This can last a while, maybe over 15 seconds. Just gotta wait it out.

Important Note: You don’t need to use this fork to use the controller layout. You would miss out on the second method of controlling your ship, and there are one or two key binds that would have no function. But this is all relatively minor. You can absolutely stick with the original Steam release. (And vice versa, the fork doesn’t require the use of the layout.)

- CONTROLLER GUIDE

Now that we’re all set up, let’s go over the controller configuration. We’ll do this by the various parts of the controller itself; sticks, pads, buttons, and so on. It’s recommended to go through this for new Endless Sky players.

If you are an ES veteran, you could skip to the Quick Guide.

Left Joystick

The arrow keys are mapped to the left joystick. This is used for driving your ship. Press forward to accelerate, backward to decelerate/reverse. Left turns the ship left, right turns right.

If you press the left joystick button (L3), the afterburner will activate. (Not all ships have an afterburner installed.)

Remember above when I mentioned there are two options to drive the ship? We’ll talk more about the second with the back buttons. For now, this is your base method.

Right Joystick

The right joystick is incredibly important. Mouse movement is mapped here. Endless Sky’s UI is very dependent on mouse navigation.

Steam Deck joysticks have a really cool feature to where it can read if you’re touching the top of the stick. In samrocketman’s layout, right stick touch will activate the Deck’s gyro, which is also mapped to mouse movement. This gives us two options for moving the mouse.

(Pixillated’s Personal Preference: I don’t like this. I edited the controller layout myself to fix this. Samrocketman’s layout is set up to activate gyro on both Right Joystick Touch and Right Trackpad Touch. I changed this to only activate on Right Trackpad Touch.)

Direction Pad

The four directions are mapped to four different keys.

Up - F key. Fleet: Fight Target, directing your fleet to fight the ship you have targeted.

Down - Shift + Down Arrow. This has two keys mapped, which is a shortcut for stopping your ship.

Left - L key. Land on Planet, incredibly important!

Right - V key. Target Asteroid or Harvest Flotsam. This is a pull request that is not merged into the base game. This is for fleet-based mining.

Face Buttons

The four face buttons are mapped to eight different keys, thanks to Mode Shift. (We’ll learn how to activate Mode Shift soon.)

X button - R key. Select Nearest Hostile. Important in combat, when you need to quickly select a ship in a fight.

Y button - N key. Select Next Ship. Repeatedly pressing this will cycle through ships in the system.

A button - T key. Talk to Selected Ship. This is how you hail a ship’s pilot.

B button - B key. Board Selected Ship. Once disabled, you can board a ship.

⠀⠀MODE SHIFT - All the mode shift buttons are used for your fleet ships.

X button - D key. Deploy/Recall Fleet.

Y button - F key. Fleet: Fight My Target. Direct your fleet to attack the targeted ship.

A button - G key. Fleet: Gather Round Me. Direct your fleet to your side.

B button - H key. Fleet: Hold Position. Direct your fleet to hold their current position.

Select and Start Buttons

The select button has two keys bound to it.

A normal press is bound to the M key, which brings up the star map.

A long press is bound to the I key. This brings up the Player Info interface.

The start button is bound to Escape. While this can close certain windows, the main point of Escape is to get to the main menu.

(Note: If you press start and then R1, this will quit the game, as the binding for R1 is the Q key.)

Left Shoulder Buttons

L1 button - W key. Select Secondary Weapon, cycling through your arsenal.

L2 trigger - Left mouse click. This will be one of your most used buttons, since this game navigates the UI with the mouse. You can also use the mouse to select planets and ships in the overworld itself, as well as click and drag to draw rectangles to select multiple units.

Right Shoulder Buttons

R1 button - Q key. Fire Secondary Weapon.

R2 button has two mappings. A ‘soft pull’ (or slightly pressing on the trigger) is the Tab key, Fire Primary weapon. This is designed so you can repeatedly tap on the trigger to fire.

A ‘full pull’ (fully pressing on the trigger) is right mouse click. The player’s manual explains this is used to “tell escorts to move to location or target ship”.

Left Back Buttons

L4 button (top left) - Caps Lock. This toggles ‘fast forward’, speeding up gameplay.

L5 button (bottom left) - Control key. It does not do anything by itself, but it does act as a modifier.

• It can act as a multiplier modifier when you buy or sell in the shipyard and outfitter, as well as for hiring crew. The Control key multiplier is x5.

Right Back Buttons

R4 button (top right) - Shift key. Like Control, it does not do anything by itself, but it does act as a modifier.

• It can act as a multiplier modifier when you buy or sell in the shipyard and outfitter, as well as for hiring crew. The Shift key multiplier is x20.
  
• R4 + X will do Shift + R, which is a shortcut to Select Nearest Ship (as opposed to the R key by itself being Select Next Hostile Ship).
  
• R4 + Y will do Shift + N, which is a shortcut to Select Next Escort (as opposed to the N key by itself being Select Next Ship).
  
• R4 + A will do Shift + T, which is a shortcut to Talk to Planet (as opposed to T key by itself being Talk to Ship).
  
• R4 + B will do Shift + B key, which is a shortcut to Buy All. Also, it is a shortcut for Board Disabled Escort which automatically will select an escort for you (as opposed to the B key by itself being Board Selected Ship).
  
• R4 + the S key, which is found in the Left Trackpad Touch Menu, is a shortcut for Sell All.
  
• R4 + the J key, which is found in the Left Trackpad Touch Menu, is a shortcut for Jump As a Fleet (as opposed to the J key by itself being Hyperspace Jump). When in the map, this will function as Add Jump Destination.
  
• R4 + Left Trigger will do Shift + Left Click, which allows you to compare two ships or outfits.
  
• R4 + Right Stick Down will do Stop Ship. This isn’t necessary, though, as this is already mapped to D-Pad Down with no modifier or mode shift needed.

R5 button (bottom right) - Alt key. Like Control and Shift, it does not do anything by itself, but it does act as a modifier.

• It can act as a multiplier modifier when you buy or sell in the shipyard and outfitter, as well as for hiring crew. The Alt key multiplier is x500.

Mode Shift

The R5 button has another function: MODE SHIFT. We brought this up earlier, with the face buttons. With Steam Input, Mode Shift allows one input to modify the functionality of other inputs. What this means is, while holding down the R5 button, the ABXY face buttons will change their functionality. While usually doing basic things like selecting ships and talking to them, holding down R5 switches their mode to specific fleet directions.

R5 enables mode shift for both the face buttons and the left trackpad, which we will go over next.

Left Trackpad

The left trackpad is the lynchpin of this controller layout. Even with the added back buttons, and mode shift on face buttons, we still have a lot of keyboard keys that we are missing access to, some of which are incredibly important to basic gameplay.

Here comes one of the best features in Steam Deck’s controller input: Touch Menus!

While you are touching the left trackpad, this menu appears, and you control a cursor contained in this menu. Steam allows you to design these menus in different ways. Different controller layouts made by the community have done this differently. Samrocketman’s approach is a 12-key grid.

It may look odd, you might assume it would be hard to use, but I personally find these menus (not just in this game, but just as an overall Steam Deck feature) to be fantastic.

Here are what these keys do:

A - Crew Attack. Orders your crew to attack while boarding a ship.
⠀⠀(Note: The A key is also used for afterburner in the overworld.)
J - Jump. Very important, used to activate hyperspace to move to another system.
T - Trading. While landed on a planet, this shortcut opens the trading window.
⠀⠀(Note: The T key is also used for talking to selected ship in the overworld.)
D - Fleet: Deploy. This is already mapped to mode-shifted X button. Just another option to execute this.
⠀⠀(Note: This key also exits all menus.)

S - Scan ship. If you have the required equipment installed on your ship, you can scan the ship you have selected.
O - Outfitter. While landed on a planet, this shortcut opens the outfitter window.
U - Fleet: Ammo. Directs your fleet to change their ammo.
P - Spaceport. While landed on a planet, this shortcut opens the spaceport window.

G - Fleet: Gather. Same as mode-shifted A button, directs fleet to gather around you.
B - Bank. While landed on a planet, this shortcut opens the bank window.
C - Cloak. If you have the required equipment installed on your ship, activates your cloaking ability.
H - Fleet: Hold. Same as mode-shifted B button, directs fleet to hold their position.

As we mentioned earlier, the left trackpad also has a mode shift, enabled by holding down R5. This turns the trackpad into a scroll wheel.

Right Trackpad

The right trackpad is also a basic scroll wheel, useful for navigating lists like the shipyard and outfitter.

Touching the trackpad also enables the gyro mouse movement, like the right stick also does.

- QUICK GUIDE

Now that we’ve gone over the control scheme in some detail, let’s finish this guide with a pared down listing of just the buttons and their in-game binding.

Left Joystick - Ship movement
Right Joystick - Mouse movement
Right Joystick, touch - Activate gyro mouse movement

L3 - Afterburner

D-Pad Up - Fleet: Fight Target
D-Pad Down - Stop Ship
D-Pad Left - Land on Planet
D-Pad Right - Target Asteroid or Harvest Flotsam (only functional in samrocketman’s ES fork)

X - Select Nearest Hostile
Y - Select Next Ship
A - Talk to Selected Ship
B - Board Selected Ship

R5 + X - Fleet: Deploy/Recall
R5 + Y - Fleet: Fight My Target
R5 + A - Fleet: Gather Round Me
R5 + B - Fleet: Hold Position

Select, normal press - Map
Select, long press - Player Info
Start - Main Menu

L1 - Select Secondary Weapon
L2 - Left mouse click

R1 - Fire Secondary Weapon
R2, soft pull - Fire Primary Weapon
R2, full pull - Right mouse click

L4 - Toggle Fast Forward
L5 - Control key

R4 - Shift key
⠀⠀R4 + X - Select Nearest Ship
⠀⠀R4 + Y - Select Next Escort
⠀⠀R4 + A - Talk to Planet
⠀⠀R4 + B - Buy All
⠀⠀R4 + Left trackpad ‘S’ - Sell All
⠀⠀R4 + Left trackpad ‘J’ - Jump as a Fleet
⠀⠀R4 + L2 - Shift + Left Click
R5 - Alt key

Left trackpad - Touch Menu
⠀⠀A - Crew Attack
⠀⠀J - Jump
⠀⠀T - Trading menu
⠀⠀D - Fleet: Deploy/Recall, and exit menus

⠀⠀S - Scan Ship
⠀⠀O - Outfitter menu
⠀⠀U - Fleet: Ammo
⠀⠀P - Spaceport menu

⠀⠀G - Fleet: Gather Round Me
⠀⠀B - Bank menu
⠀⠀C - Cloak
⠀⠀H - Fleet: Hold Position

Right trackpad - Mouse scrollwheel
Right trackpad, touch - Activate gyro mouse movement