Setting up Steam Controller for Dolphin and Super Mario Sunshine

The Steam Controller's configurability comes at a cost - Sometimes it's hard or downright frustrating to configure it for some games. A good example is Dolphin, a Nintendo GameCube/Wii emulator for PC. But, fear no more, this guide will help you correctly configure your Steam Controller to work with the same or more functionality as a GameCube controller. However, I have to give a warning. This guide is intended "for the rest of us", (I.E.: those who are not as technologically inclined) so I will only be teaching how to set up all of the BASE features of the controller - All of the regular button bindings, so that your game would work as if you had a GameCube controller. This means NO special functions, NO computer wizardry (Except for setting up the soft-pull on the controller.)

This guide is mainly for windows 10, however you can extrapolate the steps for other operating systems.

This guide takes at most 15 minutes to complete and does not require any real computer skill beyond knowing how to copy and paste and alt-tab.

Setting Up Dolphin

Setting up Dolphin on steam is as easy as 1-2-3.
This guide assumes you have Dolphin already installed on your computer, as well as a game .iso you want to play.
If you do not have Dolphin, just follow this abridged guide:
(If you have dolphin and need a game to play, skip to step 7.)
1. Download Dolphin 5.0 from https://dolphin-emu.org/download/?ref=btn
2. Run dolphin-x64-5.0.exe
3. Go through the setup
4. Copy the "destination folder" directory
5. Press "Install"
6. Wait for dolphin to finish installing
7. Find a reputable iso source. Ex: emuparadise (I don't want to directly like it here.)
8. Download and extract the iso
8b (Optional). Put the iso into a folder for safekeeping, make sure to copy the directory for that folder
9. Run Dolphin
10. Double click the dialogue that says "double click to set games/iso folder"
11. Paste in the directory of the file containing your iso
12. A banner with the game's name should appear in Dolphin

1. Adding Dolphin on Steam

The first thing you need to do is add Dolphin as a non-steam game. Go to the top left of your steam client, and under "Games", simply click "Add a Non Steam Game to My Library".


A dialogue should appear that looks like this:


The list is ordered alphabetically, so just scroll down to the D's and hopefully you'll find Dolphin. Once you have found Dolphin, simply click the box next to it to checkmark it.

If you can't find Dolphin, or do not know your Dolphin directory, simply follow these steps:
0. Check if Dolphin is on your desktop. If it is, skip to step 4.
1. Press the windows key or the windows icon on your taskbar to open up the start menu.


2. You may see Dolphin on the start menu under "recently added", right click it and select "Open File Location"


2b. If Dolphin does not appear on the start menu, simply begin typing in "Dolphin" and it should appear on the search.
2c. If it appears on the search, right click and select "Open File Location"


3. Windows explorer should open up to a folder with a shortcut of Dolphin. It should look like this:


4. Simply right click the shortcut, select "Open File Location",


and once it opens up the file containing Dolphin.exe, copy the directory from the top of windows explorer (click on the navigation bar, and once it goes blue press ctrl+c to copy, make sure that you don't copy anything else.)


5. Now you have the Dolphin directory, navigate back to the window we opened up to add Dolphin as a non-steam game.
6. Hit "Browse..."
7. Paste in the directory you copied using ctrl+v onto the navigation bar and hit enter
8. Select the file that says "Dolphin.exe"
9. Click Open

Now that you have checkmarked Dolphin, the button saying "Add Selected Programs" should not be grayed out, allowing you to click it.


The panel should close and Dolphin should be registered in your steam library.

2. Setting Up Your Game

Now that Dolphin is in our library, right click it and select "properties".


Once the properties dialogue pops up, there are 2 things that you need to do.
1. Rename Dolphin to whatever game you want to use with your steam controller
2. Find the directory of the game you want to use with your steam controller, and make Dolphin launch that game in steam.


The first one is straightforward - just type in the name of the game to the first box.
The second is a bit harder. You must type in, in the second box: "your Dolphin directory" /e "your game iso directory" /b
For an example, Mine was
"C:/Program Files/Dolphin/Dolphin.exe" /e "C:/Desktop/ROMS/Super Mario Sunshine.iso"

Luckily, your Dolphin directory should already be written in the second box. If you downloaded a game iso, the iso is probably in your downloads directory, so just copy and paste that. Otherwise, there's not much help I can give finding your game isos because you were the person who downloaded it.


Once you are done, hit close.

3. Testing the Game

Once you have finished the previous steps, simply navigate to Dolphin/the name of the game you typed in.
Press play.


Dolphin should open up, as well as a window with your game. If this happens, you've succesfully completed the first section!

Setting Up Your Controller

1. Controllert to Dolphin Configuration

Now, we need to set up the controller configuration for Steam. Turn on your controller, and either launch the new application we made last section from your steam library, or open steam in big picture mode (the controller icon in the top right) to edit the configuration.



Once you've opened up the SC configuration, navigate to the bottom and click browse configurations.


Go to templates, and select the "gamepad" template.


Once you've selected it, your controller configuration should look like this:


The circled areas are the ones we are going to edit.

First, go to both triggers, and set the "soft pull" action to their corresponding bumpers, as shown below:


(Location of Bumper:)

Next, go back to the main configuration screen, and select the touchpad (Bottom right corner).


Change the Style of Input to "Joystick Camera" and then give it the click action of the right stick.


(Location of RS click:)


In the end, your controller configuration should look like this:










Your controller is now configured for Dolphin.

2. Dolphin to Controller Configuration

Start up the GameCube game in your steam library. You may notice whatever game you are playing won't register your SC. Restart Dolphin, (Make sure your SC is on the whole time) and this time when your game is on the opening nintendo credits, quickly alt-tab to the Dolphin Menus window (Your mouse hides sometimes when the game actually starts, and it's much harder to do the next steps if it is hidden.)


From the main Dolphin window, select "Controllers" and then on the window that pops up, select "configure". This will open up the Dolphin controller configuration window. Open the first drop-down box, and change it from Dinput to Xinput/gamepad. Xinput/gamepad may not appear if your SC was off when you started up Dolphin. Now, press "refresh".
Next, you're going to have to bind the keys.


Click on the A binding box under "buttons" and press A on your controller. The box should now say 'Button A'. If it does not, make sure you are using Xinput in the drop-down box, or restart the GameCube game you launched from steam.
Now, begin binding all of the keys this same way (by pressing the corresponding buttons on the controller)
For the pads/sticks, simply move them in the direction it says to move them. Once you have completed binding the keys, your configuration window should look like the picture. Type in a name for this configuration and save it as a profile.

3. Testing the Controls

Close Dolphin, and launch the game again from steam. Simply try out the controls. Does the stick work? Do the buttons work?
If you want to test out if the soft-pull works, you can try super mario sunshine. When not fully pulling the triggers, mario should continue running while spraying the FLUDD.


If all of the buttons work, you've succesfully configured your steam controller to work with Dolphin. To configure other games to work as well, save your steam controller configuration as a template, and Simply follow the steps for section 1 again, but this time make the directory in the target properties lead to another iso. Dolphin controller configurations are global for all Dolphin games, so you don't have to redo any configuration on Dolphin's part.

[llcoolsouder]

Have you gotten this to work with 2 controllers? I'm able to configure one, when I do, the 2nd one is disabled.

[epsilon]

When i try to play it says "unexpected parameter"