I still think it's funny that Tim laid off 870 people from the company in September of 2023, because the company was in such financial trouble that they could not possibly find some other method of employing them that did not require them to kick staff to the curb. Somehow, the elimination of 16% of their total work force is not grounds for his own dismissal from his position as CEO of the company, though even if he had been dismissed, I'm sure he would have had a substantial golden parachute to send him on his way.

He then not more than a day ago makes a statement at Unreal Fest 2024 saying that the company is now financially stable, and then proceed to launch what will undoubtedly be yet another massively expensive lawsuit aimed at Google and Samsung.

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Quoting: WMan22I wonder how the puzzle that changes your desktop background works if you play it on steam deck.

This I can answer, actually. World Machine Edition was built from the ground up to allow the game to be played properly on the Deck (And the Nintendo Switch). You _can_ play the original release on Deck, but it's fiddly and you're just going to end up losing a lot of the experience like the wallpaper, as you point out. The solution is that WME sets you up with a virtual desktop that you run OneShot on.

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Quoting: chr

Quoting: JustinWoodand as mentioned above, if they're going to use regular potentiometer sticks, it's just not worth it in my opinion. No matter the build quality, no matter the feature set, no matter the price, there's more than enough e-waste in the world, I don't want to support the use of sticks that are designed to fail at some point.

Sorry, I didn't understand - could you please explain further? I understand a potentiometer is some kind of electronic component. What are regular potentiometer sticks and what is the alternative? What do Steam Controllers use?

Forgive me for the delay in responding and for reviving this, but I felt it would be unkind of me not to give my explanation to your question. When I said "regular" Potentiometer sticks, I was not using it to describe a specific kind of potentiometer joystick, but rather that the major manufacturers of gamepads have taken to producing them with potentiometer joysticks.

While hall effect sticks can and do fail, but they are a step forward in that unlike a potentiometer joystick, which relies on physical contact with a sensor in order to do its job, a hall effect sensor removes the element of physical contact that would wear down components over time, causing the dreaded issue of stick drift.

That being said, it's not as if all potentiometer joysticks are built the same. I had (and continue to have) perfectly smooth control and no dead zone drift with my Dualshock 4, to the point where the rubber of the joysticks themselves are reaching end of life. And yet, in the same amount of time, I've had multiple Dualsense controllers suffer from stick drift, and the Switch's joycons are notoriously problematic.

Otherwise, I think the other folks have provided plenty of detail to cover the more technical and in depth aspects. Hope this helps, and again, sorry for leaving you hanging for a couple months! ^^;;

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Quoting: Pickettf3nce

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: Pickettf3nceThe "Gulikit KK3 MAX [External Link]" is a great alternative for those of us in the US or UK.

L3, L4, R3, R4 detachable rear paddles, toggle-able hair triggers, analog triggers, hall-effect joysticks, 8 (or 4) way d-pad, programmable macros, 3 vibration intensities, USB-C rechargeable, addressable RGB, integrated gyroscope, extra buttons to swap between Nintendo and Traditional button layouts. Support for Switch, SteamOS, Android, iOS, MacOS, and windows.

It's a night and day difference between this and an Xbox Series controller.

Do their paddles actually fully work on Linux and Steam Deck without needing an external app like 8bitdo?

To my knowledge, there are no dedicated apps for any of Gulikit's products, the KK3 included. I have neither installed nor needed any supporting applications to date... Updates to the controller's firmware, for example, are handled via a USB connection to a computer and booting the controller into a removable storage mode. After which the firmware can be manually downloaded from Gulikit's support site, transferred over to the controller, extracted, and applied with a reboot.

As for the paddles, all the mapping and configuration for the KK3 is handled by the controller itself. So back buttons/paddles can sadly only be mapped to other buttons on the controller. So long as your distro and app can recognize traditional controller DInput or XInput (Depending on the controller's selected mode), you should be able to use all the buttons on the controller with a little bit of extra legwork.

I can second the KK3 Max. After having suffered with drift on both my Dualshock and Dualsense controllers, I've been loving the versatility of this controller. My only complaints are that because it reports as an Xbox controller, I've yet to find a way to natively activate it's gyro functionality via Steam Input, and unfortunately the built in gyro option leaves something to be desired in terms of fidelity. It's not awful but you can tell it's not quite as precise as a Dualsense or Joycon.

The only other issue I've encountered really has just been that the low latency dongle seems to struggle with connecting from time to time, requiring I either unplug the dongle or just keep cycling it a few times before it catches. That being said I'm not one hundred percent convinced the controller is at fault there as I've had a few other devices behave similarly in the room I'm renting, so it might just be interference from the plethora of other wireless signals saturating the house. And either way, once it connects, so long as it isn't left idle for 10 minutes, it stays consistently connected.

EDIT: Small note, one of the recent firmware updates adjusted it so that when the battery is running low, the LED starts blinking with a bright white light, even if you've disabled the LEDs completely. The flashing continues even if you plug in the controller, so you'll have a nice, relaxed orange interspersed with a harsh white flash every 5 seconds or so, which I'm not super fond of.

EDIT 2: Because I keep forgetting to add these things before posting, my thoughts on the HORI controller. It looks nice, and is probably the closest we'll get to a Steam Controller 2 (No, I do not count the Steam Deck, it's a handheld computer/portable console) anytime soon, but not including vibration is an odd choice, and as mentioned above, if they're going to use regular potentiometer sticks, it's just not worth it in my opinion. No matter the build quality, no matter the feature set, no matter the price, there's more than enough e-waste in the world, I don't want to support the use of sticks that are designed to fail at some point.

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There's an absolutely delightful blog I read yesterday that I feel does a wonderful job about why the AI hype is just grifters overpromising on what generative AI can do. Recommend folks take a look at it! https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/ [External Link]

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Quoting: NarcotixI played it on the Nintendo Switch (not finished yet, but not far from it). It's a pretty good Metroidvania in my opinion. The looks and feels kinda reminded me of Metroid Dread. I'd say it's not as great and complex as Hollow Knight, but pretty much on the same level as the Ori series (at least regarding the level-design/-structure and gameplay-wise). Hope that helps :D

Also: the last PoP I happened to like was Sands of Time on the GameCube - failed to have fun with pretty much every entry in the series since then, except for this one.

Seeing that it's 40% off on Switch currently, I'm curious, how's the performance? Any reason I should avoid this version over other platforms?

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As others have said, the Epic Games Store has a 12% revenue split, and yet prices on there are still the same as on Steam, on GoG, on Xbox and Playstation, and anywhere else games are sold. Valve does not set the price for games, publishers do, and lower revenue splits just mean they get more money, so why would they bother passing those savings on to the consumer? Maybe if they were somehow able to force that split on to every single distributor industry wide, but again, what's to stop publishers from taking the extra percentage for themselves?

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Quoting: pbWhat a nice idea. BTW do the skins fit both OLED and original SteamDecks?

Based on what Liam said in the article, it's a custom fitted 512 GB OLED Steam Deck, and based on the picture it's not just a skin, it's also got colored face buttons. I don't know if they're selling the skin separate but I would imagine they aren't.

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It is still endlessly funny to me that Steve went to Taiwan to purchase one of these and the clerk at the biggest tech shop around told him bluntly "you're the first one to buy one of these". Is there any handheld on the market that has even come close to comparing to even the Steam Deck LCD, much less the OLED model?

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Quoting: MayeulCI am not sure the trackpads will be comfortable to use in this location.

It's interesting that they didn't go with AMD's Z series chip. This handled will probably be more powerful and use more power, though I hope they took the opportunity to include more than one USB port.

Yeah, I have to agree, seems like they'd end up getting in the way and the thenar (area right under your thumb) would probably end up brushing against it. The D-Pad also doesn't look like it'd be particularly pleasant to use. Honestly the only positive aspect I see on this device is that they're being smart and building it with Hall effect sticks and triggers, something I cannot understand why the industry has not standardized outside of planned obsolescence.

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