Quoting: hardpenguinThis is some advanced stuff. For games that only support DirectInput I usually just use Steam Big Picture to map the keyboard buttons to the controller.

yes unfortunately the most insidious issue for me was with the triggers and the axes: without any configuration, the RT was mapping the horizontal right axis (and then the camera controls). It was quite some fun to see the whole world spinning around when launching the game.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: afettouhiThanks for the guide. A little partly of topic question. I am using my Steam controller mostly for playing games but when I use my controller with a game through proton or wine the screensaver kicks in every 15 minutes, because that is the interval I set it to. How do I get around that issue I am on Arch with KDE btw? I have no issues with native Linux games and the screensaver only wine/dxvk/proton games.

It used to happen to me as well. Decided to disable the screensaver at the moment, but I'm looking for a workaround.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Cyba.CowboyI'm sure your heart is in the right place, but it's articles like this which keep people thinking that Linux-based operating systems are harder to use than they are... If you're going to post an article like this, you post the KISS solution first, then post the Terminal-based solution for those of us that prefer that method (I prefer Terminal for a lot of - but not all - things).

The KISS approach has been the first one I tried, but (as I have already mentioned above) it wasn't working: the controller mapping was completely wrong, with axes mapped on triggers and buttons on the wrong positions. The mapping/configuration tool provided by Steam was easily working with the keys, but not that easily with either the axes or the triggers (and you could tell that having the camera controls on a trigger can give some motion sickness).

Speaking about the article purpose, the main reason was for sharing experiences on how to make things work. Are there easier way to achieve the same results? Of course they are. That's why I ask everyone to share their observations.
I totally understand that a KISS solution would be better (and that would be appealing also to a less-skilled user), but if that solution does not exist, a workaround can be an alternative. Does this workaround require some basic skills with either the terminal or the recompiling of source code? So be it.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I'm currently on Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin. I figured out that the curse concept introduced in the Game mechanics is actually referring to the amount of curses I scream (miraculously in several languages) any time I see the You Died screen...

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: cprnAny way to connect two identical ones as separate devices? They generate events with same origin (as in: both pads controlling player one).

Have you already tried with the following udev rule?

KERNEL=="event*", ATTRS{name}=="Your Gamepad Name", SYMLINK+="input/event-gamepad-%n"

The outcome should be a symlink that looks like /dev/input/event-gamepad-* with the kernel number of the attached device.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestThe Generic gamepad configuration support is enough in Steam big picture mode. No need for the user space xboxdrv driver once you have set the controller to work with jstest-gtk. You can modify the ~/.steam/steam/config/config.vdf file to remap buttons if UI settings are not enough.

I can actually confirm that was the first thing I tried. It has worked correctly for the games running natively on Linux, but not for those games running on Wine or Steam Play, in particular for those which require the support of either the Microsoft DirectInput or the Xinput API.

For the latter in particular the mapping was always wrong: axes mapped as triggers and vice versa, and changing the controller configuration in Steam hasn't ever worked. The advantage I found with the xboxdrv layer is that remaps the device in a new one, easier to be supported by the in-game Xinput API.

I was going to write a follow-up to the article today that explains what to do for games which support DirectInput or Xinput. I'll keep you all posted of course.

View this comment - View article - View full comments