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Tonight, Valve offered up highlights for the major new features to hit the Steam Controller in the past month, and a couple that are just around the corner. They have added so many features to the Steam Controller that the ones mentioned in the headline weren't even half of the new features. Hell, they even put up a special page on Steam just for the highlights of the new additions to the Controller.We're talking about how gyro aiming has redefined aiming in games. They talk about the new joystick mode that mimics mouse movement for games that lack simultaneous mouse and gamepad inputs. There are new mouse regions, a new touch menu, the ability to take your custom configurations with you on the go, the ability to bring up the keyboard at any time (useful for HTPCs), a controller HUD, and even a way to share and utilize Steam Controller configurations for non-Steam games.
Gyro
One of the community's biggest discoveries was how well FPS aiming worked when you combined trackpad and gyro input. Relying on the trackpad for large scale turns, and the gyro for fine tuning, community members found they were much more competitive than they were expecting.
Gyro support for leaning makes it easy to naturally lean around corners simply by tilting your controller.
Mouse-Like Joystick mode
Many games with full controller support expect a joystick for camera control, but PC gamers like their mouse for good reason. We did ship with a method for emulating joystick cameras, but thanks to NEOGAF user mntorankusu's suggestion, we now have a much superior method, such that it feels like you're aiming with a mouse when playing a first or third person game.
Some games don't support simultaneous mouse and gamepad input. With Mouse-Like Joystick you can play with gamepad input and still enjoy mouse accuracy.
Mouse Regions
Many PC RTS & RPG games have complex on-screen UI for minimaps, spell bars, inventory slots, and so on. To make it easier to rapidly navigate them, we added Mouse Regions, a configurable way of mapping an entire trackpad to a region on-screen.
For example, when holding a grip button, you can make your left trackpad map to the minimap, so it's easy to move your camera around the whole map.
Touch Menu
Some games have hotkeys that are infrequently used, but you still want to have at your fingertips. We added the Touch Menu, a fully configurable UI with up to 16 buttons, allowing you to select your desired hotkey on a single trackpad.
Consolidate all those RPG hotkeys into a single, easy-to-use menu.
Configuration Travelling
Want to play some co-op games at a friend's house? We wanted to make it easy to take your controller with you, so we're getting ready to ship a new feature that ensures your controller's game configurations travel with it, even when you're playing a co-op game on a friend's Steam account.
Register a controller to have it draw configurations from your account. Personalize it while you're there.
Home Theater PCs
One of the things we weren't expecting was that so many users would find the Steam Controller great at controlling their HTPC outside of playing games. These users have made a number of great suggestions, and we've managed to ship some of them already.
Create a configuration for the Steam Controller to use at the desktop. Don't forget to assign media keys like Play/Pause and Volume/Track control.
Non-Steam Game support
Another thing the community has asked for is the ability to share configurations for games bought somewhere other than Steam. The next Steam Beta client will add that as well, so add your favorite non-Steam game to your library, and we'll automatically find configurations that other users have published.
Controller HUD
With the community rapidly creating and sharing so many different ways to use the Steam Controller, we wanted to make it easier to learn how your controller is operating. The new Controller HUD allows you to easily see exactly what input your controller is generating.
This is great for visualizing some of the more complex ways the trackpad can mimic joystick and mouse movement.
One of the community's biggest discoveries was how well FPS aiming worked when you combined trackpad and gyro input. Relying on the trackpad for large scale turns, and the gyro for fine tuning, community members found they were much more competitive than they were expecting.
Gyro support for leaning makes it easy to naturally lean around corners simply by tilting your controller.
Mouse-Like Joystick mode
Many games with full controller support expect a joystick for camera control, but PC gamers like their mouse for good reason. We did ship with a method for emulating joystick cameras, but thanks to NEOGAF user mntorankusu's suggestion, we now have a much superior method, such that it feels like you're aiming with a mouse when playing a first or third person game.
Some games don't support simultaneous mouse and gamepad input. With Mouse-Like Joystick you can play with gamepad input and still enjoy mouse accuracy.
Mouse Regions
Many PC RTS & RPG games have complex on-screen UI for minimaps, spell bars, inventory slots, and so on. To make it easier to rapidly navigate them, we added Mouse Regions, a configurable way of mapping an entire trackpad to a region on-screen.
For example, when holding a grip button, you can make your left trackpad map to the minimap, so it's easy to move your camera around the whole map.
Touch Menu
Some games have hotkeys that are infrequently used, but you still want to have at your fingertips. We added the Touch Menu, a fully configurable UI with up to 16 buttons, allowing you to select your desired hotkey on a single trackpad.
Consolidate all those RPG hotkeys into a single, easy-to-use menu.
Configuration Travelling
Want to play some co-op games at a friend's house? We wanted to make it easy to take your controller with you, so we're getting ready to ship a new feature that ensures your controller's game configurations travel with it, even when you're playing a co-op game on a friend's Steam account.
Register a controller to have it draw configurations from your account. Personalize it while you're there.
Home Theater PCs
One of the things we weren't expecting was that so many users would find the Steam Controller great at controlling their HTPC outside of playing games. These users have made a number of great suggestions, and we've managed to ship some of them already.
Create a configuration for the Steam Controller to use at the desktop. Don't forget to assign media keys like Play/Pause and Volume/Track control.
Non-Steam Game support
Another thing the community has asked for is the ability to share configurations for games bought somewhere other than Steam. The next Steam Beta client will add that as well, so add your favorite non-Steam game to your library, and we'll automatically find configurations that other users have published.
Controller HUD
With the community rapidly creating and sharing so many different ways to use the Steam Controller, we wanted to make it easier to learn how your controller is operating. The new Controller HUD allows you to easily see exactly what input your controller is generating.
This is great for visualizing some of the more complex ways the trackpad can mimic joystick and mouse movement.
So, in case anybody was still curious as to how a series of updates could prevent a review from being written. Now you know.
To go along with this showcase of new features, Valve also released a new video on how the Steam Controllers are built. You can check that out below.
When we first started designing hardware at Valve, we decided we wanted to try and do the manufacturing as well. To achieve our goal of a flexible controller, we felt it was important to have a similar amount of flexibility in our manufacturing process, and that meant looking into automated assembly lines. It turns out that most consumer hardware of this kind still has humans involved in stages throughout manufacturing, but we kind of went overboard, and built one of the largest fully automated assembly lines in the US. Our film crew recently put together a video of that assembly line, showcasing exactly why robots are awesome.
Here's that showcase, where you can watch controllers being built entirely by robots. We aren't crazy though, so humans are still on hand to keep the robots from becoming sentient.
Here's that showcase, where you can watch controllers being built entirely by robots. We aren't crazy though, so humans are still on hand to keep the robots from becoming sentient.
