Steam Hardware

If you touch your software enough does it become hardware?

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FatherJack
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Steam Hardware

Post by FatherJack »

Here's a place to post your experiences, tip and tricks, etc for the new Steam hardware options, such as the Steam Link and the Steam Controller

Steam Link

The Steam Link is designed to allow you play games streamed from your main gaming PC on a TV.

Pros:
Allows you to play games from your PC in another room in front of a big TV with your friends
Supports the (official) XBox360 wireless adapter for split-screen play on games that support it like Rocket League
Perhaps unexpectedly breathes new life into games you wouldn't otherwise play much
The ideal foil for your showoff console mates - although maybe don't mention how much your PC cost
Can actually do a lot more than just Steam games
Your mum

Cons:
Games need some level of support for controller play
Using a mouse and keyboard is possible, but may be clumsy, also you sometimes need a keyboard if a game crashes or doesn't let you exit
Is limited by the power of your host PC, your networking, your TV or your lack of friends
Doesn't support ultra-high resolutions or refresh rates
Is kinda still in progress - not everything works, such as voice chat, but is being worked on
Your mum

How does it work?
It does two things, and the first you can try without even owning one - it puts Steam into Big Picture mode. This is a full-screen version of the Steam client optimised for distance-viewing and controller-navigation. The other thing it does is broadcast your screen onto your TV and uses the controller connected to the Steam Link to control the PC.

It has an HDMI socket to connect to your TV, a wired network socket (kinda recommended although it does have internal wifi) and three USB sockets.

What controllers work?
A wired Xbox360 controller (actual wired, not charge & play) can be used to operate it, or an official Xbox360 wireless adapter will work out of the box and can be paired (press button on adapter and controller) with up to four wireless Xbox360 controllers. Other options include the Steam Controller or a USB mouse and keyboard, but I don't know of any other controllers, XBOne included, that guaranteed work out of the box. Simple wireless mouse/keyboards which come with their own USB wireless receiver dongles may well work, or you may need to plug them into the host PC at least once to let their drivers get installed.

What games work?
Maybe we can compile a compatibility list through experiementation, but generally if a game has controller support then you can open and play it with a controller through the Steam Link. If you intend to play with a keyboard and mouse then there should be no issue. Even if you don't, it is worth having some sort of keyboard and mouse available as some games don't let you map every action to the controller, have a loading screen you have to click through, or just plain go wrong.
Recent games like Batman, Watch Dogs and Fallout which have equivalent console versions work just fine as they are designed to work with controllers. Equally, a lot of retro stuff like the Final Fantasy games which were originally console games will work fine with a controller once they have been set up to do so. Older PCs games, particularly those dependent on a lot of clicking like Diablo are going to need a mouse and keyboard to play.

So it just works with Steam games?
Actually, no. It works with anything you create a shortcut to in Steam - the shortcut runs the program and streams the resulting display to the Steam Link. If you want to run a copy of Notepad, you can. I have shortcuts in Steam to Origin games, GOG games, Blizzard games, and standalone games and they all function. An Origin game or similar will automatically start up the Origin client before running the game, so there may be some delay or screens to click through - or you could create a Steam shortcut to run Origin itself in advance. "Closing" the "game" Origin from the Steam Link's context doesn't actually stop it running, just removes the focus of what it is streaming to the TV and returns to Big Picture.

What? You've seriously, actually played Dragon Age through Origin and The Witcher through GOG using your Steam LInk?

Yes.

So what else can it run?
Anything you want. I have links to start the various clients such as Origin and Battle.net, run Skyrim with the SKSE, launch a command prompt called "your mum" and even have a link to change my desktop resolution. If you use any tools like SweetFX to alter the graphics and make stuff look more pretty or have better definition, then that works on the TV, too.

What was that about resolution?
Ah, yes. My PC's main* monitor is a 16:10 1680x1050 jobber. My TV is a 16:9 1920x1080 wanger. That doesn't match so bad things happen with black bars if left uncorrected. Most games let you change to whatever you want, unless higher than your screen can cope with - while my nVidia card can do oversampling up to 4k it only does so in 16:10 ratios - so my best option for 16:9 is 1600x900. For games that don't let you change, or are otherwise arsey, changing the desktop resolution beforehand using a Steam shortcut to a program called SetRes does the trick. It only becomes an issue if you jump between playing a particular game on the computer and the TV.
If you have a 16:9 monitor, it probably won't affect you at all. You can sometimes also get around issues by using Windowed mode.
(*primary, you can choose which)

What about other peripherals or non-standard controllers?
Typically if you can get them working on the host PC, by plugging them in and installing the drivers, then you stand a chance of them working on the Steam link. That's how it worked for me for an unofficial XBox360 wireless adapter.
If it doesn't then the Steam Link has built-in support for VirtualHere which makes the peripheral appear as if it's connected to the PC even though it's connected to the Steam Link. It requires installation on the PC (and needs Bonjour - boo!) and the free version linked above only supports a single USB device. The paid version is available in the Steam store: virtual here (paid)

What about controller remapping?
Well, they kind of want you to buy the Steam controller, which has this functionailty built in through its profiles, but other tools are available:
Pinnacle Game Profiler: http://pinnaclegameprofiler.com/ lets you map pretty much anything to your controller and includes a lot of pre-made setups for a lot of games. It needs to be running on the host PC and needs VirtualHere running as well so that it can see the XBox360 controller attached to the Steam Link. Even then you'll find most downloaded setups aren't quite what you would have used for mappings so will end up trying to make your own custom ones, which can be a bit of work.
Controller Companion may be of interest, but isn't something I've used: http://store.steampowered.com/app/367670/

And voice chat?
No, not yet. It's been "coming soon" since Christmas. It does detect my Jawbone headset as a sound device though.
Joose
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Re: Steam Hardware

Post by Joose »

Im really pleased with the Steam link, for the most part it is very "just works". I plugged it in and it detected my main PC with no fuss, I plugged in my 360 wireless dongle and it just worked straight away and most games just work with no issues.

The only issues I have had are:

- One game that entirely refuses to load. Its Jamestown, the old school scrolling shmup, and trying to launch it through the steam link gives a crash message and nothing else. Other people have the same issue and ive yet to find a solution. Every other game ive ran through the link has loaded without issues.

- One of my wireless 360 controllers died whilst we were playing a four player game, so I ran upstairs and disconnected the wired controller I have plugged in to my main PC. This caused the steam link to get Very Upset, and stop responding to all controls. Easy to resolve though, just needed to exit the game on my main PC and start it again from the steam link.

- PC games with a lot of text are sometimes not designed to be played on a massive telly from several feet away. We tried to play Magica and all the text prompts were unreadably tiny, and the icons for the different elements were indistinct smudges. Other games with text has been fine though, with the text being scaled appropriately for the resolution so it can still be easily read.

- Again with Magica, we had some deeply weird behaviour on the menu screen. We *think* that what was happening was that the controller for player one could only select things for slot one, even though it looked like you could select whatever slot you wanted. This was made more confusing by the controller claiming to be player one actually being a different player. Of course, this could be more of a Magica problem than a Steam link problem. That game is not known for its stability.

Other than that I havent had a single issue with it.

Fun game: See if you can make a console supremacist cry by loading up the same game on your console and steam link and switching from one to the other to compare how they look. Thanks to the Xbox live thing where they give games away each month I have a few duplicates and even on my reasonably low specced PC as a source the difference is profound.
FatherJack
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Re: Steam Hardware

Post by FatherJack »

Steam Controller

I only got this today, but here's quick description and review of my first impressions.

It's about the size of a 360 controller and has a familiar but decidedly-non-copyright-infriging layout. On the face there is a Steam button which wakes it up, along with "Back" and "Start" buttons. Top left is a touchpad/d-pad and top right is another circular touchpad without the directional grooves - both can be configured to function like mouse cursors, joystick axes or button presses, including a click down.
Bottom right is the analague stick about where the PS3 controller has them, and bottom right are four buttons labelled A, B, X and Y similar to a 360 pad, but a little bit uncomfortable to reach naturally.
On the back are two shoulder buttons, two triggers and also two extra triggers you activate by squeezing your hands.
It has the most over-engineered battery compartment I have ever seen. Yeah, it takes batteries: 2xAA and I don't think the USB socket charges them (it's used for patching and initial config)
It has it's own USB dongle which you need to use even if connecting it to a Steam Link. A Steam Link works just fine with a USB hub if you're running out of sockets.

It's clear the design focus is on those touchpads - if you want a console-style controller, an actual console controller like the 360 one is still your best bet. However the Steam Controller can act like a mouse and keyboard by mapping any of its buttons and axes to any keypress or mouse action. For the most part - it works. It isn't effortless, but it isn't massively clumsy either. Unless you are happy working out mappings yourself then you are kind of at the mercy of community-based submissions - but there are lots of them and they can be accessed and tried out easily.

I tried Diablo 3, Big Pharma and Factorio. All click-heavy with menus and tiny text. The Steam Controller doesn't do anything to fix the tiny text of course, so that's still going to be the limiting factor for a lot of games, but everything else it handled pretty much okay.
There were two Big Pharma setups, one omitted scroll wheel emulation which is used in some menus, so I tried another - it used a completely different layout but otherwise worked just fine. Factorio and Diablo worked okay as well - it was just a case of learning what the buttons are mapped to. The Diablo one in particular was a bit tricky - you used the touchpad like the mouse but a half-press on the right trigger would move you in the direction of the cursor, whereas a full-press on the right trigger would have you attack in that direction - with practice though I think it would work pretty well.

I'll try other games and update this with details. I don't know how long the batteries will last. It seems a good way to play games with a controller, which you might particularly want to do when using a Steam Link, which you would not be able to do otherwise.
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Re: Steam Hardware

Post by Grimmie »

Exciting :D Mine have been dispatched.
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