One of the annoyances that may come with people using SteamOS is buying games from the store they cannot use a game-pad controller with, and Valve are taking steps to improve this.
There is a problem with this though that Valve hasn't done anything about. What happens for games that have game-pad controller support, but that support doesn't work on Linux? There are games like this, so they should in my opinion not be shown in this new method if you're on SteamOS or Big Picture Mode on Linux.
It certainly could be a good incentive for those developers to fix their game-pad controller support on Linux.
I very much welcome these changes, but there is an easy option to still view all games that don't work directly on a game-pad controller, so they aren't removing the ability to see everything just making it easier.
Changes like this actually make me feel a little easier about SteamOS, as you can imagine when major websites review it on a Steam Machine this issue would have been picked up as a major flaw. Anything that makes the process of using SteamOS smoother is welcome and will strengthen its position at release.
See the full post on it on Steam. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
QuoteWhen navigating Big Picture mode with a traditional gamepad, the Steam Store is now optimized to showcase controller-friendly games. When browsing the Store in Big Picture mode on SteamOS, Linux, or OS X, the Store displays content designed for your OS. When you have an active In-Home Streaming connection to another machine, the content designed for its OS is also displayed.
There is a problem with this though that Valve hasn't done anything about. What happens for games that have game-pad controller support, but that support doesn't work on Linux? There are games like this, so they should in my opinion not be shown in this new method if you're on SteamOS or Big Picture Mode on Linux.
It certainly could be a good incentive for those developers to fix their game-pad controller support on Linux.
I very much welcome these changes, but there is an easy option to still view all games that don't work directly on a game-pad controller, so they aren't removing the ability to see everything just making it easier.
Changes like this actually make me feel a little easier about SteamOS, as you can imagine when major websites review it on a Steam Machine this issue would have been picked up as a major flaw. Anything that makes the process of using SteamOS smoother is welcome and will strengthen its position at release.
See the full post on it on Steam. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Here is games I can remember have broken controller support for xbox360 controllers using xpad kernel driver. (Same driver steamos is using)
Grimind has broken controller support and dev admits it, and doesn't seem to wanna fix it. He is using SDL, yet he programmed the controller input with glfw. People found a way around it by using xboxdrv and some program to make controller register as keyboard presses. Dev had this to say at first.
"Nice! Thank you. I didn't manage to implement this on Linux, so this looks like nice workaround. Thread pinned." here is link
http://steamcommunity.com/app/265380/discussions/0/45350791713656622/
Any game made with gamemaker like Risk of rain, Stealth bastard deluxe
Dev from stealth bastard deluxe seemed interested, gave us hope of a new build of gamemaker months ago but then vanished
http://steamcommunity.com/app/209190/discussions/0/810923021661107869/#p1
Electronic super joy has a button repeat issue, meaning the game can't be played because you can't double jump. Actually a whole lot of games made with Unity engine have this issue. That many I wont list them. Here you see the dev from electronic super joy, telling everyone to install xboxdrv instead of xpad to fix it. Which is far from acceptable, especially on steamos,
http://steamcommunity.com/app/244870/discussions/0/792924952243285553/
All these games off full or partial controller support on store page. I could go on, but you get the idea. This sort of thing can't happen when people are running a console (steamos) it will flop otherwise.
Then there are also games missing features completely in linux version. Like Euro truck simulator has had the radio feature stripped from the game and no ability to play your own .mp3 music. They did it because they don't want to pay for codec rights. In windows they actually just tell windows media player to play it, which avoids the issue.
I have contacted them repeatedly about it. Shown them how they could do the same thing with mplayer on linux. Even sent them c++ code that controls mplayer as an example. Yet nothing.
I'm not sure which driver this problem is related to, but Awesomenauts doesn't work that well with a 360 gamepad either. The controls are fine, but the screen shows, e.g., "Button 1", instead of "A". Apparently, Ronimo doesn't seem so interested in fixing this: Your text to link here...
I have almost the exact same problem playing L4D2 with the 360 gamepad (yeah, yeah, I know). The screen shows keyboard buttons instead of 360 ones.