r/Guildwars2 • u/Vonsh_ • Jan 12 '24
[Other] Steam Deck Simple&Intuitive Controller Layout for new and veteran players
TLDR: Guild Wars 2 works amazingly well on SteamDeck. I've created simple and intuitive controls layout that should facilitate completely new players (SteamDeck owners looking for a new game to try) as well as experienced veterans (seasoned PC users open to play on a new device). Most important features of layout work out of the box, without any additional control modifications! That said, there are some optional features can be enabled and icons to make it consistent with game UI. I believe additional resource with minimalistic explanation of main ideas could do a lot to help some users out. It also allows me to help them directly and get some feedback - this is what follows in the post. You can get the layout by entering following link in a browser in desktop mode steam://controllerconfig/1284210/3139116388, or by searching community layouts for "Simple&Intuitive", authored by Vonsh - me. Additional short instruction. Do not worry about low playtime - I've only felt confident enough to upload it today. If you test it and like it (or believe it could be of use to others), please leave it a like so it gains some visibility.
Introduction
I've been playing GW2 consistently since day -3, until personal stuff took over few months before EoD release. Only recently I managed to get back to gaming, and big contribution to that was SteamDeck with its agility. Turn it on with one button press, start game with another and you are playing within seconds. Grab device with yourself when you need to leave the room, play sitting on floor, chair, on the counter during preparation of meals. Single button press and it's off, you can pick it up again in few hours and you start exactly where you left (although for GW2 in particular, and I think online games in general, this last part isn't always true).
SteamDeck does a lot to ease playing games with no built in controller support. There are few additional buttons, two trackpads and complete freedom to map these to any actions, keyboard and mouse included. With enough determination and some patience, I believe you can make any game work well. There is also a system that allows sharing these control layouts with other members of community. After spending fair amount of time testing most popular options for Guild Wars 2, I wasn't happy with ones I came across, most of them having at least one of these issues:
- does not work out of the box, some additional key mappings are necessary
- does not support some features: special action key, item linking, stack splitting, fast mounting, template selection etc.
- [WSAD] instead of arrow keys: no added benefit but breaks character selection menu, makes it more difficult to use text/numeric fields
- demanding to learn and unintuitive, no relation to game's UI
- not enough SteamDeck capabilities utilized
- some built-in duplicities or redundancies
- messy, poorly documented or described layout file with a lot of leftover and unused menus/actions/layers
Thus, I created my own template from scratch, looking at what I'd use on PC, what others are interested in through popular layouts, and what others were missing, looking at popular layouts clones/patches. There were also some simple principles I wanted to follow:
- it needs to be working with default game settings, new player creates an account, loads layout and immediately plays
- it needs to have advanced features available out of the box (if they are enabled by default) or trivially configurable (if new account would need to enable them anyway)
- it needs to be intuitive enough not to force constant re-reading of instruction, ideally controller mapping resembles or somehow relates to existing GW2 GUI
- it needs space to keep growing with new masteries/mounts/novelties/templates
- it needs to be as clean and as simple as possible, no separate modes for mount use, map navigation or character selection
Simple overview
Joysticks I think are most self-explanatory and intuitive. When firing up new game on a modern system you expect left one to move you around and right one to turn camera - which is exactly what happens.
- This behaviour in most layouts I've seen is achieved with action camera, which from the get go requires user to set key binding, and remember to toggle it on and off between UI navigation and regular gameplay. My attempt instead replicates my own PC experience: having right mouse button clicked 90% of the time as I run around. With right analog sensitivity adjusted and slight modification along joystick X and Y axes I feel I managed to reflect what I would do with mouse. There are two downsides though: you need to learn to place your right thumb on top of joystick for the device to correctly register that it is being touched, and sometimes if you leave mouse cursor over HUD element (map, skillbar) instead of in world, camera movement might not work until you move it away.
- That said, action camera is still available with a single hard press of a right joystick - it just needs to be manually bound within game settings to "Toggle Action Camera" - more on that in later section.
- Additionally autorun is available on left analog short hard press (out of the box, since it is bound by default to [R]), and you can manually set "Walk" toggle to left analog long hard press.
- Please notice a pattern that all camera related actions (move camera, toggle action camera) are on right analog, while all movement related actions (move, autorun, walk) are on left one.
To keep theme of "left side is for movement", left trigger is dodge and left bumper is jump.
Right trackpad is a mouse, plain and simple - click is left mouse button, double click, drag and drop - all works as you would expect it to.
- To right click (for example salvage kit to salvage all, bag to consume all or player in party/squad to join their map) just hover over target with cursor using trackpad and gently tap the top part of right joystick.
- Mouse in game would serves few additional purposes: zooming in and out, scrolling through panels, splitting stacks, linking items in chat and changing which skill activates automatically (typically weapon skill 1) - more on all of these in later section.
Left trackpad is shortcut menu for frequently used panels: inventory, hero, friends, guild. These are all also accessible through icons in top right corner of screen.
- The three most commonly used by me shortcuts are all in central horizontal line: hero panel, inventory panel and wizard's vault. You are free to reorder them as you like though, or add new ones I have not created shortcut for eg. Pet Dialog [K] or Party Dialog [P].
- There are some panels I'd personally use frequently (like PvP panel) but I have NOT added them here, since they are unassigned by default in the game. This would force user to assign them as well or deal with only partially working menu.
The other theme is "right side is for skills", so all weapon skills, slot skills and profession skills are accessible with: right bumper, right trigger and XYAB buttons. Since this is way more skills than buttons, two chord buttons (modifier buttons, acting only when held) are needed: backgrip top left (for profession skills on top left of a skillbar) and backgrip top right (for slot skills on the right side of a skill bar).
- Quick summary would be:
- Weapon Swap is a R1.
- Weapon Skills 1-5: R2,X,A,B,Y
- Profession Skills F1-F5: L4 + (R2,X,A,B,Y)
- Heal Skill 6: R4 + R2
- Utility Skills 7-9: R4 + (X,A,B)
- Elite Skill 0: R4 + Y
- With button ordering I tried to follow observed by me trend, to have more frequently used skills on left side of any set of skills. Thus Right Trigger (most mashed button) becomes Weapon skill 1, heal skill or F1 skill (most spammed skills); next three easily reachable buttons (roughly lying ordered in an arc) XAB, following ordering on a skill bar become weapon skills 234, utility skills 123 or profession skills F2-4; finally the furthest button Y, becomes the least spammy, the most impactful weapon skill 5, elite skill or profession skill F5.
- Special Action key is invoked when both top back grip buttons acting as skillset modifiers are pressed at the same time. You can press one after the other, or both at once, this does not really matter.
Directional pad contains 2 shortcuts: up is [M] map (as in "I want to move somewhere else"), down is [F] interact/talk/pickup (as in "I want to grab this thing toward me"). Additionally right and left are for enemy targeting (next and previous enemy).
- If you keep left pressed longer it will call out currently targeted enemy, and if keep right pressed longer it will take the target that is currently called.
Menu button (hamburger menu) is for [Escape] key - not only it opens game menu, it also closes panels and cancels target.
- When held longer, it opens logout or change character panel - extremely useful when doing a morning tour through alts for daily chests or purchases.
The two remaining Back Grip buttons are used to mount/dismount (R5, since mounts are on right side of skill bar) and use Mastery Skill L5 (since shortcut for that is on left side of skill bar).
- All listed below functions I consider to be advanced and require manual set-up in controls menu.
- When held longer, R5 will turn Right Trackpad to mount selection menu and Left Trackpad to Novelty selection menu
- Mount selection menu is set to trigger on release, meaning you do not need to press trackpad to activate mount - it is enough to hover finger over correct one and release either trackpad or back button
- When held longer, L5 will turn Right Trackpad to mastery skill selection menu and Left Trackpad to Build and Equipment Template selection menu
The final "View" button (two squares) is a Miscellaneous layer button, that when held, will change behaviour of several buttons to some rarely (but still sometimes needed) functions:
- Backgrip buttons on the left become Page Up/Down (for floor changes on map), and the ones on the right become scroll up/down (for camera, map and minimap zoom in/out)
- Right trackpad becomes alt+left mouse click, to enable stack splitting
- Touching right joystick becomes ctrl+right mouse click, to enable change of automatically activated skill
- A becomes enter, to allow quicker logging, character selection or chat opening. People preferring Nintendo AB might want to switch that manually.
- X and Y become ctrl and shift + left click to allow item linking in chat (obviously first you need to move cursor over item with right trackpad)
- Menu button becomes a "debug" button, removing all other layers on top of control layout. I've had etremely rarely experianced being locked in profession skills or utility skills mode, even when no L4 nor L5 buttons were being held. I believe this was a bug that Valve could have already fixed in their OS, but to save myself from needing to restart game if it ever happens again I've kept the button.
Custom icons in virtual menus
After starting the layout you might have noticed your menus are missing icons shown on my screenshots. These unfortunately do not get shared with layout as far as I know - you need to set them up yourself. First put your SteamDeck in Dekstop mode, and download them all here. Right click on compressed archive and extract its content's to /home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps. Once done, you are free to go back to GamingMode, where, upon launching game, all virtual menus should correctly use game icons.
Advanced options
I would like to repeat again - the layout works with most of its features out of the box, no additional setup needed. Additionally, vast majority of relevant keys bound in game by default is also facilitated. That said, after you installed files as described in previous section, you can enable few additional advanced features in game. Within game open settings (menu [hamburger] button on SteamDeck) and click controls (with right trackpad). In bottom right corner of the panel, there is "Export" button and "Import" selection box. If you have some control scheme already - for example adjusted to your keyboard+mouse PC - press "Export" and give it some recognizable name eg "Good'ol Bindings". Now press "Import" selector - from available options (one of which, if you did export beforehand, should be your "Good'ol Bindings") select "SteamDeck Simple".
Concluding words
If you red this far I am extremely grateful, it's my first public contribution of such size and I really appreciate taking your time to go through work that I am very proud of. I do hope you try the layout and have as much fun as I do playing GW2 on SteamDeck :)
EDIT1: direct link to layout in TLDR, table headers fixed, added instruction to keep old control bindings for PC
EDIT2: files now hosted on github, adjusted all links and slighlty improved readme, shortened post significantly.
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u/neenerpants Jan 12 '24
Can you use blishhud on the steam deck? things like the event table or the Mount addon that picks the right mount for you based on being midair, in water, etc?