Controller Support is a Pain...

In my spare time over the last week or so I was going through the controller setup for my game We Love Fish Tanks, which is primarily a keyboard and mouse supported game, and has been that way since the start.

For my next game, I'll definitely be implementing controller support much sooner, and without so much crunch. I may even be able to make use of the Steam virtual keyboard next time, instead of manually creating a virtual keyboard, but given my deadline of like 9 days from now for a demo (Steam Next Fest), just decided to brute-force it and make my own virtual keyboard.

Ironically that's less work than getting the SteamInput virtual keyboard API endpoint working. The worst part is (to the best of my knowledge) I'd have to make a build of the game and upload it to Steam to even test it. SO NOPE!

Also, when it comes to detecting if the player's using SteamInput (can't do it with regular controller input detection since the virtual cursor is a MUST), the SteamInput API is worthless. I dearly hope this aspect of it gets some love in the future. I ended up just adding a toggle in the menu to switch between KB+M or controller glyphs, both, or no glyphs, with it defaulting to both to meet Steam's requirements.



On another note - I've commissioned an artist to help make a logo and some key art for Steam, so hopefully I'll be sharing that soon.

A cool quote I got in the "Texts from Mittens" calendar my sister got me says the below:
"If you can't fly, run; if you can't run, walk; if you can't walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving."

Hope this inspires you to get through whatever you're going through like it inspired me today.