They weren't awful or anything, but compatibility was always an ongoing issue. Drivers were a constant issue, and many games that were supposed to offer button mapping and such simply didn't work. This was also back before readily available patches were a given, so the odds of ending up with a game that simply didn't work with your controller was a pretty regular occurrence. They get memed on now, but back in the day Mad Catz was pretty well regarded for actually providing broad support for their controls on PC. Microsoft on the other hand was actually pretty bad about making their 1st party controllers like the Sidewinder actually have ongoing support, with lots of users reporting significant issues with compatibility, especially as the legacy ports that supported them were phased out in favor of USB 1.0 and 1.1. Most of these issues were all still tied into DirectInput, the predecessor to Xinput, and what a breath of fresh air it was when that came out. The 360 pad just worked on PC, and 3rd party options like Logitech's F310 actually had a switch on the back for switching between Direct and X Input as people were upgrading to later versions of XP that fully supported XInput, as well as the rollout of Vista. In short, it wasn't great, but it all depended on access and manufacturer. It's so much better now, where you can literally smash any old controller to a PC over USB, Bluetooth, or 2.4, and it just works.
Focus on multiplatform titles as the industry was growing larger, especially PC+Xbox instead of solely PC-oriented titles. It caused the era of "consolization", vastly simplified games and extremely disappointing sequels like Thief 3 and Deus Ex Invisible War.
The DirectX-Box made traditional PC devs develop for console first, then port the console version to PC, which resulted in the oversimplification of games that used to take for granted that you'd have a keyboard and mouse and be tech savvy.
More setup required because of wildly different controllers and no guarantee of the same button, eg. "button 1" being in the same place between competing controllers so mapping your controller was a must. Compatibility issues were rampant too. A lot of people simply didn't have one because it wasn't worth the effort, joysticks for flight sims were probably more popular than gamepads.
Xinput made things a lot easier, but it also killed all controller innovation and confined us to X360-type controllers (1 dpad, 2 sticks, 2 analog triggers and 10 buttons) because that's the only type it allows.
>Xinput made things a lot easier, but it also killed all controller innovation and confined us to X360-type controllers (1 dpad, 2 sticks, 2 analog triggers and 10 buttons) because that's the only type it allows.
They can both be used as either DirectInput controllers, the older API that didn't have those limitations. If the game only supports Xinput, you need some sort of middleware to map it into a fake Xinput controller. Steam has this built-in so usually you don't need to do anything, although some of the features on those controllers won't be available unless you map them by hand. For example, if you want to use gyro you'd map it either into one of the sticks or a virtual mouse.
Obviously Sony and Nintendo don't make xinput devices, they use USB/Bluetooth HID (human interface divice) standards which may have device specific quirks.
They get reported to games via direct input, or through rawinput which is a Microsoft standard for user software to access HID devices themselves.
an absolute pain in the ass to set up with most games
funny how microsoft did one single good thing by making xinput the norm while they were also busy trying to kill PC vidya so people would go and play on the Xbox 360 instead
No of course not. It's not ergonomic. There's been millions of dollars invested in ergonomic r&d you don't know better. This is the dumbest form of nostalgiagayging might as well say we should go back to the atari joystick >inb4 gigachad.jpg yes
Nobody is going to laugh
>This is the dumbest form of nostalgiagayging
Playing games is nostalgiagayging these days as new games suck en masse.
Also some people happen to like 6 buttons and there's almost nothing for them on the market.
>millions of dollars invested in ergonomic r&d you don't know better
There is nothing that is "ergonomic" about the base layout of a gamepad we've been using for the past 30~ years. Doesn't matter where the sticks are placed, or how many face buttons there are, or how the grips/triggers/overall shell is shaped; the base "gamepad" shape that has all been derived more or less from the SNES/PS1 controller design is NOT ergonomic.
See the weird thing around the dpad? It's a tiny wheel. Dpad sucked by the way but the buttons were alright and overall build was solid. Thanks for reading my blog entry about my first pc gamepad, have a good day everyone.
Happen to own a saitek like that. Rubber melted from sticks in about year 2009. Three face buttons (digital, rumble and s) do their own stuff and can't be mapped so for start/select you have to use additional regular buttons. Also square gates on sticks are a bit weird and the dpad isn't the best.
all over the place, most people just played with keyboard and or mouse.
Pic related is pretty neat, it plugs between PC and keyboard, and it allows you to map any buttons to any keyboard, and this is done via hardware and not software, so it works with anything, literally. Microsoft sidewinders had similar thing but via software and it worked good enough when it worked.
i had some windows 95/98 joystick that i used to play shit like asteroids and not much else
my dad installed the drivers for me but knowing days of ye olde that was always a manual and dumb chore
i can sorta recall it was just a dumb piece of shit, very hard for my child hands to manipulate. i'd lose the space ship because i couldn't crank the hog hard enough.
It was that logitech controller you could get at walmart and every game was a nightmare to make it work with. Only shit that worked consistently was emulators. >$40
Holy shit lmao it was $12-20 back in the day.
I had thats predecessor, when it worked it was alright, the d-pad was not that great though. But the build quality was complete ass, I had to RMA it few times as it kept not working after while or went completely unresponsive, until I got tired of it and bought playstation controller adapter.
Only moronic gays used controllers back then and it used to be a small percentage which is why the marker for pc controllers was small up until the x360 released
If you had one at all, it was probably a joystick for stuff like Decent. Most PC games weren't designed around gamepads.
They did exist though and they were generally not very good compared to console ones. But it was still better than trying to play emulated games with a keyboard.
Only moronic gays used controllers back then and it used to be a small percentage which is why the marker for pc controllers was small up until the x360 released
>want a symmetrical style controller to use on PC >can't get legit DS2s and DS3s that easily >have a Dualsense but the d-pad is downright unusable for old games >want to get a DualShock 4 but don't want to go back to using micro USB
help me out fellas, I'll have to take the chinkpill if there is no other choice
8bitdo controllers are fine anon
You don't even need to buy that "Xbox" version if you are on PC, just pick any other 8BitDo controller and you are settled.
there's really no other choice sadly. I get what you mean with the dualshock 4, I left mine plugged in all the time, and the usb port still got loose in like 7 months, I would be playing something and it would disconnect if I moved. shit sucks
I thought the Dualsense dpad was pretty good aside from the gross glass texture. I couldn't trigger any false diagonals even intentionally rocking the individual directions
I have similar saitek. My aunt mistakenly bought it for my ps1. It lay in the attic for many years. Emulated Crash and Spyro with him. She died of cancer, I keep it as a memory. She also gave me the Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time.
sobbing
we had this serial port control stick that worked half the time and also didn't. it was hit or miss. project64 emulator could detect it but good luck getting it to work for halo demo.
did we even have controllers back then ?
I feel like most 2000s pc games were rts ,rpg and fps games
Yes. Before XInpunt there was DirectInpunt, which for the most part was an unorganized mess.
That goes with all of Microsofts Direct bullshit until around DX8. it was just kinda here's code documentation do whatever.
I mostly used joysticks back then. I beat Final Fantasy 7 with this.
They weren't awful or anything, but compatibility was always an ongoing issue. Drivers were a constant issue, and many games that were supposed to offer button mapping and such simply didn't work. This was also back before readily available patches were a given, so the odds of ending up with a game that simply didn't work with your controller was a pretty regular occurrence. They get memed on now, but back in the day Mad Catz was pretty well regarded for actually providing broad support for their controls on PC. Microsoft on the other hand was actually pretty bad about making their 1st party controllers like the Sidewinder actually have ongoing support, with lots of users reporting significant issues with compatibility, especially as the legacy ports that supported them were phased out in favor of USB 1.0 and 1.1. Most of these issues were all still tied into DirectInput, the predecessor to Xinput, and what a breath of fresh air it was when that came out. The 360 pad just worked on PC, and 3rd party options like Logitech's F310 actually had a switch on the back for switching between Direct and X Input as people were upgrading to later versions of XP that fully supported XInput, as well as the rollout of Vista. In short, it wasn't great, but it all depended on access and manufacturer. It's so much better now, where you can literally smash any old controller to a PC over USB, Bluetooth, or 2.4, and it just works.
Simply put, we didn't use them.
PC space was still very different from the console space in the mid 2000s and I wish it had stayed different.
>PC space was still very different from the console space in the mid 2000s and I wish it had stayed different.
QRD? What changed?
Big money going into gaming, or rather publishing. Xbox Live. PC started getting ports of console titles on the reg. Blah blah blah.
Focus on multiplatform titles as the industry was growing larger, especially PC+Xbox instead of solely PC-oriented titles. It caused the era of "consolization", vastly simplified games and extremely disappointing sequels like Thief 3 and Deus Ex Invisible War.
The DirectX-Box made traditional PC devs develop for console first, then port the console version to PC, which resulted in the oversimplification of games that used to take for granted that you'd have a keyboard and mouse and be tech savvy.
More setup required because of wildly different controllers and no guarantee of the same button, eg. "button 1" being in the same place between competing controllers so mapping your controller was a must. Compatibility issues were rampant too. A lot of people simply didn't have one because it wasn't worth the effort, joysticks for flight sims were probably more popular than gamepads.
Xinput made things a lot easier, but it also killed all controller innovation and confined us to X360-type controllers (1 dpad, 2 sticks, 2 analog triggers and 10 buttons) because that's the only type it allows.
>Xinput made things a lot easier, but it also killed all controller innovation and confined us to X360-type controllers (1 dpad, 2 sticks, 2 analog triggers and 10 buttons) because that's the only type it allows.
What about DualSense and Switch Pro?
They can both be used as either DirectInput controllers, the older API that didn't have those limitations. If the game only supports Xinput, you need some sort of middleware to map it into a fake Xinput controller. Steam has this built-in so usually you don't need to do anything, although some of the features on those controllers won't be available unless you map them by hand. For example, if you want to use gyro you'd map it either into one of the sticks or a virtual mouse.
Bro, shut the frick up. I would take the strictness of XInput over the dogshit mess that was DInput, easily.
Ok cool, but that's in no way related to my post.
Shut the frick up, no one cares.
Obviously Sony and Nintendo don't make xinput devices, they use USB/Bluetooth HID (human interface divice) standards which may have device specific quirks.
They get reported to games via direct input, or through rawinput which is a Microsoft standard for user software to access HID devices themselves.
A nightmare of drivers and unsupported titles and it was shit. Some joysticks were cool though.
DOGSHIT GARBAGE
legit below 50% chance if shit would work at all.
Dope as frick
not everygame works / supported you need driver to make it work on windows xp.
Madkatz garbage
I think joysticks usually saw more use then any controllers.
an absolute pain in the ass to set up with most games
funny how microsoft did one single good thing by making xinput the norm while they were also busy trying to kill PC vidya so people would go and play on the Xbox 360 instead
Every controller posted at the moment has 6 face buttons though. Now in the off chance that 6 buttons are present there will be no sticks guaranteed.
Should modern controllers go back to having 6 face buttons?
I feel that could be useful in certain scenarios.
Depends on game, six face buttons isnt inherently worse or better than four
there's no point. instead add paddles to the back.
Back paddles are patented and nobody is going to bother paying to license them from corsair.
Every third party controller has back buttons anon. Welcome to current century
I like 6 button for certain games but both 6 face buttons and back paddles are wildly overrated.
No of course not. It's not ergonomic. There's been millions of dollars invested in ergonomic r&d you don't know better. This is the dumbest form of nostalgiagayging might as well say we should go back to the atari joystick
>inb4 gigachad.jpg yes
Nobody is going to laugh
>This is the dumbest form of nostalgiagayging
Playing games is nostalgiagayging these days as new games suck en masse.
Also some people happen to like 6 buttons and there's almost nothing for them on the market.
>millions of dollars invested in ergonomic r&d you don't know better
There is nothing that is "ergonomic" about the base layout of a gamepad we've been using for the past 30~ years. Doesn't matter where the sticks are placed, or how many face buttons there are, or how the grips/triggers/overall shell is shaped; the base "gamepad" shape that has all been derived more or less from the SNES/PS1 controller design is NOT ergonomic.
See the weird thing around the dpad? It's a tiny wheel. Dpad sucked by the way but the buttons were alright and overall build was solid. Thanks for reading my blog entry about my first pc gamepad, have a good day everyone.
Is it me or that dpad looks like goatse?
There is a degree of similarity, yes.
Real gangsters knew about the PS2 to parallel port lagless kino.
never worked and had to set them up on a per game basis.
I remember the PC port of Virtual On had support for two joysticks.
Happen to own a saitek like that. Rubber melted from sticks in about year 2009. Three face buttons (digital, rumble and s) do their own stuff and can't be mapped so for start/select you have to use additional regular buttons. Also square gates on sticks are a bit weird and the dpad isn't the best.
all over the place, most people just played with keyboard and or mouse.
Pic related is pretty neat, it plugs between PC and keyboard, and it allows you to map any buttons to any keyboard, and this is done via hardware and not software, so it works with anything, literally. Microsoft sidewinders had similar thing but via software and it worked good enough when it worked.
i had some windows 95/98 joystick that i used to play shit like asteroids and not much else
my dad installed the drivers for me but knowing days of ye olde that was always a manual and dumb chore
i can sorta recall it was just a dumb piece of shit, very hard for my child hands to manipulate. i'd lose the space ship because i couldn't crank the hog hard enough.
It was that logitech controller you could get at walmart and every game was a nightmare to make it work with. Only shit that worked consistently was emulators.
>$40
Holy shit lmao it was $12-20 back in the day.
Price went up because of that sub thing, guess you haven't been here for a while
I had thats predecessor, when it worked it was alright, the d-pad was not that great though. But the build quality was complete ass, I had to RMA it few times as it kept not working after while or went completely unresponsive, until I got tired of it and bought playstation controller adapter.
most people used controllers for emulators
The best
If you had one at all, it was probably a joystick for stuff like Decent. Most PC games weren't designed around gamepads.
They did exist though and they were generally not very good compared to console ones. But it was still better than trying to play emulated games with a keyboard.
Only moronic gays used controllers back then and it used to be a small percentage which is why the marker for pc controllers was small up until the x360 released
Dumb zoomers
>want a symmetrical style controller to use on PC
>can't get legit DS2s and DS3s that easily
>have a Dualsense but the d-pad is downright unusable for old games
>want to get a DualShock 4 but don't want to go back to using micro USB
help me out fellas, I'll have to take the chinkpill if there is no other choice
I have a few 8bitdo controllers and they are all great. Take the plunge, Chang.
8bitdo controllers are fine anon
You don't even need to buy that "Xbox" version if you are on PC, just pick any other 8BitDo controller and you are settled.
For 40 it's okay. Thing I don't really like about these 8bitdo ones is the triggers feel way to squishy
Logitech F310 is what I'd normally suggest, but the 8-way d-pad is probably gonna be an issue for you with older games.
there's really no other choice sadly. I get what you mean with the dualshock 4, I left mine plugged in all the time, and the usb port still got loose in like 7 months, I would be playing something and it would disconnect if I moved. shit sucks
I like my 8bitdo more than the DS3 and 4.
I only ever liked the DS1 and 2 more but those are impossible to get now.
I thought the Dualsense dpad was pretty good aside from the gross glass texture. I couldn't trigger any false diagonals even intentionally rocking the individual directions
it was a very fricking dark time i tell u what
imagine being forced to use kbm for your emulators
dark fricking times
i still don't know how I made controllers work back then, sometimes it worked fine, other times it refused to work no matter what.
I have similar saitek. My aunt mistakenly bought it for my ps1. It lay in the attic for many years. Emulated Crash and Spyro with him. She died of cancer, I keep it as a memory. She also gave me the Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time.
sobbing
So bad you may as well pretend pads for pc gaming didn't exist back then.
we had this serial port control stick that worked half the time and also didn't. it was hit or miss. project64 emulator could detect it but good luck getting it to work for halo demo.