Congrats on Controller Support, But ... Steam Deck ...

[zBeeble]

So... I was really happy to hear about controller support (read it on RPS) and they assumed this was also steam deck support. That last bit doesn't seem to be true, but it could be.

So another, much older, game ... Space Chem... I tried it when I first got my Steam Deck. Clunky. Ignored it. For some reason, I picked it up recently and someone made a controller profile for it that makes it _better_ on steam deck than desktop. This isn't done by eliciting controller support from the game, but by rethinking the input and implementing that with the deck's controller edit feature. I didn't think so at first, but the choice to make the trackpad modal --- with both mouse and part menu was a flash of literal genius.

Now... I play a lot of Factorio... and I think that really good deck support requires Game support. Space Chem had a hotkey for each placeable instruction. This is possible due to there being 16 (or so) total instructions. Factorio and certainly modded Factorio have no such simplicity.

It strikes me that Steam Input support would be the gateway to amazing deck support. This (for those who don't know) is the ability to access actual in-game knobs with the controller's functions. I think it even goes beyond the deck --- to other controllers with steam... but I haven't ever tried that. The key here would be to allow mod access to the Steam Library --- to add knobs that Steam Input could then use. It might be that there could only be a certain set of knobs --- I'm not remembering how the API works.

Anyways... Factorio is not yet an amazing game on the deck, but I think there's a possibility that it could be.

[Koub]

I know the devs were working on that a couple months ago, don't know the status though.
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