I'm having trouble playing Thief Gold with the Steam Controller. The game just won't take controller input from it. If I bind the track pads and buttons as mouse and keyboard keys, it works. But the analog stick and buttons that are set to controller buttons do nothing. The buttons I could deal with by rebinding them to keys, but the analog stick is the whole point of why I want to play the game with a controller, since managing your movement speed (= noise) is such an integral part of its gameplay, and an analog stick is a much more elegant and intuitive way of doing that than pushing different combinations of buttons.

I suspect this has something to do with the fact that the Steam Controller isn't actually detected as a controller by Windows, instead the system thinks it's a keyboard and mouse, and it doesn't show up in the Game Controllers control panel.

Has anyone had any luck getting this to work? I found this Steam Community thread that recommends using TFix: https://steamcommunity.com/app/211600/discussions/0/494631967664404290/ I tried that and it made no difference at all. Any ideas? Anyone?

I think the important part here is NewDark. For some reason I have issues with the Steam Controller when games are really old so having something utilizes a modern engine will help buti f you bought the game from GOG you are most likely using NewDark so I'm not sure where the exact issue lies.

I could try and see if I can set up movements for the analog stick. If you plan to use movement for analog stick, what are you going to use the left Haptic Feedback area to (if at all)? Just curious as I set it up to use the Haptic Feedback to use WASD but I'm a Haptic Feedback addict ever since I received my SC.

You're right, it won't work because Thief doesn't have X-input support (I think?), you need that for all non-mapping auto-configurations. What's wrong with mapping the analog stick to WASD? (or turning instead of strafing if you prefer that)

Thief does have Xinput support, at least the GoG version does. A standard X360 controller works just fine with it, but that doesn't have the track pad and gyro mouse emulation. I just can't go back to aiming with an analog stick. A 3rd person melee hack and slash like Dark Souls, sure, that's fine with a standard controller, but anything where you have to aim with a crosshair has become unplayable with that for me ever since I got my SC.

I also tried using x360ce to map the SC input onto a virtual X360 controller that the game could detect, but that hasn't worked either. x360ce doesn't even see the SC at all either. Maybe that is a way to solve this and I just haven't been able to figure out the correct settings, I dunno. I'll take any help or ideas anyone has to offer at this point.

I think I'll probably set the left track pad as a d-pad and use it to cycle through inventory items, though that's just a provisional idea, I haven't really planned that far ahead. Figuring out how to map all the controls is the next step once I get the controller working.

I could map the analog stick to WASD, but that rather defeats the whole point. I want that smooth, seamless control of Garrett's movement speed and direction that the analog stick gives. If I can't get that to work, I might as well just play with keyboard and mouse.

Wait, aiming with the analog stick? I thought you wanted movement?

This is how I did it:
WASD for left Haptic Feedback, mouse aim on the right.
Next/previous items on analog stick up/down and next/previous weapons on left/right.
Square Picklock on Left Bumper and Triangle Picklock on Right Bumper.
Right Trigger Soft = Attack and Hard, Block. Left Trigger Soft = Use Item
The letter buttons = Map, Objectives, Drop Item and Drop Weapon.
Left Grip = Crouch, Right Grip = Jump
Holding Left Haptic Feedback button = unlocks alternative setup for Right Haptic Feedback = (Lean Left & Right).

I think I might change Crouch to touching the end of the Left Haptic Feedback as I really enjoy utilizing them to their full potential, having all kinds of different movements on the HF pads really helps sell the idea that I'm a character that is moving rather than moving a character.

If X-input works for you, if you activate Joystick support in-game, does it work to change your analog stick you Joystick Movement? It didn't work for me but perhaps it doesn't support that, only to map directly basd upon the buttons that are given the on controller which I rarely do. I actually want to map my keyboard/mouse since I'm so used to that (excluding emulators where I always used a traditional controller).

I want movement on the analog stick, yes. Xinput works with any other controllers except the Steam Controller.

That's weird. SC has X-input support to me in games that have it officially and that I own on Steam but not Thief (I also have the GOG version).

But why can't you map it to WASD? Use the option "Radial with Overlap" and movement will feel move frictionless as you turn or change directions (although not as good as using it with Haptic Feedback).

I don't want to map it to WASD because I want that smooth, seamless control of Garrett's movement speed and direction that the analog stick gives. If I can't get that to work, I might as well just play with keyboard and mouse.

nvm

Thanks for trying to help. Hopefully someone can come up with a solution, because I'm stumped.

I wonder if there's a software that emulates any controller into a 360 controller, might get the analog stick to pick "joystick move" but I'm not sure it would as intended, maybe the feel will be surprisingly similar to just mapping WASD.

I became bothered by your thread, I want to solve this problem as making movements feel even more seamless would add greatly to atmosphere in Thief games.

I had forgotten about it as I always play with WASD and Radial with Overlap that allows smooth, diagonal directions instead of only either vertical or horizontal movement. There's one under called Analog Emulation. I've yet to test this at length but I'm in the middle of a Witcher 2 playthrough so I'll try it tomorrow and see how it works. What surprised me most about it how quiet the Haptic Feedback pads became (usually doesn't bother me as I play with Headphones).

Oh interesting, I didn't even know such a thing existed. I tested it just now. It works, sort of. What that mode does is it automatically taps the movement keys in order to simulate analog movement, so when your thumb is at the edge of the track pad, the input is sent continuously, while near the middle of the pad the input is sent intermittently. The problem is while that gives analog control of movement speed and direction, tapping the "move fast" key still counts as moving fast, so Garrett still makes a lot of noise. I've tried fiddling with the outer ring binding option for the track pad as well to try and come up with a setup that allows me to move quickly as well as slowly and quietly without having to press any additional modifier keys, sadly that effort was without success.

I've been trying a more technical approach as well. x360ce actually does work with Xinput controllers, it just can't see the Steam Controller. I opened its .ini file and found out the controller it's taking input from is identified by name and two large hexadecimal numbers (referred to as ProductName, ProductGuid, and InstanceGuid in the .ini file). It's my understanding that these are what Windows actually uses to identify the devices connected to the system, so I'm thinking if I could find these for the Steam Controller and manually edit them into the .ini file, it should be able to read input from the SC and translate it into something Thief will accept.

I'm having trouble finding those numbers, though. I've poked around in the control panel and the registry and found some promising candidates, however editing them into the file has made no difference. Without really knowing what I'm looking for and where to find it, I'm basically stumbling around in the dark.

The outer ring solution, what I did was add crouch as toggle at the end with a very low deadzone (so I really have to hit the end, minimizing accidental when I'm focused on the game). It's not perfect but it's better than using the Grip button that I used before.

Interesting idea about x360ce, I haven't used that application much. You should probably create a thread about this in both SC and Thief sub-forums in Steam Discussions, perhaps someone might have an idea where to find those numbers and if it's even possible to use it for a game that doesn't pick up SC as a 360 controller to begin with.

x360 used DirectInput and newer controllers like Xone and Steam controllers use Xinput. The reason for the confusion is the fact that for some reason the trigger axis on one translates as the right analog stick axis on the other (probably because of the number of axes each service had, I don't know). This is the reason why with some controllers in some games (for instance Ubisoft titles like the Creed series) you end up with an endlessly rotating camera by default without even touching the controller.

If you had an Xbox One controller I recently created a control scheme for the TFix version of Thief Gold that works quite well.

I do, you got a link for it pls?