overview
many older steam games that run great on the GPD win have no native controller support, meaning you would have to play on the GPD's cramped keyboard, lucky steam has a solution for us. Using "big picture mode" we can map the GPD'S inbuilt 360 controller to actual keyboard and mouse inputs, effectively adding controller support..
tutorial
first, you will need to launch big picture mode, open steam and click "View" on the top left. then click "big picture mode." at this point you will want to turn on the inbuilt 360 controller you will then be able to navigate the menus with it. go to settings in the top right by navigating to the cog icon, and go to "Controller Settings." here you need to turn on "Xbox Configuration Support." once this is turned on you can back out and choose a game to configure. head to your library, select a game and then press "Manage Game" from the menu on the left. then hit "Controller Configuration." (you MUST have the GPD's inbuilt 360 controller turned on or this option will not appear.) for most games you should then be able to pick from many already made templates that you can then customise to your liking. to do this press x and it will show you some community made configurations. It is very customisable, take some time to configure the game so it plays as you would expect, hey even upload the config so that others may use it too.
you can change your congiguration on the fly by pressing shift+tab in game and pressing "controller configuration." the game must have been launched by big picture mode to do this.
Non-Steam games
you can configure Non-Steam games to use the GPD's inbuilt 360 controller using exactly the same method above, you simply have to add the game to your steam library. to do this, open steam and press "games" in the top left, then press "Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library." add the game from the list or navigate to the folder by pressing "Browse." then from there just launch big picture mode and configure the controlls as normal.
you will need to launch the game via steam to use your configuration.
notes
- once you have configured the controls for a game using big picture mode you do not need to launch it via big picture mode, you can do so by the regular steam launcher and it will work all the same (though in my personal opinion big picture mode is a much more GPD friendly interface.)
- This does not work offline!!!
- you can configure the controller to emulate Keyboard and Mouse inputs outside of steam, although redundant in the GPD's case due to already existing mouse input control with the thumbsticks. just head to controller settings then "Base Configurations"
- obviously the GPD's physical keyboard is still fully functional so utilise it for controlls you don't use often if you run out of buttons on the Xbox controller.
- this is my first Wikia post, sorry if there are grammar/formatting mistakes, if anybody wants to do a cleanup that would be very much appreciated, thanks! - Psycheous