There are many reasons to want to use a controller for games that would usually require keyboard and mouse. Personally, it’s carpal tunnel. Thankfully, most Steam games will let you easily set your controller up for it, or the games are already controller compatible, but what if your game isn’t a Steam game and has no controller support?
It can be done!
And if I can do it, I guarantee that you can, too! This guide will show you exactly how to do it, from A to Z. I won’t assume that you know anything beforehand. And that’s not because I think you don’t, it’s because I didn’t, and all the guides I found out there didn’t give enough explanation for me!
This guide requires you to have Steam, even if your game isn’t a Steam game. *YOU WILL NEED TO START THE GAME THROUGH STEAM*
DISCLAIMER: This guide will work for many games, but it is based on my use of the ChromieCraft-WoW private server. Some screenshots later on use the WoW layout for abilities, etc.
Getting Your Game Steam-Ready
First of all, we need your game to be added to your Steam library. Go in Steam and click on “Games”, then “Add a Non-Sream Game to My Library”. That will open a pop-up window, asking you to select your game. If you don’t find the game in there, even using the search bar, don’t worry! Use the “Browse” button and you can select the game from anywhere on your computer.
NOTE that if you intend to play WoW (non-private server) you will need to add the Battle.net launcher as a non-steam game.
Oddly enough, some games, like the ChromieCraft WoW private server, will only allow you to link to a Shortcut version of the game, not the game itself. Go figure…
Congratulations, you can now start your game through Steam! It should look like this:
And make sure to always start the game through Steam, or your controller won’t work in-game.
Getting Controller-ready
Now that your game is added, click on it from the left-side menu. You should see a fairly blank game page, which is totally normal. Click on the cogwheel in the middle-right of the page, which will open a menu. Click on “Properties”, which will open up a pop-up. Go under “Controller” – you want to make sure that the Steam input is ENABLED. If it isn’t, enable it.
Your Controller Layout
On to the fun part! Let’s get this controller set up.
Back to the little cogwheel, click on “Manage”, then “Controller Layout”. You will get a new pop-up window, which is where the magic happens. First of all, the controller will automatically be on the “Gamepad” template. Click on the area where it says “Gamepad”.
In that menu, switch to “Templates” and select “Keyboard (WASD) and Mouse”, then hit A or click “select” with your mouse, at the bottom right of the screen.
Now, you should see something like the screenshot below, where the button layout is Keyboard (WASD) and Mouse:
A NOTE ON RIGHT JOYSTICK SENSITIVITY: Some games will have slower cursors or faster cursors, and this sensitivity slider is the key for you to adjust the in-game cursor how you want it. You can also adjust it in-game for a lot of games.
Controls and Keybinds
Now that that’s all done, we can go into “Edit Layout”.
That will open yet another pop-up (Steam sure is a fan of pop-ups!) With the standard Keyboard and Mouse layout. It’s not ideal for gaming, to say the least, so let’s play with it!
I want to note that from this point on, the keybinds are merely a suggestion. I use these keybinds and it works well for me, but you should go with whatever works for YOU.
I want to start off with a visual representation of my controller settings, which I use on ChromieCraft-WoW:
I set them up this way because it makes sense, in my brain. 1, 2 and 3 are the order in which i see those three buttons, same for 6, 7 and 8. As for 4, well… Again, it works for me! If your game doesn’t have a jump button, you could use it for other game-specific things like sprint, mount up, or another spell slot. Same for the bags, although most games have an inventory.
Now that you have the visual of the controller, you’ll see that the numbers look jumbled up in the menu, but that’s the setting for the order I want it to be.
Different games have different keybinds for things, so “map keybind” is just whichever button means “map” in your game.
Same as above, inventory can be B or I or whatever, so use that.
modifier buttons
I put both my triggers as modifier buttons – which means that my keybinds 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 (and others) will now become [shift +1] or [control +1] thanks to the triggers. that makes an entirely different command in-game, so it’s extra spells and ability slots!
Finally, the joysticks. There isn’t much to do here, but I use the left joystick as a WASD keyboard (it should be that way from the beginning) and the right joystick click as a left mouse click. My right mouse click is on my right bumper button, but the game I play requires both to be available.
How does it translate in-game?
So, we’ve set up a bunch of buttons, but what about the actual gameplay? Let’s take a quick look at my layout. The image below shows you my setup in-game.
Please note that I have set up these keybinds that way in my private server of WoW itself as well, it does NOT start out like this. The only ones that are defaulted that way is the very first ability bar, with numbers 1-4 and 6-8 ready for you to use with a controller without any changes.
It may look overwhelming at first, and I’ll admit that it took a bit of getting used to. However, most games start out which just a few buttons, so you can learn on the way as well.
Finally, we get to the Ctrl+Shift extra, extra buttons! Using both trigger buttons at the same time gives us 8 more buttons. In WoW, you can get extra bars on the right-hand side of the screen, which is where I added more buttons like below:
I set my buttons that way in my action bars because of the way I “see” the order of my buttons on my controller. If you see it differently, make sure to set up your buttons accordingly so that the visual helps you!
So that was everything on setting up your controller to be able to play elaborate games without your keyboard and mouse. Check out my second post, Using a Controller for Non-Controller games, Pt 2, for the in-game keybinds for WoW, which you can setup on any other similar game too. I hope it helped you, and see you in-game 🙂
