CtrlAssist – an open source project to bring more accessible, collaborative gaming to Linux! Inspired by PC gaming sessions with my own family, where both young and old relish exploring rich stories with immersive worlds (like Witcher 3, RDR3, Hogwarts Legacy, etc) but find coordinated combat or movement control too challenging to play solo, CtrlAssist lets you combine multiple controllers into one virtual gamepad, much like assist features on dedicated game consoles.
Whether your helping grandparents through tough boss fights, or co-oping with nieces and nephews to level age gaps, CtrlAssist aims to make PC gaming on Linux fun and accessible for everyone. While I’m certain similar utilities exist, I also just wanted a holiday hobby project to practice Rust development while scratching a personal itch.
Please give it a try, share your feedback in the relevant discussion categories, or check out the open issues if you’d like to contribute, help is always welcome!
- User Feedback and Accessibility Community Discussion
- Developer Feedback and Rust Community Discussion
#RustLang #LinuxGaming #Accessibility #OpenSource #CtrlAssist
This looks nice for gaming with my kid, though I find that most games on Steam allow me to have two controllers connected and both working as a single player input. I can already help my kid control the camera while they are doing the majority of the movement.
It’s probably a function of Steam input.
Indeed, I’ve encountered a few games on Steam that gracefully switch multiple controllers, but only by giving exclusive input on a first come-first-serve bases (i.e. which ever controller moves first after some cool down of inactivity from both). Hollow Knight: Silksong being one such example, as I couldn’t necessarily drive separate axis from different controllers simultaneously, thus one such motivation for passing the game only one virtual controller and optionally hiding the rest to avoid input conflicts.
I’d be happy if Steam were to adopt such an accessibility feature into Steam input directly, much like Xbox and PlayStation. Perhaps they’ll take more of an interest in multi controller configurations with the upcoming refresh of the Steam Controller, given the wireless dongle is meant for multi device pairing.
