The PC Gaming on the couch/living room/Big Tv thread

[caiuumtoro]

Hi!
I dont know how many of you do this, maybe its just me, but i´ve plugged a pc into my living room big tv and play pc games from my couch

Why
I work all day on a computer, sitting a few inches from the screen in the office*. When i get home i want to be laid out in the couch. With a big tv away from my face
*we should be allowed to work from home

The PC

Its a beelink mini pc. SER some number. I dont know, dont care a lot. Its from 2022, i remember i made sure it had 32gig ram. Its fantastic, in the sense that it runs mostly anything without questions. 4k, ray tracing(?), hdr, 120fps? I dont know, dont care. These things really doesnt matter much to me. Videogame graphics peaked in 2014 and mostly everything is the same for the past 12 years so who cares about these numbers

Input method
Usually most games are controlled with any controller i get from ali express that can be set up by DS4 Windows
I like the PS4 compatible controllers more because of the track pad (and in my opinion D pads should be in the upper part of the controller)

The track pad part is usually terrible. But it can get you at least to double click the game icon you want to play. But its crappy
This controller + DS4Windows is usually enough for Retroarch, Eden Emulator (Nintendo switch) and PC games from steam that you can play with controllers
Avoid the DATA FROG version. Its the cheapest one, the gyro is terrible
And i love Gyro aiming! I cant believe they release games without gyro aiming even today

Input Method - Mouse PC games

For the past few years this has been my living room keyboard
It works FINE, battery lasts a lot. Track pad is pretty responsive. The yellow button on the left side is the left mouse button - fantastic idea, works great! But it lacks the right mouse button on the same area
Althought this keyboard + track pad works fine, it has obvious shortcomings: lack of num pad, the arrow keys are minimal, i mean, it really only works for games that are mouse only and you dont need the right button a lot (like Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - works great)

Older PC games

I love older games, as mentioned above, i dont thing gaming evolved a lot in the past few years.
And unfortunally older games - specially those on the GOG plataform - usually are pretty hard to set up to work with controllers
They have a patch, the patch is supposed to add controller support but it doesent work, the forum is dead, etc. Its pretty unusual to get any GOG games to be playable in this setting


Extras
Since i never got a Nintendo Switch, i bought one of those controllers just to play eden emulator with a joy con

Its been 3 months. Nope, still cant get it to work

The future?
I really believe they should sell more controllers with a trackpad instead of a second analog
A few years ago ive gave this one a try:

It was awful
Its a great idea: every single button is just a keyboard key mapped to a button.
But the design is completely stupid. You WILL get cramps in your hands.
It feels like anyone in the world could think of better placement for these buttons except the genious working for this company
It was pretty cheap when i got it, nowdays it somehow doubled the price
My dog threw it out of the table ONCE and it was enough to break the track pad. Its very flimsy

So i was thinking "this was flawed, but a nice idea. Maybe soon they will release more controllers with track pads"
Yeah its been five years and im still waiting

 

[TruxtonTatsujin]

my computer is always plugged into the TV, I don't even have a desk. It's not a mini PC, but a full tower. That wireless keyboard is the exact one I use, though I have a wireless mouse I use occasionally as well. I just put them on a little table in front of me if I ever need a more conventional PC set-up. For games I either use an Xbox Series controller or arcade stick. I've had a proper PC gaming set-up before but after doing this for so long I'll never go back to it, I hate sitting at a desk. The only downside is only having one monitor, though if I REALLY wanted to I'm sure I could find a spot to put one.

 

[Zerpina]

I have a couple of PCs I use in the living room as gaming PCs.

One is an HP ProDesk 405 G4 Micro PC with an AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 2400GE, running at 3.20 GHz, with 32GB of DDR4 RAM. The other is an HP Pavilion Desktop 590 with a Ryzen 7 CPU 32gb of ddr4. I forget which GPU I installed in it off the top of my head, as it's been a while since I even turned it on, to be honest.

I usually just use the mini PC. Both run Batocera as the OS, and I use either my Xbox One wired controller or my wireless PS4 controller on them.

They play what I want all that matters.

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

I can't quite do that, but I'm always broadcasting my phone to the TV and using a wireless keyboard + some emulators ^^!

 

[Aldia Aldia]

I really believe they should sell more controllers with a trackpad instead of a second analog

The first Steam Controller was all about that, actually.

Recently followed upon with this one:

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I never had (and probably never will have) the opportunity to use either one of them, but I'm partial to the uniqueness of the former's design.

 

[Sheepy765]

I used to have a big TV setup in High School. I had an overclocked Raspberry Pi 4 Model B I usually kept in the basement but took with me when going on vacation along with some wired controllers so I could play games with my sisters (got one of them into Persona 3 and another into Mother 3 that way).

 

[Heidegger of Shinra]

This is very close to my setup, same keyboard and all. But my controllers are all cheap generic ones, and the PC behind my telly is just a broken laptop.
I also got my TV off the side of the road. Poor man's Shangri La, it does literally everything I could want it to do.

 

[X y b e r - S k u ll]

I have a similar setup like this as well. Used to have a traditional desk setup, but switched to this kind of setup in about 2017 due to my space becoming more limited, but also for the sake of convenience, and very convenient it is lol.

 

[Megarockman _1987 Megarockman _1987]

Sometimes I plug my laptop to my tv and play with my PS4 controller, it feels so good when I play some PS3 games or steam games there
Actually I beat Megaman X7 in that way

 

[Dew Prism]

Been doing this for quite some time. I used to use my regular PC with a 20 foot hdmi cable. But now I have a small form factor PC like the one you have in that photo. I bought one that had enough space to install a decent, low wattage GPU into. Got a couple wireless 8bitdo controllers, wireless kb/m, and it all works very nicely.

 

[Boo Man]

Couch + 65" Tv + PC =

also have a CRT setup for light gun games

 

[Zerpina]

*Edit
Probably should have said I have it set up to dual boot, the mini PC I mean... between Batocera and Linux Mint, with the obligatory wireless keyboard and mouse of course, in case I want to watch anime or YouTube or the like on it.

I have both an SSD and an M.2 in it. Batocera is on a 1TB drive, and Linux Mint is on a 500GB drive. That's more than enough for some anime and other media consumption on a 55 inch tv.

 

[PrismRed]

Had similar setup back in the day since I did not have space for another monitor, with a wired keyboard and the terrible wired logitech controller, using the analog as a mouse pointer, I bought Controller Companion on Steam to remap everything. I only use it for gaming so it works fine most of the time.

 

[TheOneEV]

I've been rolling with big TV set up for a long ass time. I had an Alienware Steam Machine to start off with, but after 5 or 6 years of that, I upgraded to a tower PC. More to do, more to play. I use a wireless Logitech keyboard with trackpad. It works fine enough, and I can play most games with it. Although the bulk of my games I usually re-map to my Xbox controller, or - the first edition of the Steam Controller. (I just got it recently, used, but I can tell it's going to open up game options.)

The only downside to big screen gaming is ofc working out which settings actually run and work. Some games max out the resolution because of my TV, others I have to mess around with an ini. The graphic settings also annoy me - as there is so much to mess with to make sure everything runs.

I mainly use my PC to run some Steam games, but it's mostly a Playnite machine, letting me run older consoles with ease.

 

[Sonic Boomer]

I simply had my gaming PC hooked up to one of my livingroom TVs right there, sadly when my work PC's GPU died and I wasn't able to find a good replacement I had to put the gaming one in my PC Room and use it as both a gaming CP and work PC in 2023 or so.
but then I started using my Steam Deck a lot, so I just stream from PC to my deck if I'm playing a graphically demanding game or play natively on the deck. It works out well most of the time

 

[beefbowl]

I have installed Playnite on my pc for this reason. I want to be able to open any game without using keyboard and mouse. Playnite has a big screen mode like Steam which can be controlled fully by controller and it automatically loads into that mode when I turn the pc on.
I have a wireless mouse to install games and watch stuff from my files.
If I want to search for something or look for some download links, I use my phone to browse and send the tabs to my pc through firefox. It's quite a simple life.

 

[bombatomba77]

I don't do much couch gaming anymore but when I do I keep an HP ED 704 G4 w/RX560 (used to be my main Batocera machine) and an HP ED 805 G6 that I upgraded to a 4750G and that is what I mostly use now (when I use it). Personally I've never had any luck with a touchpad so I just use the old "mouse on a couch cushion" thing. For kb I use either one of the newer Apple Magic keyboards (super portable) or my 8bitdo Famicom-style kb.

 

[Stookymalarkey]

Man, I wish I could do couch gaming with my PC. Since I moved into my current place, my PC is in another room and I needed to rely on Steam Link to make up for that. Sadly, if the game is on another launcher like Uplay or the RockStar launcher, my controller won't work.

 

[caiuumtoro]

The first Steam Controller was all about that, actually.
View attachment 191928
Recently followed upon with this one:
View attachment 191930

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I never had (and probably never will have) the opportunity to use either one of them, but I'm partial to the uniqueness of the former's design.

I found it funny that no ali express chinese company made controllers with trackpads following the steam controllers

they could upgrade it a lot - the new steam controller is awful, i really cant believe they went with this design

and the trackpads are used like the analogs? Or are they just for desktop navigation?

 

[bombatomba77]

I found it funny that no ali express chinese company made controllers with trackpads following the steam controllers

they could upgrade it a lot - the new steam controller is awful, i really cant believe they went with this design

and the trackpads are used like the analogs? Or are they just for desktop navigation?

My kids bought me the original Steam Controller one year and despite the look I think it's pretty awful, but then again I really rely on good dpads (and that controller doesn't have that).

If the pads are anything like the Deck I'd imagine they can be used for any of the above. I played through Sacred Gold on my Deck using the left touchpad as a mouse and the triggers for clicks and it was a hoot. Then again the real power of the Deck is with the ability to customize the controls, and I have no idea how they intend to handle that on the new Steam controller