Miscellaneous¶
Paddle-ing¶
Something you probably already know, but which took me a bit to figure out:
To press one of the rear paddle buttons on the Steam Deck, don’t try to squeeze the part closest to your hand. Instead, push out with your fingertip on the part of the paddle that is farthest from your hand.
Tutorial Keybindings¶
If you play the Myth 2 tutorial (or the Myth: TFL tutorial as described on the next page), the narrator will require you to do various actions to make progress. In fact he calls out the specific keys you should press to do different actions.
Even back in the day this was potentially confusing if you had rebound your keys, since the text and voiceover would not change to match your bindings. Of course now with the Steam Deck you have a similar problem.
While it would be super nice if the tutorial narrator could magically know to tell you to do “left trigger plus right stick down” to zoom out, that ain’t gonna happen. The narrator will demand that you press V to zoom out and you’ll just have to figure out the right thing to do.
It’s honestly not a bad way to develop some familiarity with the controls.
Don’t Forget to Zoom Out¶
The default zoom level is pretty claustrophobic. You’ll almost certainly want to zoom out as much as possible. I also recommend enabling “persistent zoom” in the Myth preferences so you don’t have to keep re-doing this too often… only a few in-game cutscenes will reset the zoom level.
Use Your Time Powers¶
You can give orders to units at any game speed, and also while the game is paused. It’s absolutely expected that you will slow down or pause the game to be able to deal with hectic situations.
It can also be nice to speed up the game when e.g. re-traversing a big area that you have already cleared of bad guys. Just don’t get too frisky with the speed-up button in potentially dangerous situations, because that’s how bad surprises happen!
The Triggers Aren’t That Different¶
As discussed throughout the Deck Config pages, the right trigger is “left click” and the left trigger (when touching the right trackpad) is “right click”. The former is intended for selection and targeting actions, while the latter is for movement and facing.
However…
Myth was originally a crossplatform game that was designed to work with an old single-button Mac mouse, and the development since then has only imperfectly provided for separate left-click and right-click responsibilities. It turns out that even with the Myth controls setup recommended in these docs, you can still use left-click (right trigger) for basic movement commands and you can still use right-click (left trigger) for basic attack commands.
When you get into more complicated actions involving drags, modifiers, and/or double-clicks, it’s not always the case that the triggers are interchangeable. But for simple move and attack clicks you might find it comfortable to use either trigger.
Touchscreen¶
You can use the Deck’s touchscreen to do left-click and left-click-and-drag actions if you like. As covered above, this means that you not only have capability for touchscreen selection and targeting, but you can also do simple movement commands with the touchscreen.
I was initially pretty excited about this… but IMO the responsiveness of the touchscreen makes it a poor runner-up to just using the right trackpad and the triggers.
Savegame Naming¶
You’ll have to open the virtual keyboard (Steam button + X) at least once per level, to type a savegame name (unless you are ironman-ing it). However if you do multiple savegames per level you can leverage the other control bindings to avoid using the virtual keyboard most of the time.
When you are creating the first save for a level, the savegame dialog will open with “New Saved Game” as the initial name text, already selected. You can press left trigger + double-tap B to generate a “backspace” that deletes all of that text. Now you can open the virtual keyboard and enter your initial savegame name.
Let’s say for the sake of example that you’re playing Willow Creek and your first savegame name is “creek1”.
If after playing a bit more you want to create another savegame, you don’t need to go to the virtual keyboard to name it. Instead:
Use the right trackpad and right trigger to move the cursor to the end of the name “creek1” and click right after it.
Now when you do left trigger + double-tap B, you will just delete the “1” at the end of the name.
Enter a “2” using the left trackpad number wheel or the D-Pad.
Hit the left bumper to accept the savegame name “creek2”.
Etc. and so forth for any further savegame names.
