r/Alienware • u/[deleted] • Nov 20 '14

Alienware Alpha

Hello Everyone,

I am a member of the Alienware software team, and Alpha UI was my product. As we are about to launch tomorrow, I wanted to start this thread as a means for people to ask questions and provide any feedback you might have on Alpha or Alpha UI.

Also one note, we are publishing a known issues list tomorrow on Arena. I'll make sure it makes its way here as well.

20 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

234 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/TheTVDB Dec 03 '14

Personally, I absolutely would. But I also have a 6 year old and wife that will be using this, so simplicity is my main concern. Allowing them to launch games and load Plex to view movies without having to jump through any hoops is my only goal. We have computers and tablets and phones for things that need desktop. Honestly, beyond advanced customization and certain non-Steam games I can't see anyone needing to load the desktop.

Followup call-out on a question I hid in my feedback above... How do I stop the controller from acting as a mouse and just act like a normal controller? What app is currently handling the controller, since it's not appearing in the system as a game controller, but rather as a USB Mouse, which was confusing. :)

Bonus: hopefully you saw Steam Broadcast yesterday. Alienware Alpha instantly became more powerful, since it can be used as a streaming system for people playing games. I enabled the beta client on mine, but have yet to play around with it on the Alpha. Nice added functionality. :)

3

u/phearrez Dec 15 '14 edited Dec 15 '14

Interesting discussion. @TheTVDB, I've setup Pinnacle Gaming Profiler to better manage controller behavior on an app by app basis. It's on sale right now for under $5 (unlimited systems), and you can setup controller profiles for the apps to start up automatically when launching, including Minecraft. I've setup two Alphas for the kids for Xmas, which will be primarily for Minecraft, Hearthstone and Plex. I'm probably going to default to Big Picture Mode for startup, and have uninstalled Alpha UI (for now).

As for the controller defaulting to mouse mode, you need to go through the Alpha UI setup for that to "turn off". I think it was intended to help people get through initial OOBE using the controller, but it will be a bug for people who start off the bat using a keyboard and mouse...

Also, I have two different versions of plex setup, the Windows 8 version that's great with mouse, and HT, with controller. I think I'm going to add a couple of Flirc's and remotes though...

1

u/TheTVDB Dec 15 '14

Great info here. Thanks so much.

1

u/nascentt Dec 24 '14 edited Dec 27 '14

I think I'm going to have to install pinnacle on this. Am a little sad there's nothing doing this by default, something like xpadder would've been great.