Controller Overlay
The overlay is a menu drawn over the emulated screen and driven from a gamepad, so Bizmuth can be used with no keyboard or mouse, as on a Steam Deck. It holds the window’s menu commands, the settings, and first-run setup.
Select button
Hold Select on a gamepad for half a second, 25 frames, to open or close the overlay. View ▸ Overlay does the same from the window. On a Steam Deck, Select is the View button (⧉).
Navigation
| Control | Action |
|---|---|
| D-pad or left stick | move the selection |
| South button (A on an Xbox pad) | choose |
| East button (B on an Xbox pad) | go back |
The overlay reads the first gamepad connected. While it is up, gamepads stop driving the emulated joystick and the keyboard stops reaching the guest, so nothing pressed in the overlay reaches the game. A key held as the overlay opens is released.
Contents
The top level lists the window’s menus (File, Machine, Tape, Disk, SD Card, Input and the rest), each holding the same commands, with check marks where the menu has them. Settings holds the Preferences that apply from the overlay. With a debug server running, the top level also shows the address a debugger connects to, as ADP 192.168.0.42:11001.
First-run setup works entirely from the overlay: the install folder, what to download, and the download’s progress. A machine with no ROMs and no SD card can be set up from a gamepad.
Files are chosen with the overlay’s own browser.
Text entry
A keyboard types into the overlay while it is up. With no keyboard, the overlay’s on-screen keyboard is driven from the gamepad; SteamOS provides one of its own only in Game Mode.
Size
On a display under 5 inches tall, such as the Steam Deck’s, the overlay grows until its menu fills the window’s height. overlay.zoom in the config sets a magnification of your own; see Config File.
--player
--player starts Bizmuth full screen with no menu bar, toolbar or status bar, leaving the overlay as the only way to reach the commands. Nothing it runs with is written back to the config, so an ordinary launch afterwards is unchanged.
bizmuth --player