Valve introduces Steam Deck

[LowLowHighLow]

@LowLowHighLow just a suggestion that may make your life a bit less miserable. I set up AnyDesk in the Deck and my desktop allowing me to remote desktop into the deck from my rig which makes file manipulation a lot more comfortable.

That's a great idea I didn't even think about, thanks!

please tell me you're not trying to run fitgirl installers on the deck

Actually I did, but only 1-2 and they were working fine. But my goto repacker was ElAmigos, as his repacks worked always flawless, however not so much on the Deck. It didn't like his installer at all (IIRC crashed during the install process for most if not all the games I tried).

@LowLowHighLow Are you using it properly?

That's a very good question and I can say with confidence: no idea!
Before the Deck I always used Windows for gaming, so the whole Wine- and Proton world was (and very likely is) very new to me and it was a pain to wade through the process learning about the different launchers, wine prefixes, wine/protontricks and whatnot. Overall I think I got the gist of all of it (most stuff in the end worked), but didn't really bother going deeper into the matter, because it was already tedious enough.
It also didn't really help that sometimes the whole process took longer than my actual time in game, so Steam refunds are the better option here too.

One thing I forgot: afair you couldn't use community controller layouts on non-steam games (at least not without renaming the game to its Steam App ID, which again is very tedious and annoying to have X games with just numbers for names), which also was an issue for me at least for older games, that don't have controller support.

 

[Epoch]

You could probably just run the installer on your main computer, then copy the installed files to the Deck. In my experience I never had to mess around with Wine or Lutris, just add non Steam game and then set proton version in compatibility, its probably a bit more involved with older games however.

 

[Apathetic Luigi]

I had to return my ROG ally for legit overheating itself to death, AFTER i had it RMA'd. (Fans died 2 weeks after i got it back for SD card failures). so I'm just saving the spare Best Buy credit for when the Lenovo legion handheld is ready for preorder. Looks like a legit neat idea where the Ally was a "aw shit valve made one, spuirt out a competior" because whoever thought that design for the ally, being so small and putting shit at the top of the unit deserves a fucking flogging.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Now's the time for Xbox to do a handheld PC. Make it compatible with all digital Xbox games so your library carries over and they'd probably make a killing.

I'm going to shamelessly pat myself on the back for this

 

[CoolSixtyNiner]

I have been playing a ton of Starsector and it has been excellent. Initially I was using the windows exes and Proton, but I was not able to increase the vram parameters so I switched over to Linux and used a ton of mods. Spent a night coming up with a control scheme that really works well in case anyone wanted to know.

Side note, I love playing ARPGs on the deck while I listen to audiobooks, mindless fun etc and have just went through Diablo 2 Remastered and Diablo 4. I am not like a pro ARPG player, I just like the combat and the mindless loot grind, and I usually just use builds I find online as a starting point. But I wanted to know if you guys had any recs. I got pretty far in Grim Dawn, and I had titan quest installed for the next one. Also played a ton of Inquisitor Martyr and that was a lot of fun for a while as well.

 

[Stasi]

I got pretty far in Grim Dawn, and I had titan quest installed for the next one.

Depends on what you like and YMMV but I really didn't enjoy Titan Quest personally (also played it on Deck). I've been wanting to check it out pretty much since it was released and never got around to it until recently. Honestly it was a third rate Diablo clone, painfully boring and tedious and far too long for its own good. Maybe I had a shitty build, I don't know, but I really didn't enjoy the game.

I'm not sure how well they play on emulators but if you don't mind dicking around with emu deck to test the performance I would recommend Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance (GameCube/PS2 I literally just found out there is a PC port so maybe try that) and Champions of Norrath/Champions Return to Arms (PS2). All excellent games and perfect for that hack and slash dungeon crawl and mindless fun.

 

[ZMOT]

Side note, I love playing ARPGs on the deck while I listen to audiobooks, mindless fun etc and have just went through Diablo 2 Remastered and Diablo 4. I am not like a pro ARPG player, I just like the combat and the mindless loot grind, and I usually just use builds I find online as a starting point. But I wanted to know if you guys had any recs. I got pretty far in Grim Dawn, and I had titan quest installed for the next one. Also played a ton of Inquisitor Martyr and that was a lot of fun for a while as well.

next fest next week, it might have some demos. might also run on the deck as is to get a bit more sales.

 

[Epoch]

But I wanted to know if you guys had any recs.

Minecraft Dungeons is surprisingly fun, but it needs some workarounds because of Microsoft bullshit to work on Deck.

https://www.protondb.com/app/1672970

 

[Stasi]

A couple of tips for people using Dolphin on the deck. Some games don't perform that great and take a bit of fiddling. I started playing Metroid Prime 2 and it was chugging like crazy with frame drops into the low 40s. Did some digging online and the below fixed it -

1. Install power tools and set the threads to 3 or 4 (I manually installed through decky loader but I think the latest version of emudeck also lets you install power tools). From what I understand this pushes more power to the remaining threads and Dolphin only uses 3 so it increases emulator performance.
2. In the deck power menu set manual GPU clock. Don't think you need to set it to max, I set mine to 1300 and seems to work fine.

Game now holds a solid 60 with only minor drops here and there in busy areas.

 

[TOTAL NIGGER DEATH]

A couple of tips for people using Dolphin on the deck. Some games don't perform that great and take a bit of fiddling. I started playing Metroid Prime 2 and it was chugging like crazy with frame drops into the low 40s. Did some digging online and the below fixed it -

1. Install power tools and set the threads to 3 or 4 (I manually installed through decky loader but I think the latest version of emudeck also lets you install power tools). From what I understand this pushes more power to the remaining threads and Dolphin only uses 3 so it increases emulator performance.
2. In the deck power menu set manual GPU clock. Don't think you need to set it to max, I set mine to 1300 and seems to work fine.

Game now holds a solid 60 with only minor drops here and there in busy areas.

This stems from SteomOS not handling certain multi thread workloads well and is a problem with switch emulation as well. Yuzu also requires SMT to be disabled to get good performance out of most games. I am currently playing Link's Awakening on yuzu and the framerate halves when I don't have SMT turned off. I believe the Valve devs are aware of this and a fix is supposed to come with SteamOS 3.5 or 3.6.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

A couple of tips for people using Dolphin on the deck. Some games don't perform that great and take a bit of fiddling. I started playing Metroid Prime 2 and it was chugging like crazy with frame drops into the low 40s. Did some digging online and the below fixed it -

1. Install power tools and set the threads to 3 or 4 (I manually installed through decky loader but I think the latest version of emudeck also lets you install power tools). From what I understand this pushes more power to the remaining threads and Dolphin only uses 3 so it increases emulator performance.
2. In the deck power menu set manual GPU clock. Don't think you need to set it to max, I set mine to 1300 and seems to work fine.

Game now holds a solid 60 with only minor drops here and there in busy areas.

Was it a solid 60fps on GC or is this improving the performance beyond that? Probably a stupid question, and I assume it's the former.

 

[Stasi]

Was it a solid 60fps on GC or is this improving the performance beyond that? Probably a stupid question, and I assume it's the former.

Got it up to 60 with some drops here and there to mid 50s but I don't think that's a deck issue, I've played Prime 2 on desktop before and it also had drops on more powerful hardware.

This is all GC, I don't know if primehack and Prime Trilogy is any better performance wise.

 

[Slav Power]

Valve is releasing the Steam Deck OLED with a special limited edition model, just a slight revamp of the first gen.

They are planning on making a second gen Deck, but it's years away as they're still looking into how to get better performance in the same form factor and so on.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Valve is releasing the Steam Deck OLED with a special limited edition model, just a slight revamp of the first gen.

They are planning on making a second gen Deck, but it's years away as they're still looking into how to get better performance in the same form factor and so on.

I hope this sells well and they put OLED in the next iteration from the beginning.

 

[Epoch]

Valve is releasing the Steam Deck OLED with a special limited edition model, just a slight revamp of the first gen.

I'm a bit annoyed since I haven't even had mine for a year, but its also just a slight revision so its not that much of a difference. It really is just the Switch OLED. Surprised they didn't switch to Hall Effect joysticks.

 

[11 Herbs and Spices]

Surprised they didn't switch to Hall Effect joysticks.

The strange part to that is they changed the rubber on the sticks for some reason

 

[Epoch]

The strange part to that is they changed the rubber on the sticks for some reason

That I get, the stick caps, which I assume they are talking about, are really weird and slippery like the trackpads, and they have a weird residue buildup if you scratch it with your fingernail. The stuff around the edge is also weirdly plastic feeling and doesn't grip very much either.

The hall effect gulikit sticks have replacement stick caps since its soldered on for the touch, and they have better grip on the top and the edge despite feeling cheaper.

 

[11 Herbs and Spices]

That I get, the stick caps, which I assume they are talking about, are really weird and slippery like the trackpads, and they have a weird residue buildup if you scratch it with your fingernail. The stuff around the edge is also weirdly plastic feeling and doesn't grip very much either.

Oh, I'm agreeing that it's welcome. I just thought it was weird to change that and not use hall effect. The minor cost increase from the new stick orders couldn't have been much less than the two things people asked for since launch: OLED and hall effect. The new case is a sideways improvement, I guess.

 

[Epoch]

I just thought it was weird to change that and not use hall effect.

Perhaps no company trusts Gulikit yet since they are a new company with new stick designs, and they still have issues to iron out with quality control. Hopefully in a couple years we see them start to get adopted, or maybe another company starts producing hall effect sticks in the existing footprint.

 

[Gravemind]

Slightly upset that I got a Deck roughly a year ago only for it to already receive an "improved" model by now.