Steam Deck and Linux Gaming

It is my understanding that the power system goes to the battery and also bypasses the battery, so when you are plugged in it is not in fact drawing any power from the battery at all if it's getting sufficient power.

Tycho the Mad wrote:

It is my understanding that the power system goes to the battery and also bypasses the battery, so when you are plugged in it is not in fact drawing any power from the battery at all if it's getting sufficient power.

I would hope so! That's pretty much the status quo for laptops and other portable computers.

Yeah, and thank goodness valve had the sense to include that, especially since most portable gaming devices do not. Even the switch, which should have that feature (with a completely dead battery it will not start while docked until the battery gets some charge).
Maybe it's because so many portable devices take their cues from phones? Hell, even some laptops do it. At least many I've encountered with barrel plugs do. Haven't messed around with any lightning/usb c laptops.

Steam OS is slick. Definitely a better hand-held experience than Windows.

Decided to give Heroic a try, but had some trouble installing it because the Discover app store kept throwing “Error Pulling From Repo” errors. Ended up doing it manually via Konsole using flatpak commands, which worked fine.

Installed the Shadowrun games from GoG, but had some trouble adding them to "Other games" within Steam. I've tried the obvious, like enabling the setting to automatically add game shortcuts to Steam and manually clicking "Add to Steam" from the library view.

The answer to both of the above issues, like all my Steam OS issues recently, was a reboot, lol.

After I restarted the Discover app store launches as expected, and the shortcuts are in Steam.

There's a feature request to add achievement support for GoG stuff to Heroic, but at the moment it's not able to track that.

I then tried launching the Shadowrun games, but all three wouldn't start properly. I even installed the Linux versions of all three, so not sure what's up there. May mess with it more tomorrow.

I gave streaming a game from my PC to Steam OS a try. Played some Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters and the text is hard to read, but otherwise worked great via streaming.

I also tried to stream High on Life from Game Pass for PC via Steam, but only there was no video and only the sound came through.

I think I'm going to stick to booting to Windows for GoG games that I want to track achievements for or Xbox Game Pass. Getting those working in Steam OS is just more of a headache than booting to the MicroSD and using SWICD.

Not sure how well it works, but in heroic settings there is an option to automatically add games installed to steam. Just noticed it yesterday and i haven't tested it yet.
Did you add heroic to steam as a non steam game? Running games via the non desktop gui seems more reliable for me.
Also, I've heard that using the windows versions is actually more reliable since it's all built around using proton. There are a number of games I've tried that do need specific proton builds and you can force that.

Tycho the Mad wrote:

Not sure how well it works, but in heroic settings there is an option to automatically add games installed to steam. Just noticed it yesterday and i haven't tested it yet.

Oh, nice. That must be new since I looked last. That was the most vexing part for me previously, since the Heroic UI isn't built for a small mobile screen like the Deck.

Tycho the Mad wrote:

Not sure how well it works, but in heroic settings there is an option to automatically add games installed to steam. Just noticed it yesterday and i haven't tested it yet.
Did you add heroic to steam as a non steam game? Running games via the non desktop gui seems more reliable for me.

I chose the settings to do so, both ways, but they didn't actually get added until after a reboot.

Tycho the Mad wrote:

Also, I've heard that using the windows versions is actually more reliable since it's all built around using proton. There are a number of games I've tried that do need specific proton builds and you can force that.

Ah, I see! I uninstalled the Linux versions and then installed the Windows versions instead (it is kind of funny it gives you the option for Linux versions in that case). You're right! The Windows version started as expected.

Which is how I found out that despite releasing console versions of all three Shadowrun games, Harebrained Schemes never updating the PC versions with gamepad support. But that's not Heroic's fault.

Maybe as a weekend project I'll try to figure out how to stream from my Xbox console to Steam Deck (the Shadowrun games are on Game Pass for console but not Game Pass for PC).

Engaged in a Remote Play in Steam OS Extravaganza!

Remote play via Steam

If you've know how to use a Steam Link or the Steam Link app, you're all set. The tl;dr is: in Steam's settings find the "Remote Play" tab, then make sure "Enable Remote Play" is checked.

There's some settings to fiddle with, I uncheck "Play audio on host" and check "Change desktop resolution to match streaming client". Everything else you can fiddle with to tweak the performance.

If you've never used tried Remote Play before, I think this is a decent overview:

This guy also has a video on replacing the SSD that I referenced when I upgraded my Deck. He briefly mentions Moonlight towards the end of the video, but I haven't given that a go yet.

The Steam Deck has a "Ready to Play" filter, and the text explicitly says it should work for games that can be streamed from another device. But as far as I can tell it just doesn't work right now. If I check that option, only games locally installed on the Deck display, and none of the games ready to stream from my PC are shown.

However, if I manually look games up in the library and click on them the "Stream" button will be available. Successfully streamed both Cyberpunk and Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters this way. Daemonhunters worked well on a gamepad, but there's a lot of text and it's tiny. I was using the Deck's built-in zoom function (Steam button+Right bumper) quite a bit.

Remote play for Xbox/PS4/PS5 is relatively painless. I found the FlipScreen Games channel videos easy to follow because they cover installation as well as recommended settings.

Xbox Remote Play

You need to download two things, the "Greenlight" client AppImage and "AppImageLauncher" (AppImages contain everything a Linux application needs to run within a single file.) If you've never run an AppImage before make sure you don't skip the step to make them "executable".

https://github.com/unknownskl/xbox-x...
https://github.com/TheAssassin/AppIm...

Once you start Greenlight, it asks you to login with your Xbox credentials. After I did that I could see my XSX under "My Consoles" and the Game Pass streaming titles under "xCloud Library".

Don't forget to map the Xbox button (N) or you may have a hard time quitting out of games to return to the Xbox dashboard.

I keep my Xbox in the 0.5w power saving mode, and as far as I can tell Greenlight can't "wake up" my Xbox when it's in that mode. It will try to start the stream and then nothing happens, even trying to disconnect won't work and I have to exit Greenlight via the Steam button.

When I was using the 10-15w regular sleep mode, it did seem like Greenlight could actually wake up the Xbox properly and start a stream. I didn't test it too much because I'm never going to have it in that mode.

So that does add an extra step of needing to wake up the Xbox manually before I try and start a stream.

Streaming quality seems great. I've been playing Shadowrun Returns since it's on Game Pass, and sometimes I genuinely forget I'm streaming the game. Granted, it's also not a very technically demanding game.

PlayStation Remote Play

You can install Chiaki from the Discover store and that puts you 80% of the way there.

The most annoying step is getting your PSN ID code (I think Farley ran into this earlier), but the above channel has actually created a tool that makes that step simpler than the methods where you run Python scripts.

Visit: https://psn.flipscreen.games/

Type in your PSN username, copy the bottom code into the Chiaki settings.

Chiaki has more settings than Greenlight. You can adjust the resolution/bitrate/buffer, but the video has some recommended settings if it seems overwhelming.

The video quality was extremely bad initially, but after about a minute it smoothed out. Like the video mentions, there was some audio popping as well. Overall the streaming quality didn't seem as smooth as Greenlight.

Don't forget to map the PlayStation button (Esc) and the Touchpad button (T) or you probably won't be able to open the map in a lot of games.

This version of Chiaki doesn't have support for the DualSense touchpad, but there's a fork called Chiaki4Deck that adds it:

Chiaki4Deck isn't in the Discover store, so you'll have to run some Konsole commands.

https://streetpea.github.io/chiaki4deck/setup/

Following along with the video is pretty straightforward. However, unlike the video, I couldn't click "Register" to register my PS5. I had to follow the instructions for copying the configuration file from regular Chiaki before I could connect.

I also skipped the automation steps. You can setup a script so that as soon as you click Chiaki4Deck, it starts a remote session. I couldn't be bothered with that.

The way mapping the DualSense touchpad works is you set one of the Deck's touchpad's to "Mouse Region", set click to "T", and set touch to "left click".

Or you can just use a community profile where that's already setup for you.

I also keep my PS5 in the 0.5w power saving mode. Chiaki/Chiaki4Deck actually seems like it's able to wake up the PS5 when you start the stream, but in practice when my PS5 was in sleep mode Chiaki often couldn't see it. Which means like the Xbox I was waking the console up manually before starting the stream.

I ran into a weird "Unkown Ctrl Error" when trying to start a stream a few times. The reason seems to be because my PS5 has a PIN code set for logging in. I entered that PIN when I registered the console, but sometimes unless I first logged in to the PS5 dashboard via the gamepad I'd get that error message.

Returnal is definitely playable via Chiaki/Chiak4Deck, but sometimes the video would turn into a green mess. This seems to be related to the video needing to buffer. If you wait a bit it smooths out, but it's pretty unplayable during that period.

Neither console streaming option is "1-click install", but I'd be willing to rate them both as "EasyMac". There's *some* steps, but nothing too demanding. And once they're setup you won't have to keep fiddling with it.

ccoates wrote:

I also keep my PS5 in the 0.5w power saving mode. Chiaki/Chiak4Deck actually seems like it's able to wake up the PS5 when you start the stream, but in practice when my PS5 was in sleep mode Chiaki often couldn't see it. Which means like the Xbox I was waking the console up manually before starting the stream.

That's weird. Never had an issue with my PS5. In fact Chiaki seems to work WAY better with detection than the official network play apps ever did for me.

ccoates wrote:

Returnal is definitely playable via Chiaki/Chiak4Deck, but sometimes the video would turn into a green mess. This seems to be related to the video needing to buffer. If you wait a bit it smooths out, but it's pretty unplayable during that period.

I actually had to mess with my streaming settings a LOT before I found something that didn't stutter the video or audio. Specifically, I set Resolution to 720p, FPS to 60, Bitrate to 20000, Codec to H264, Audio Buffer Size to 20000, and Hardware decode method to "none" (which has less visual artifacts from what I hear?).

Dunno if these are optimal but I tried all sorts of recommendations that made no improvement for me so I just kind of messed around until it seemed to just "work". In fact I used it for multiple day-long sessions when I was sick and pretty much forgot I was streaming for the most part.

Valve answers our burning Steam Deck questions — including a possible Steam Controller 2

https://www.theverge.com/23499215/va...

I’m loving the Deck still and keep considering buying another one for my kids to use. Then I remind myself to wait and see what the next model looks like.

I watched because I have seen a lot of comments like yours - wait for the next one, etc. Around 1:30 he says "seems like Valve will be targeting the same performance as the current one" that they are thinking of an OLED screen as the update. So I don't feel like it would have been worth it to wait.

A second-gen Steam Deck is coming — but maybe not a “Pro”
Valve has repeatedly confirmed that the Steam Deck is a “multi-generational product” and new versions are on the way. What will they include? When I asked Yang and Griffais for the pain points they wanted to address in a sequel, they had nearly identical answers: screen and battery life.

What about performance? Like Nintendo — which has repeatedly chosen not to increase the performance of the Nintendo Switch despite having the technology to make a so-called “Switch Pro” — Valve is similarly weighing whether to keep the handheld’s performance consistent for now.

“Right now the fact that all the Steam Decks can play the same games and that we have one target for users to understand what kind of performance level to expect when you’re playing and for developers to understand what to target... there’s a lot of value in having that one spec,” says Griffais.

“I think we’ll opt to keep the one performance level for a little bit longer, and only look at changing the performance level when there is a significant gain to be had,” he adds.

I figure there's always going to be an upgrade when it comes to PC hardware. My 3060 TI that I just got last year is already seeming long in the tooth, ha.

Another way it's more of a PC than a console, I suppose.

The other reason Valve doesn’t see them as competition, though, is because they could easily be partners, too. “We actually want to work with them to make sure that, if they want to use SteamOS or offer a SteamOS based alternative, that can be done,” says Yang.

Seeing Steam OS on other devices would be pretty neat.

tl;dr is that they aren't interested in the tradeoff of the extra juice something like the Aya Neo needs for performance. (40w for the Aya Neo 2 vs. 29w for the Steam Deck).

farley3k wrote:

I watched because I have seen a lot of comments like yours - wait for the next one, etc. Around 1:30 he says "seems like Valve will be targeting the same performance as the current one" that they are thinking of an OLED screen as the update. So I don't feel like it would have been worth it to wait.

I was glad to hear the same, since I just bought mine. I did get the feeling from the giveaway that they could be clearing inventory to get ready for a new Deck, which can still be true, but if the performance is the same I don't think it create much regret... Better battery life might do it though.

I ordered the Deck and Dock at the same time. Just got the Dock, the Deck is stuck in a California snowstorm, sigh.

farley3k wrote:

I watched because I have seen a lot of comments like yours - wait for the next one, etc. Around 1:30 he says "seems like Valve will be targeting the same performance as the current one" that they are thinking of an OLED screen as the update. So I don't feel like it would have been worth it to wait.

I would not have waited to get my first one. I was in line as fast as I could and bought it the moment they let me. Zero regrets. Love it. But if there is another version coming in a year or so, even a minor upgrade, it might be worth waiting before I buy a second Deck for our house.

if what they are shooting for is just a battery and screen upgrade, it's entirely possible that it could literally be "send your deck in and give us $200US, we'll send you back your deck, upgraded to the new standard"

Anyone try Dwarf Fortress on it yet?

From what I’m seeing, Mix, the controls are “wonky” - I assume that means “use the touch screen” - and cloud saves just don’t work, so you’d run a different world or find some sideways way to sync games with your pc. Other than that several sites are reporting that it works and people are generally happy with it.

If you already have the game, it won’t hurt to try it, right? One source recommended running the tutorial again to get used to the new controls.

Mixolyde wrote:

Anyone try Dwarf Fortress on it yet?

I installed it an played it a bit. It's hard for me because I am new to DF and everything is SO TINY. I think it'll be fine once I get a hang of the game and remap the controller to fit my needs.

Tried streaming Game Pass for PC games via Remote Play on Steam another try and it just doesn't seem to work for me.

Best case scenario I had a black screen but no audio, otherwise the streaming session fails to start.

Installed Moonlight from the Discover store, and tried that instead.

It works pretty well. I read online that to add Game Pass games you just need to create a shortcut on your desktop, and use when manually adding the game to Geforce Experience.

That did not work for me. Or it did, kind of. When you start the streaming session, it just shows your PC's desktop. If you can manually launch the game by clicking the shortcut, you can play that way.

Instead, I tried adding the exe files from the Game Pass directory to Geforce Experience, and that seems to work properly. Not sure if you need to move the Game Pass directory to a different folder/drive so you can do that (previously, that directory used to be protected and it was super annoying).

The exe files have vague names though, like "GameHelper.exe" instead of just the name of the game. So it may take some fiddling/trial and error.

Once I did that, it works pretty well. I streamed High on Life to my Steam Deck and played through the first two bosses. Steam Remote Play has more features/settings, but if a game has built-in controller support you're pretty set.

That said... https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-kills-off-gamestream-feature-on-shield-devices

Sad trombone.

There's an open source version of Gamestream named Sunshine that apparently also works with AMD cards, but I haven't tried it yet: https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine

ccoates wrote:

Tried streaming Game Pass for PC games via Remote Play on Steam another try and it just doesn't seem to work for me.

Best case scenario I had a black screen but no audio, otherwise the streaming session fails to start.

Installed Moonlight from the Discover store, and tried that instead.

It works pretty well. I read online that to add Game Pass games you just need to create a shortcut on your desktop, and use when manually adding the game to Geforce Experience.

That did not work for me. Or it did, kind of. When you start the streaming session, it just shows your PC's desktop. If you can manually launch the game by clicking the shortcut, you can play that way.

Instead, I tried adding the exe files from the Game Pass directory to Geforce Experience, and that seems to work properly. Not sure if you need to move the Game Pass directory to a different folder/drive so you can do that (previously, that directory used to be protected and it was super annoying).

The exe files have vague names though, like "GameHelper.exe" instead of just the name of the game. So it may take some fiddling/trial and error.

Once I did that, it works pretty well. I streamed High on Life to my Steam Deck and played through the first two bosses. Steam Remote Play has more features/settings, but if a game has built-in controller support you're pretty set.

That said... https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-kills-off-gamestream-feature-on-shield-devices

Sad trombone.

There's an open source version of Gamestream named Sunshine that apparently also works with AMD cards, but I haven't tried it yet: https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine

My fallback when I can’t get a game hooked into GFE for Moonlight is I have Notepad in GFE and I launch that which gives me the desktop and then I launch what I want from there. Steam Streaming is sometimes great but I often run into games that don’t perform well or where I can’t use a remote controller because Steam registers the host PCs controller as the primary. Moonlight was usually a better option. Especially for Game Pass games.

If GFE is losing gamestream support I might try something like Parsec next. I haven’t used it yet but it’s on my short list. I’m hoping to find an option that forces the desktop or games to 800p before starting streaming. I’d also like an option that lets me log into Windows from the stream instead of having to physically log in on the host machine first. I have the same problem when I stream to my Quest 2. Kinda cuts down on the spontaneity of streaming when I have to physically log into my desktop first.

pandasuit wrote:

My fallback when I can’t get a game hooked into GFE for Moonlight is I have Notepad in GFE and I launch that which gives me the desktop and then I launch what I want from there. Steam Streaming is sometimes great but I often run into games that don’t perform well or where I can’t use a remote controller because Steam registers the host PCs controller as the primary. Moonlight was usually a better option. Especially for Game Pass games.

That's basically what trying to add a Game Pass desktop shortcut does for me. It launches my desktop but not the game. It's weird.

Adding the exe directly launches the game as expected.

Game Pass specifically doesn't seem to play well with Steam Remote Play/Steam Link, but it works for me with Moonlight so far.

pandasuit wrote:

If GFE is losing gamestream support I might try something like Parsec next. I haven’t used it yet but it’s on my short list. I’m hoping to find an option that forces the desktop or games to 800p before starting streaming. I’d also like an option that lets me log into Windows from the stream instead of having to physically log in on the host machine first. I have the same problem when I stream to my Quest 2. Kinda cuts down on the spontaneity of streaming when I have to physically log into my desktop first.

Sunshine (the open source version of the GFE host) might get a bit of love if people know GFE is shutting down in February.

Moonlight for me doesn't seem to match the client resolution, unlike Steam Remote Play. Is there a way to get it to do that?

Edit:

Think I figured it out: https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-docs/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions

Apparently games need to be set to Fullscreen to manually adjust the resolution.

The problem is if I do that, the screen freezes for me, on the Steam Deck end. I can still see on my PC monitor that the game is still running (and navigate menus/play as if my Steam Deck is just a controller).

Might try another Game Pass game later, but for High on Life it only works on Windowed Fullscreen for me.

ccoates wrote:
pandasuit wrote:

My fallback when I can’t get a game hooked into GFE for Moonlight is I have Notepad in GFE and I launch that which gives me the desktop and then I launch what I want from there. Steam Streaming is sometimes great but I often run into games that don’t perform well or where I can’t use a remote controller because Steam registers the host PCs controller as the primary. Moonlight was usually a better option. Especially for Game Pass games.

That's basically what trying to add a Game Pass desktop shortcut does for me. It launches my desktop but not the game. It's weird.

Adding the exe directly launches the game as expected.

Game Pass specifically doesn't seem to play well with Steam Remote Play/Steam Link, but it works for me with Moonlight so far.

pandasuit wrote:

If GFE is losing gamestream support I might try something like Parsec next. I haven’t used it yet but it’s on my short list. I’m hoping to find an option that forces the desktop or games to 800p before starting streaming. I’d also like an option that lets me log into Windows from the stream instead of having to physically log in on the host machine first. I have the same problem when I stream to my Quest 2. Kinda cuts down on the spontaneity of streaming when I have to physically log into my desktop first.

Sunshine (the open source version of the GFE host) might get a bit of love if people know GFE is shutting down in February.

Moonlight for me doesn't seem to match the client resolution, unlike Steam Remote Play. Is there a way to get it to do that?

Edit:

Think I figured it out: https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-docs/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions

Apparently games need to be set to Fullscreen to manually adjust the resolution.

The problem is if I do that, the screen freezes for me, on the Steam Deck end. I can still see on my PC monitor that the game is still running (and navigate menus/play as if my Steam Deck is just a controller).

Might try another Game Pass game later, but for High on Life it only works on Windowed Fullscreen for me.

I tried using Parsec in a few different ways to see how it compared to my experience with Moonlight.

It definitely depends on having a device that can decode streams quickly and the Deck was good at that despite refusing to use hardware decoding at all. The latency was still worse than Moonlight and I'm pretty sure it was network latency. Despite both host and client being on the same network Parsec was seeing 10ms network latency. That's not enough for it to be routing through some external server (which they claim to not be doing) but it is far higher than expected on my local network. It felt very slow and was far more glitchy than Moonlight. I tried using a Chromebook as a Parsec client (with both web and Android apps) and it was a lot worse than the Deck. The Deck was using h265 but the Chromebook fell back to h264. Maybe if I was using a Windows client with hardware h265 decoding it would perform better.

On the plus side Parsec had no issue taking me to the Windows login screen when my device was locked (Moonlight is hit or miss there) and Parsec forced the host resolution down to the client resolution on connections so it was really usable on Deck.

In the end feeling slower and more glitchy (repeated or dropped inputs) means it is not a real contender and I don't recommend it.

Maybe related or maybe not, after I removed Parsec from my host machine that machine got into a BSOD infinite loop and wouldn't boot into Windows. Thankfully it was just one of those corrupt driver signature issues that isn't hard to fix.

Long story short I'm still relying on Moonlight being my primary way to stream games from desktop to Deck. I'll keep an eye on Sunshine.

Edit:
I've spent some more time trying to get Steam Streaming to work with PC Game Pass games or at least stream the full desktop so I can launch whatever. I configured my Steam host to change it's resolution to that of the connecting client and I configured both ends for speed. It seems like Steam games streamed directly are performing a bit better now in my minimal testing. To try to get to a full desktop view where I can launch any game I used the trick where you add Notepad as a Steam game and then once it launches you open help. That gets me to the desktop. The problem is the performance is not great when I do it this way for desktop or any launched games (I'm using PC Game Pass version of High on Life for testing). Also, despite me changing the controls on the Deck for this "game" it does not do so and keeps giving me something that appears to treat the Deck controller as a mouse/keyboard. Not ideal. So, I can get a full desktop at 1280x800 in Steam Streaming and launch games from it but it performs too poorly to be usable.

Moonlight is still the best I've got. I was already thinking about looking for an alternative before you mentioned the impending death of Nvidia Game Streaming because I'm seriously considering going with an AMD graphics card on my next upgrade. Hopefully Sunshine or some other alternative matures enough before Feb 2023.

pandasuit wrote:

Moonlight is still the best I've got. I was already thinking about looking for an alternative before you mentioned the impending death of Nvidia Game Streaming because I'm seriously considering going with an AMD graphics card on my next upgrade. Hopefully Sunshine or some other alternative matures enough before Feb 2023.

NVidia seem to be doing all they can to put me off their products in recent times.. I know a good few people that bought and use the Nvidia Shield Pro device purely for gaming (rather than as an android TV box) and they are basically going to be left with a brick when Nvidia kill game streaming.

Things are going well with the Deck for steam gaming and emulation so far. One thing that isnt working out is the Epic games via Heroic. I can get the games but it doesnt seem to be saving games properly. Tried playing Ooblets and you can save in game with no problem but you can't load. I've googled and found a few others reporting this but no solutions.

I have the 64gb device, so all games are going on the SD card. Anyone run into this and have a solution?

Edit: Well now I don't know why, but this time it worked fine. I dont have any idea what I did.

omni wrote:
pandasuit wrote:

Moonlight is still the best I've got. I was already thinking about looking for an alternative before you mentioned the impending death of Nvidia Game Streaming because I'm seriously considering going with an AMD graphics card on my next upgrade. Hopefully Sunshine or some other alternative matures enough before Feb 2023.

NVidia seem to be doing all they can to put me off their products in recent times.. I know a good few people that bought and use the Nvidia Shield Pro device purely for gaming (rather than as an android TV box) and they are basically going to be left with a brick when Nvidia kill game streaming.

Moonlight and Sunshine are hopefully a good option for them. Steam Link app should work for them already (but I like it less than Moonlight). There are other alternatives but, again, not yet as good as Moonlight/GFE. Maybe others will have better experience with Parsec than I did. Rainway is another one I’ve been meaning to try so maybe I’ll do that next.

Apparently AMD Link has a streaming feature to compete with Nvidia Game Streaming as long as you have a Radeon in the desktop but I have zero experience with it. I don’t have a modern Radeon to try right now. Anyone here have experience?

It seems like Valve is still investing in their solution so maybe that’s what really takes over now that Nvidia has stopped. I like that it’s hardware agnostic and there’s a Steam Link app for nearly every device under the sun. I just hate that it doesn’t perform as well as Moonlight/GFE.

While I was poking around in Steam Remote Play settings I noticed an option that pulls from the NV framebuffer instead of capturing specific game windows. It would always capture the full screen but that’s what I always want anyways. I’m going to try that asap and see if it performs better for full screen capture.

I gave Sunshine a try. Definitely a bit rough around the edges compared to the simplicity of Gamestream.

https://github.com/LizardByte/Sunshine

https://docs.lizardbyte.dev/projects/sunshine/en/latest/about/usage.html

Sunshine is setup via a web interface and uses some confusing terminology. For example: the path to the game executable goes in the "Detached Commands" field, not the "Command" field.

Something else that threw me is that once you've added the path, you HAVE TO click the plus symbol, otherwise it won't run the command properly when you launch the game via Moonlight. You'll be dumped to the desktop.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/KQcs1MI.png)

I must've watched half a dozen videos of people setting up Sunshine and they always seem to cut away without actually letting you see them add a game. Maybe it's obvious to everyone else? It wasn't until I watched a video meant for people who want to stream FROM the Deck and they didn't cut away from that step that I realized I had never clicked that button.

The only two fields you need to fill in are "Application Name" and "Detached Commands" (the command path should be in quotes).

The "Find Cover" button was pretty handy for adding cover art easily.

Here's an example of my "High on Life" entry:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/uidSSwC.jpg)

There's a ton of other settings for adjusting the encoding, but I left everything on the defaults.

On Windows you also need to install:

https://github.com/ViGEm/ViGEmBus/releases

Or you wont have any gamepad functionality once the game launches.

If you're running Gamestream via GeForce Experience, you may want to toggle it off. I can't tell if it was causing issues during my testing or there was some additional user error on my part.

I played about an hour of High on Life and it wasn't bad. I've seen some folks mention Gamestream has better performance, but the quality was fine for me.

If there was a "For Dummies" version of the Web UI that hid all the settings a novice wouldn't need (and they fix that step where you have to click the plus symbol), I think it'd be usable for most folks.

So the tl;dr would be:

1. Run the Sunshine installer.
2. Add games via: https://localhost:47990/apps.
3. Install ViGEmBus.
4. Launch Moonlight and select your PC.
5. Enter the PIN via https://localhost:47990/pin.

merphle wrote:
Baron Of Hell wrote:

So would you say Emudeck is the best way to go for emulation? If not what are you guys using?

Yes, EmuDeck. It's a minor pain to get it up and running, and configured for each game, but once you do it's a silky smooth, Steam-integrated experience.

I wish I had read this first, haha.

I had the misguided impression it'd be one-click and done and it's really not.

I mean, the initial install can be, but then different emulators need bios files and some of them need those files in very specific directories. And because of the legal gray areas the documentation on where to put the files and what format they need to be in are sometimes very cagey and vague. So next thing I know I've spent hours trying to figure out how to get different emulators working.

This cheat sheet has a few errors but is really helpful (for example, even using Retroarch PPSSPP you don't need a separate bios/firmware file):

https://github.com/dragoonDorise/EmuDeck/wiki/Cheat-Sheet

And the Libreto Docs can help with emulators that have multiple firmware files like Final Burn or MAME:

https://docs.libretro.com/guides/arcade-getting-started/

After all the hassle I didn't initially see the appeal versus just installed RetroArch standalone, but now that I've poked around it has some neat functions, like it can make toggling on scanlines/widescreen hacks across multiple emulators very easy.

I can never remember what the button combinations to do things in a specific emulator are, but there's an overlay add-on you can install if you jump through the hoop of adding a sudo password to your Deck (in Linux sudo is used to run commands as root/administrator).

I followed along with this video, which helped clarify a few things I didn't find intuitive, like how the Steam ROM Manager works. That's another neat feature, you can add individual games to your Steam Library, which means you could theoretically have a different controller layout for each one.

https://retrogamecorps.com/2022/10/16/steam-deck-emulation-starter-guide/

ccoates wrote:

I gave Sunshine a try. Definitely a bit rough around the edges compared to the simplicity of Gamestream.

Is it easier to get Game Pass games working or about the same?

pandasuit wrote:
ccoates wrote:

I gave Sunshine a try. Definitely a bit rough around the edges compared to the simplicity of Gamestream.

Is it easier to get Game Pass games working or about the same?

The Sunshine interface is a bit confusing, but High on Life in both of my examples is a Game Pass game. Sunshine doesn't have a "file picker", so you have to manually copy/paste the path to your game's executable. If those don't seem like hurdles for you, it's about the same.

In the case of both Sunshine and Gamestream I had better luck adding the .exe files from the Xbox directory, as opposed to trying to use desktop shortcuts like some folks recommend.

Once ViGEmBus is installed and you understand how Sunshine works, you could argue that Sunshine is actually easier because it has built-in functionality for looking up cover art. But if you have a GeForce card and already know how to use GeForce Experience, that's easier than learning how to use something new.

ccoates wrote:
pandasuit wrote:
ccoates wrote:

I gave Sunshine a try. Definitely a bit rough around the edges compared to the simplicity of Gamestream.

Is it easier to get Game Pass games working or about the same?

The Sunshine interface is a bit confusing, but High on Life in both of my examples is a Game Pass game. Sunshine doesn't have a "file picker", so you have to manually copy/paste the path to your game's executable. If those don't seem like hurdles for you, it's about the same.

In the case of both Sunshine and Gamestream I had better luck adding the .exe files from the Xbox directory, as opposed to trying to use desktop shortcuts like some folks recommend.

Once ViGEmBus is installed and you understand how Sunshine works, you could argue that Sunshine is actually easier because it has built-in functionality for looking up cover art. But if you have a GeForce card and already know how to use GeForce Experience, that's easier than learning how to use something new.

I'll load up Sunshine on one of my non-GFE machines soonish and try this out.

Regarding GFE and Game Pass games:

Previously I was able to add the desktop shortcut for a Game Pass game to GFE and have it play properly. That hasn't worked recently. If I launch the game I frequently just get a desktop and the game doesn't run. From there I can just launch the game shortcut from the desktop and it works. It's only a little annoying due to the screen resolution being so high on the host but it works.

If I try to add the game EXE directly to GFE I get an error about not having permission to open the file and I should contact the administrator which is a "fun" error since my account is an admin account on this PC. All my Game Pass games seem to install into a "XboxGames" directory these days. They used to install in the same "WindowsApps" as store apps. Not sure if that is the cause of the permissions issue. It's likely just that they are setting the permissions inside XboxGames to be more restrictive than they used to. I could always mess around with the permissions of the game files to see if that lets me add them to GFE.

The middle ground I've found that seems to work is I track down the EXE for the game in XboxGames and I create my own shortcut to that. "Oregon-WinGDK-Shipping.exe" for High on Life for instance. Then I add that desktop shortcut to GFE and edit it to have the proper game name. When I do this the game adds properly to GFE (no permissions issue) and so far seems to launch the game properly when connecting from Moonlight. Likely this is exactly what I'd get from adding the EXE to GFE directly if I didn't run into the permissions issue (or messed with the permissions). It's a simple work around that has been working for me. Didn't require me changing graphics settings in the game at all.