Steam Deck and Linux Gaming

It's in engine not prerendered? Darn unfortunately i have no fix that

iaintgotnopants wrote:
hbi2k wrote:

I typically stick to one game at a time, and I'm LOVING the ability to just sleep the device and come back to it and pick up right where I left off, without having to sit through all those obnoxious unskippable swoopy logos for the developer and the publisher and the licensor and the other developer that made the multiplayer mode that I never played before the servers got shut down five years ago etc etc etc ad infinitum.

How much does it drain the battery to sleep with a game running? Like, can you let it sleep for a couple days or will it run dry? I'm currently paying a game that takes about five minutes to get to the main menu so I'm tempted to do that.

I accidentally left my Deck at my parents' house for a week. By the time I got to it, the battery had drained by about 5%. YMMV, etc.

Just got a message, the Steam Deck I ordered 2 days ago is being prepared for shipment. That's much faster than expected!

Metroid Prime Remastered is already running at 60fps on Steam Deck in the Ryujinx emulator:

Some missing textures on Samus, but they already hotfixed a crashing problem just a few hours after the game's release. Definitely gotta try this out, maybe in a week or two after some more inevitable emulator updates.

I’ve been trying to play Midnight Suns for the last week but started having severe stuttering, slowdowns, and egregious load times after the first few missions, protondb recommended increasing the Steam Deck’s vram using CryoUtilities and not only did it fix all the issues with Midnight Suns, but every game I’ve tested runs and loads significantly better now. Don’t know if it’s been mentioned in this thread before, but 10/10 would recommend.

That is one of the things I first setup on my deck. I wonder if that is why I have never had the performance issues with many games that people talk about. It was something I set months ago and never really thought about again.

It is well worth doing.

Just for balance, I've never heard of that, so never done it, and not had any performance issues to write about.
It does sound great for improved load times though!

I've done it, too. Probably won't make a difference to older or indie games, but has been great for heavily modded Skyrim and other games where the shared 16GB of RAM/VRAM is a bit tight.

ruhk wrote:

I’ve been trying to play Midnight Suns for the last week but started having severe stuttering, slowdowns, and egregious load times after the first few missions, protondb recommended increasing the Steam Deck’s vram using CryoUtilities and not only did it fix all the issues with Midnight Suns, but every game I’ve tested runs and loads significantly better now. Don’t know if it’s been mentioned in this thread before, but 10/10 would recommend.

Woah. Never heard of this. Just download it with the Linux browser and thats it? It runs itself? No setup needed?

My Steam Deck arrived yesterday evening, 4 days after my order! I haven't had much time to fiddle, but first impressions:

- It's BIG!
- It's cool!
- I love it!

I played like fifteen minutes of Kentucky Route Zero, and loved the experience. It felt much more chill for some reason than playing it on my desktop PC, maybe this is my future platform for zen type games?

Balthezor wrote:

Woah. Never heard of this. Just download it with the Linux browser and thats it? It runs itself? No setup needed?

Save it as a file on your desktop and run it like any other program, it will create three new icons with self-explanatory names. Run the first one and it will open the command prompt window and then after ~30 seconds or so another window asking for your preferred vram settings. It might take a couple minutes to reserve memory depending upon your choice but will then open a window asking for swappiness (OK to go with the recommended value of 1), and then afterward a window asking about Trim (OK to select No).

ruhk wrote:
Balthezor wrote:

Woah. Never heard of this. Just download it with the Linux browser and thats it? It runs itself? No setup needed?

Save it as a file on your desktop and run it like any other program, it will create three new icons with self-explanatory names. Run the first one and it will open the command prompt window and then after ~30 seconds or so another window asking for your preferred vram settings. It might take a couple minutes to reserve memory depending upon your choice but will then open a window asking for swappiness (OK to go with the recommended value of 1), and then afterward a window asking about Trim (OK to select No).

Don’t forget to set a password in the console first. CryoUtilities will warn you if you didn’t. You could also set it using the config panel if a UI is preferred.

I guess, important question, did it work for you without having a password set?

I just finished my first finicky project on the Deck! After several hiccups I got Pro Evolution Soccer 2021 + the VirtuaRed v5 mods (updated roster and correct names/shirts/etc. for unlicensed teams) working.

So for the first time, I can play a fully fledged soccer game on a portable device. I don't think the PES series ever appeared on a Nintendo device, and FIFA games were always nerfed compared to the other console versions. Living the dream!

The Deck in that regard is exactly what I wanted it to be: instant gaming device for my huge PC backlog when I just want to chill, but perfect for some tweaking and optimizing when I feel like it.

Framework (that repairable laptop company) will be selling 2TB NVME drives that are compatible with Steam Deck. I'm sticking to SD card expansion for now and will likely get a 1TB+ one when I see a good deal come along. I flip between a 256MB and a 512MB right now.

https://frame.work/ca/en/products/we...

Looks like transferring Steam game data between a PC and Steam Deck directly in Steam is coming to the latest Deck beta so you don't have to re-download games per system. I've been looking forward to a feature like this in Steam since way before the Deck launched. I use the Xbox equivalent frequently.

On a different topic, I've finally run into an Epic game where cloud save games are supported in Heroic: Rise of the Tomb Raider. Unfortunately the default paths it sets in config don't actually work. Not hard to fix if you dig around for where the saves really are and set the paths in the game sync settings. I've been bouncing back and forth between Deck and PC playing that game for about a week now without issue. I've also run into more Steam games that claim to support cloud saves but don't actually send the saves to the cloud on Deck or PC. The current culprit is Metro 2033 Redux. Metro Last Light Redux seems to do it fine. Cloud saves are something that consoles seem to be doing more consistently than PC platforms. Quite possibly I care more about this feature than the majority of people tho.

Cryo Utilities updated to 2.0!

omni wrote:

Cryo Utilities updated to 2.0!

New storage manager helped me clean up a bunch of left over prefixes and shader cache. I haven’t tried the sync game data feature but that may have been a faster solution to the issue I ran into moving a game between storage devices and losing saves.

I just finished replaying Rise of the Tomb Raider on Deck and could have used these performance improvements. It definitely dipped below 40 a bunch regardless of my tweaks. I’m about to start replaying Shadow of the Tomb Raider and see how it goes with the new Cryo Utilities defaults.

I may have to install this boot video

Taaaaake Onnnnnn Meeeeeee

IMAGE(https://i.redd.it/c4cbvxdqvcla1.jpg)

Another amazing loading video

And another one. People really are creative

So, um... I'm here for the inevitable chorus of "one of us!" ^^ I will soon have a shiny new piece of tech between my hands. Looking forward to test driving the Steam Deck myself!!

It's not Earth-shaking, but it's a very nice machine for traveling, playing in bed, situations where you want to use console controls, stuff like that. A rock solid luxury.

I've had a number of trips recently and the deck has proven it's worth extremely well. The greatest thing is that I play very different games on it so it's actually draining my backlog!

It's also made me realize there's some games in my backlog that are keyboard and mouse only that I've never going to get to, ha.

And for replays, bummed out when you realize that even when a console port exists, gamepad support was never added to the PC versions of some games (most recently for me Shadowrun Returns and Invisible, Inc.)

After playing those on Switch, I just can't go back to keyboard and mouse. Invisible, Inc. is a great portable game except it runs poorly on Switch. And the community controller profiles for it aren't bad but... non-optimal.

If I can't play it on Deck or gamepad, these days I'm just not going to play it.

ccoates wrote:

It's also made me realize there's some games in my backlog that are keyboard and mouse only that I've never going to get to, ha.

And for replays, bummed out when you realize that even when a console port exists, gamepad support was never added to the PC versions of some games (most recently for me Shadowrun Returns and Invisible, Inc.)

After playing those on Switch, I just can't go back to keyboard and mouse. Invisible, Inc. is a great portable game except it runs poorly on Switch. And the community controller profiles for it aren't bad but... non-optimal.

If I can't play it on Deck or gamepad, these days I'm just not going to play it.

I love me some Nintendo, but I do play different games on the Steam Deck. Currently that's Shadowrun Hong Kong funnily enough, but there are games (Cogs and Exapunk) that simply don't work well on the Deck.

This was a luxury purchase, but I'm getting real value out of it.

Plus, I love the kind of finicking the Deck allows for. Tinkering within an OS with software settings is my kind of jam, and the online community is really vibrant. There are some unironic PC Master Race whiffs in there, but at least the info is solid

Robear wrote:

It's not Earth-shaking, but it's a very nice machine for traveling, playing in bed, situations where you want to use console controls, stuff like that. A rock solid luxury.

I respectfully disagree. Playing Steam games in bed is Earth-shaking. I'm making so much progress with my pile (though now I also have access to Absurd's absurdly huge Steam library).

I have back problems so I occasionally need to lie down for long periods so the ability to stream games from my pc is also really awesome and has noticeably improved my qol when I'm in pain. When I'm streaming the battery life is fantastic.
Hmm note to self, I need to see if I can full on remote into my gaming rig so I can do other stuff too...

I've been without power at my house since Friday afternoon, and I have to say that my Steam Deck has been a godsend either while sitting in a dark room with nothing else to do or while camping out at my parent's house. I'm mostly just working through my backlog, so on the docket these last few days is Ghost Song, Enter the Gungeon, and Dome Keeper. They all play great on the Deck.

The new RE4 remake demo plays on Steam Deck and is over 40fps at low settings but there always seem to be graphical glitches regardless of settings. Still, it’s promising and if they optimize the final release it could work better. The current glitches didn’t ruin the game but they did break the atmosphere which is unfortunate.

I played RE 2/3 remakes on Deck and they were great. I’m now playing RE Village on Deck and it’s pretty good so far. Grabbed it from Steam sale recently as I’ve been waiting to get into it.

Edit: looks like Valve has already pushed updates in the "preview" version of Steam OS that fix the graphical glitches in RE4 remake so should be stable by the time the full game releases: