Steam Deck and Linux Gaming

anyone had any trouble with lutris for installing amazon games? i'm running into an issue where they just won't finish downloading. the website gives some konsole commands to fix it, but they don't see to work and i'm not great with linux.

Signed up for Game Pass to give Weird West a try.

I'm... kind of disappointed? I can't think of a single way the combat being real-time twin-stick shooter offers a superior experience compared to turn-based. Every time an encounter starts, I legitimately think, "this would be better turn-based."

The aiming is wonky, and the combat gets hectic so not being able to pause or take turns means it's difficult to use your abilities, which makes having them kind of pointless. If you only hit 1-key to slo-mo Max Payne style, and you have to hit multiple keys and be in close proximity to an enemy while they're inevitably all shooting at you to trigger an ability... which one do you think you'll be triggering most?

The immersive sim bones in a isometric perspective game is kind of interesting, but there's a lot of combat, and it's bad. That aspect reminds me of Arcanum, a game that was deep and rewarding for folks that could get past just how awful the combat was. Except in both games, there's so much of it.

If you already have Game Pass, probably still worth giving a try. But I had been considering buying it on sale, and I think even at $16 I'd have felt frustrated with the purchase.

Weird West isn't exactly cutting edge graphically, and seemed to be running at 40+ FPS. Not sure if maybe in the later game some battles get larger and chunkier. But I'm not sure I'm going to keep playing it.

The text is a bit small for the Deck's screen, but so far it doesn't seem as narratively dense as something like Planescape, so that's probably fine.

Also installed Pentiment and Beacon Pines. Running Windows on the Steam Deck, there are certain Game Pass games that don't work well because they don't let you choose the game's resolution. Some games, like Beacon Pines or Pentiment, seem to have hard-coded default resolutions, and if you try to change the resolution in-game the dropdown field is just entirely blank.

I'm not sure if that's incompetence on the part of developers or not, but it's kind of annoying. So to get both games running properly in Windows on the Deck you have to edit the registry to manually set the Steam Deck's resolution. It's finicky and kind of annoying. In Steam OS you'll probably be fine (but I'm running these through Game Pass).

Beacon Pines I really enjoyed. It's essentially just a choose your own adventure visual novel. The game's main "hook" is that you can return to branching points in the story at any point and play different "charms". Charms are just verbs/actions for how you'd approach that branch (like whether you want to be a "sh*t" or whether you decide you want to "break" stuff). It's much more finite that it sounds, each branch obviously has specific verbs that are valid for being applied to that part of the story.

However, I like that returning to previous branches is just built-in to the gameplay. It's kind of like if you remember reading choose your own adventure books as a kid, how you might bookmark different decision pages and return to them when you hit a bad ending. However, the progression is extremely linear, and at any given point there's probably only going to be 1-2 branches you can apply an alternative verb to (with more opening up later as you play).

So it's a linear, forgiving, cute (but also sometimes dark) story.

Pentiment seems designed the opposite. I only played for around 20 minutes, so I'm not sure how much it delivers on the promise, but decisions you make *can't * be easily taken back, you can't reload to an earlier save point, and even small conversations seem to have a ripple effect forward in the story. Maybe most decisions don't end up mattering, but it definitely seems to be implying/emphasizing that they will, since it'll even tell you via the UI when a choice you've made will seemingly have consequences.

Not sure how long a run of Pentiment is, but Beacon Pines is super short. You could 100% it even playing casually over a couple days.

Pentiment and Beacon Pines aren't exactly cutting edge, graphics-wise, but the graphics for both seem appropriate to the content. So both should run fine on Deck.

Both have a lot of reading, but I didn't find myself bothered by it with Beacon Pines. Pentiment I struggled with the fancy (period appropriate?) fonts, but they have an accessibility mode when you start the game where you can choose simpler ones, and switching to that option I didn't find myself feeling strained reading all the text (and there's a lot of it).

Pentiment is very, very heavy on the period-correct attitudes, behaviors and situations, as enabled by very deeply researched fonts that indicate social status, intelligence and so forth on the part of the speakers. As such, it's very much an "art" game. But it's great.

I played Pentiment on my Deck (in SteamOS). It was a great experience. I loved the art (and the fonts).

It is on Gamepass and it is possible to get Gampass working on the Deck.

farley3k wrote:

It is on Gamepass and it is possible to get Gampass working on the Deck.

Wait... game pass streaming or game pass native installing? I know about the former... but if the latter was possible I'd probably subscribe in a heartbeat.

You've got to dual boot, and all the things that go along with it.

I finally did the SSD upgrade in mine and set up a permanent dual boot, because being able to fall back to Windows for a few things is a definite value add.

Yeah, I'm dual booting via MicroSD (I've installed Windows to an SD card).

When I want to play a game via GoG Galaxy (for achievement tracking) or something like Game Pass, I boot into Windows.

jamos5 wrote:
farley3k wrote:

It is on Gamepass and it is possible to get Gampass working on the Deck.

Wait... game pass streaming or game pass native installing? I know about the former... but if the latter was possible I'd probably subscribe in a heartbeat.

I found some instructions on the web to install the edge web browser so I’m playing for the browser. When I do gamepass

For me, it works as well as if I were playing on my computer wirelessly

Played a bit of the System Shock Remake.

So far runs pretty well! There's some hitching, but it's hard to tell if that's a performance issue of the Deck or an Unreal Engine problem.

The gamepad controls are decent. There's a couple things where you end up using the right analog stick as a mouse, like "vaporizing" inventory items, and for that the Deck's touchpads are actually pretty handy. And I say that as someone who generally never uses them unless I have no other option.

So far a faithful remake, which overhauls the graphics and adds a bare minimum of modern gameplay enhacements. Whether or not a game's design firmly dating back to 1994 (even if it was ahead of its time) is something you'll find frustrating is going to heavily affect how much you enjoy it, I think.

I think if you have nostalgia for the original but found it hard to replay in later years on a functional or technical level, or if you never played it and you're curious about how influential the game was (I think even from this remake you'll be able to tell how much of its DNA ended up in spiritual successors) it's worth getting.

ccoates wrote:

Yeah, I'm dual booting via MicroSD (I've installed Windows to an SD card).

When I want to play a game via GoG Galaxy (for achievement tracking) or something like Game Pass, I boot into Windows.

I ended up installing GoG Galaxy on SteamOS through Proton and then installing games through that. It has it's quirks but has been a better experience than trying to play GoG games through Heroic. Cloud saves work better at least.

Still, I want to get Windows running one of these days specifically for Game Pass PC games I just haven't put in the time yet. I have the SD card ready to go.

pandasuit wrote:

Still, I want to get Windows running one of these days specifically for Game Pass PC games I just haven't put in the time yet. I have the SD card ready to go.

The initial install and waiting for the endless amount of Windows updates to install is the most tedious part.

But with Steam Deck Tools, a better experience than it was last year.

farley3k wrote:
jamos5 wrote:
farley3k wrote:

It is on Gamepass and it is possible to get Gampass working on the Deck.

Wait... game pass streaming or game pass native installing? I know about the former... but if the latter was possible I'd probably subscribe in a heartbeat.

I found some instructions on the web to install the edge web browser so I’m playing for the browser. When I do gamepass

For me, it works as well as if I were playing on my computer wirelessly

Ok, so that sounds like you are streaming game pass? If it's through a web browser. I can't stomach streaming. I don't want to dual boot windows either. Don't want to be hassled into it.

Oh well. Sounds like it's no game pass for now. I've got enough Linux-playable games -- those are keeping me happy for now. But I'm glad many of you found good alternatives that work for you.

I have not tried this myself yet but GamingOnLinux just posted a video about a tool that makes it easier to install non-Steam launchers on the Steam Deck:
Battle.net
Epic Games
GOG Galaxy
Origin
Ubisoft
EA App
Amazon Games Launcher
Itch.io
Legacy Games
Humble Games Collection
IndieGala
Rockstar Games Launcher

https://github.com/moraroy/NonSteamL...

Kinda neat. It looks like the script streamlines installing launchers, but it's not doing anything "under the hood" so to speak to make them more compatible.

Installs the latest GE-Proton and Installs Non Steam Launchers under 1 Proton prefix folder and adds them to your steam library.

So your launcher (and any game you install with it) get installed to the same "bottle"/prefix. Which isn't always optimal since games can require different tweaks/Proton or Wine versions/settings to run properly.

Another drawback is similar to one I ran into installing emulators: you're going to be applying the same control scheme to everything since it's a single entry in Steam.

So worth a try because it look simpler than Lutris/Heroic, but not a solution to getting those launchers working if the other options or just installing it yourself via Proton didn't work.

I tried that launcher this morning and when I opened Battlenet to install D4 the aspect ratio of the window on both desktop and gaming mode cropped off the install button and nothing I tried could move or resize the window so I could install the game. I removed everything and installed Battlenet via Lutris and everything worked fine.

ruhk wrote:

I tried that launcher this morning and when I opened Battlenet to install D4 the aspect ratio of the window on both desktop and gaming mode cropped off the install button and nothing I tried could move or resize the window so I could install the game. I removed everything and installed Battlenet via Lutris and everything worked fine.

Ouch. Thanks for warning us.

When I use GoG Galaxy through Proton I see weird window/screen behavior sometimes as well. I should try using Lutris for it: https://lutris.net/games/gog-galaxy/

ruhk wrote:

I tried that launcher this morning and when I opened Battlenet to install D4 the aspect ratio of the window on both desktop and gaming mode cropped off the install button and nothing I tried could move or resize the window so I could install the game. I removed everything and installed Battlenet via Lutris and everything worked fine.

Please let us know how D4 runs!

Balthezor wrote:
ruhk wrote:

I tried that launcher this morning and when I opened Battlenet to install D4 the aspect ratio of the window on both desktop and gaming mode cropped off the install button and nothing I tried could move or resize the window so I could install the game. I removed everything and installed Battlenet via Lutris and everything worked fine.

Please let us know how D4 runs!

It runs fine. There’s a little bit of hitching and frame drops but nothing egregious and it’s hard to tell whether it was due to hardware or just release day connection/server issues since it was also happening a bit on my PC that vastly exceeds the recommended specs. Totally playable.

How does it handle suspending and resuming? I loved D3 on the Switch because I could easily pick it up and put it down for short bursts with no trouble, but I don't know if the same thing is possible on the Steam Deck.

Chaz wrote:

How does it handle suspending and resuming? I loved D3 on the Switch because I could easily pick it up and put it down for short bursts with no trouble, but I don't know if the same thing is possible on the Steam Deck.

It disconnects almost immediately upon suspension. Reconnecting/relogging was pretty fast yesterday but today it’s taking 10+ minutes and crashed once while loading. Less impressed by the performance today than I was but it might just be down to launch issues.

ruhk wrote:

Reconnecting/relogging was pretty fast yesterday but today it’s taking 10+ minutes and crashed once while loading. Less impressed by the performance today than I was but it might just be down to launch issues.

I’ve spent several days with Diablo 4 now going back & forth between Steam Deck and PC and it’s still surprisingly playable. I prefer the PC because the game is a lot prettier there but I suspect most of my play time will be on Steam Deck just out of convenience.
I’m not certain what was going on with loading times on day 2, but every other day I’ve played the loading and logging in times have been almost as fast as on PC.

I've now beaten System Shock remake twice, and can definitely recommend as a Steam Deck game. Same caveats as before, but performance wise it ran decently on medium settings.

I'm playing through again streaming it from my PC, with the eye candy cranked up, and it is a pretty good looking game. Although humorously playing with the lower settings made it a lot easier to see (there's so much fog and weird lighting and DEEP shadows when everything is ultra).

ruhk wrote:

I’ve spent several days with Diablo 4 now going back & forth between Steam Deck and PC and it’s still surprisingly playable.

Diablo IV is a fantastic Deck game.

I think I may finally pull the trigger on Diablo II Resurrected so I can have that on the Deck as well.

I’ve seen some chatter about launchers(Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft) regularly breaking on the Deck. Is that an issue? If so, how are they resolved?

Thanks,
Chad

chooka1 wrote:

I’ve seen some chatter about launchers(Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft) regularly breaking on the Deck. Is that an issue? If so, how are they resolved?

Battle.net broke briefly last year. It was fixed by Blizzard themselves.

I assume you have to have Windows installed to put Diablo on there, right? I'm far too lazy to do that.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

I assume you have to have Windows installed to put Diablo on there, right? I'm far too lazy to do that.

Haven't tried it (yet) but here is some instructions on how to get it to run on the steam deck.

https://www.polygon.com/23750107/how...

iaintgotnopants wrote:

I assume you have to have Windows installed to put Diablo on there, right?

No. Battle.net runs just fine in SteamOS. Install via Lutris.

*Legion* wrote:
iaintgotnopants wrote:

I assume you have to have Windows installed to put Diablo on there, right?

No. Battle.net runs just fine in SteamOS. Install via Lutris.

It works fine without Lutris as well. Might be a couple extra steps to get installed though.