Steam Deck | RNDA2, 7" display, Dock, starting at $399 (yes OLED)

[Bebpo]

Would love to get PS2 emulation running on something. I used to be into emulation back in the PSX days when Saturn was impossible, DC was just getting started, PS2 ran at like 2fps unless you had a killer CPU.

I'd love to re-visit some PS2 games since it's my favorite era of gaming. Just been hesitant to spend the time and read up on how to get it working. Plus need to figure out how to rip your own discs. I legit own like the entire PS2 library of games worth a damn. It's my biggest collector's era though I also own most of the DS/PSP library since that was around the same time.

[Polident Hive]

I’ll say in 2022, it’s probably quicker to acquire games that fell off the back of trucks, in CHD format, than doing it all yourself. Because I legit ripped all my games years ago, and it’s even quicker to download than converting isos or bin+cue to chd. Nice thing I’ve become aware of are newer optical media formats like CHD. Uncompressed PS2 games DVD size at 4.5 GB. CDs are 700 MB. Games on multiple CDs or DVDs can be placed in one file.

PS1 and PS2 were easy enough to rip when comported had optical drives. Think I used my laptop and had it running in the background. GameCube, Wii, and PSP, I had custom firmware to rip to memory sticks and external hdds. DS, I had a GBA flash card cart to dump games.

Yeah. PS2 emulation is easier and better than I remembered. Last time I really played with it, I had my PS3 hooked up. Now it’s on a handheld where I can play The Getaway with a 60 FPS patch at 3x resolution. Can even fast forward through the dumb lean against wall to heal moments.

[Eel O'Brian]

Heads up, new OS update breaks all your emu and non steam shit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/zs3i65/steamos_34_stable_release_apparently_changed_the/

[bork]

Heads up, new OS update breaks all your emu and non steam shit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/zs3i65/steamos_34_stable_release_apparently_changed_the/

Rollback has happened for the SD Card renaming. Just update SteamDeck to the latest, then update EmuDeck using the Quick Update function. It should fix all the paths.

Oh and remember to run SteamRomManager again to merge all your VDFs if you use it.

 

[Pissy F Benny]

Emu Deck

[Pissy F Benny]

Valve have already fixed it too, works fine for me just as before without any emudeck update

[Bebpo]

One thing I'm frustratingly noticing as I'm messing around with games in my backlog is how many of the smaller indie games don't have cloud save support. Especially VNs. Super annoying because those kinds of games are good on portable.

May need to actually spend the 30-60 mins and figure out how to create my own save moving/dropbox solution for some games.

Like even 2022 stuff like Omori doesn't have cloud saves and it's a 30 hour game! :|


Also a loooot of indies don't really play right on deck off the bat, especially if they were made for PC first in terms of screen resolution/controls. Deck seems to work best with mid-tier AA indies and older AAA that were made for consoles first. Definitely having a case by case experience as I go through some backlog. Probably about 1 in every 3 indie games works with no effort off the bat. 1 in every 3 works sorta but has issues and 1 in every 3 is no good.

For instance Read Only Memories 2064 which is a console game at this point on every console, has an issue with saving. Which is kind of a big deal in a 10+ hour game. There is a work around that if you mash a letter on the in-game keyboard a bunch it'll eventually register for the save name and then if you mash DONE a bunch it'll eventually press and save the game. But for whatever reason it freaks out when trying to save. The rest of the game runs 100% perfect and has cloud saves. It's stupid little bugs like that.

[Bebpo]

Alright, I've been spending this holiday week sitting down and finally taking care of lots of errands of small stuff I never get around to figuring out. Gonna spend the time now and figure out how to do manual cloud saving for games that don't support cloud saves.

Apparently the best solution is a program called Syncthing. Time to dive into tutorials.

[Bebpo]

Ok, this tutorial sucks.

[Tasty]

I mean yeah, there's lots of solutions for keeping arbitrary files synced to a cloud, and Linux is even better for that kind of thing anyways.

[Bebpo]

Ok, this is impossible. I give up. I can't even find where save games are on the deck. Supposedly they're under users/local/share/steam/steamapps/compatdata and the app ID on the store page is the number of the folder.

But like I'm looking for Heaven Will be Mine, which is installed on my deck and I have a save.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/836450/Heaven_Will_Be_Mine/

So it should be 836450, but there's no folder with that number.

At least on my PC end I can find the saves even though it's a pain in the ass. But for smaller stuff where there is nothing online about where the game keeps saves on linux...yeah. And if you can't find both folders, you can't sync them.

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Heaven_Will_Be_Mine  (no info on Linux save location)

Also the fact you have to find these folders and manual add everything (no easy copy/pasting GUI stuff), and every game does it differently. What a pain in the fucking ass. I guess if a game doesn't support cloud saves I'm just not going to play it on deck or on PC period.

Did this on Omori and found save location for both and when I try to share the steam deck folder I get an error:

"Failed to save configuration
Invalid HTTP response
b"

Pretty sure it's cheaper to just buy Omori on Switch than the time it would take to get this working.

[Nintex]

If I had any interest in setting up something like this. I would probably combine a cron job (linux built-in scheduled tasks) with an existing cloud sharing service like Dropbox or Google Drive or literally anything else with a folder path.

First I would back-up everything manually, because Linux has fewer guard rails that prevent you from deleting all your files. 

Next write a script to copy over the files from the local steam save folders to the linux dropbox folder and save it as a file 'backup.sh' or whatever. I think the main path in Linux for the Dropbox is ~/Dropbox.
It would take some time to tinker to get the correct folder paths at first, but the script to copy the files would look something like this.

Code: [Select]

cp -rv path_to_source path_to_destination/
Once it works manually (i.e. files are copied from the source to the destination) it is time to automate. The v should show progress.

The next step would be to automate this by running it as a cron job every day at midnight or every hour or whatever interval works. Every half hour maybe.

Code: [Select]

30 * * * * /root/backup_to_dropbox.sh
Now that this works I want to prevent copying older saves over newer ones. So I adapt my script to:

Code: [Select]

yes|cp -ur path_to_source path_to_destinationThe -u checks if the file is newer than the destination file, the R includes subfolders.

Now I want to do it the other way around but probably with a different interval like at the top of the hour with another cronjob or simply 5 minutes after every reboot.

Code: [Select]

0 * * * * /root/load_from_dropbox.sh

Code: [Select]

@reboot sleep 300 && /root/load_from_dropbox.sh
The copy command should literally take (micro)seconds but dropbox might need some time to sync. But in this case older save files will be overwritten if newer ones are available on the dropbox.

Code: [Select]

yes|cp -ur path_to_destination path_to_source
In theory the hard part is done, the files are now available as a backup in Dropbox.
For Windows there's probably an add-on or button or whatever to sync with the steam folder.

Even easier might be a symlink, simply create a symlink folder in Linux between the steam save folder and the dropbox folder so Steam saves directly into Dropbox. This is more risky though.

Code: [Select]

ln -s ~/Dropbox/Steam ~/path_to_steam_saves

[bork]

I've refunded games that didn't have cloud support before.  It's super-annoying and inexcusable.

I picked up High On Life but haven't started it yet for this reason.  Will probably just play it on my laptop and not worry about the Steam Deck.

Another option is to just stream the game from your PC to the Steam Deck.  Shouldn't be a problem with Omori.

[Bebpo]

Nintex, appreciate the detailed scripting, but I think the bigger issue is just finding the damn saves on Linux on the deck. Just a pain in the ass. Why the fuck did videogames on PC stop just putting saves in the game directory under a folder called SAVES? This whole user/appdata/localraw roaming/numbernumbernumber shit is the worst.

I've refunded games that didn't have cloud support before.  It's super-annoying and inexcusable.

I picked up High On Life but haven't started it yet for this reason.  Will probably just play it on my laptop and not worry about the Steam Deck.

Another option is to just stream the game from your PC to the Steam Deck.  Shouldn't be a problem with Omori.

This is a good option, but some of these smaller indie games fuck up completely when trying to stream. Like the screen size will be totally off and I only see a quadrant of the screen and can't access options or anything and when I click in-game it ....takes me to my desktop with the game minimized?? A lot of stuff runs streaming just fine, but I swear indie stuff often gets bizarre and it's usually the same titles too small to support cloud saves.

Also wtf at Omori being $30 on Switch! I thought this was a $10-15 indie game. Will just play it on my pc someday, but between not being able to play it on the deck and it being 30 hours long, despite Tasty's nonstop love for the game, I think it's gonna sit in the backlog a while longer.

[Tasty]

Honestly, it is surprising there's no universal ~/.saves directory.

[bork]

Bebpo, why not just play Omori on the Steam Deck?  If you want to play it on a TV or monitor, you can still do that too.

[Bebpo]

Bebpo, why not just play Omori on the Steam Deck?  If you want to play it on a TV or monitor, you can still do that too.

Some games on deck end up running into issues later on (i.e. game breaking ones where you can't progress) and then would need to finish it on PC. For a few hour game it's not a concern, but for a 30 hour one it is.

[Tasty]

Played Omori on Windows and Linux using Proton pre-Deck and never had any issues.

Had some slight visual glitches with the Switch launch version but it's had some patches since then.

[Polident Hive]

Don’t entirely grasp what Proton is and the various versions and the great benefit here is I don’t really need to. It’s all dumbified in the OS for me. But as is the nature of PC games, linux gets tripped up with fan patches and mods. Sometimes an executable issue. Sometimes a path issue. If Windows support ever matures on deck, I’ll switch over. As far as the vanilla experience, Linux has been mostly painless.

[Bebpo]

Btw, I can't use the trackpad on the right-side worth shit. It keeps going where I don't want it. Is there some way to calibrate it?

Additionally, where do you go in Linux to sync a BT mouse and keyboard to your deck? Using the trackpand and OSD virtual keyboard is miserable for trying to learn how to navigate an OS you're not used to for the first time. Really is one of the main reasons putting me off messing with stuff in desktop mode and trying to learn Linux.

[Joe Molotov]

Can't you just sync Bluetooth devices from the settings in Gaming Mode? I didn't think any Linux BS was required for that. Although so far the extent of my fiddling with settings has been installing Proton-GE and dropping the refresh rate to 40hz on some games to get more battery life.

[bork]

Btw, I can't use the trackpad on the right-side worth shit. It keeps going where I don't want it. Is there some way to calibrate it?

Additionally, where do you go in Linux to sync a BT mouse and keyboard to your deck? Using the trackpand and OSD virtual keyboard is miserable for trying to learn how to navigate an OS you're not used to for the first time. Really is one of the main reasons putting me off messing with stuff in desktop mode and trying to learn Linux.

You can remap the controls to make things easier.  Just remember that for this to work in desktop mode, Steam needs to be running.

[Bebpo]

Yeah, good point that you can probably sync BT controllers within the deck OS without going to the Linux desktop since Steam has controller support.

I do think the weakest part of the Steam Deck are the trackpads. Either I just got a defective unit, or I hold/use them incorrectly, or it's impossible to use for gaming and the trackpads take up a huge chunk of space on the system. I get frustrated pretty quickly if I ever have to use the trackpads for anything on Deck.

[Polident Hive]

I like the trackpads and have since the Steam controller (These are much better than those). I’ll say I haven’t found a personal use case for the left trackpad. What I noticed is people use it as a macro shortcut with the little radial steam overlay. Take an old FPS without controller support, you map the number row to it. Less a primary input.

More I use this, more I’m assured it has enough power for my personal use cases. Any PC game I threw at it has been ideal. Not looking to play modern games and haven’t resorted to 40hz. Mainly Xbox 360 era titles and some smaller scale games.

Emulation end, the hang ups are software. Largely, to me, emulation is nostalgia fare. Of everything PS2 and GameCube I tried, only Outrun 2 SP PS2 had slowdown issues. Never though Xbox would be on the table, but once the software matures, it’s viable. As is Spikeout plays perfectly. JSRF, NGB, Otogis are almost there. Likewise with PS3. After Burner Climax is already perfect. Everything I was using my Pi4 for, I can do on this with higher accuracy emulators and other enhancements. Arcade emulation can go up to and past model 3 now. Systems like 3DS, Switch, Xbox 360, Wii U, and even Vita are progressing. Not personally interested in those.

[Pissy F Benny]

The switch version of crisis core is by and large fine via emulation

Only game I've had problems with is Gran Turismo 4, which runs like shit on certain events. Dunno if there's any in pscx2 fixes that will solve it, I never delved that deep into it.

[Polident Hive]

I read some emulated games benefit from installing powertools and changing cores and clock speeds. Something like that. Not interested in getting that deep into it.

Most in the weeds I got with an emulator here is duckstation ps1. Made my own shortcuts to toggle overclocking and all that. I’m not smart enough to know why a 5x overclock makes some games run 5x faster, but fixes frame rate issues in others.

[Pissy F Benny]

Powertools is essential for smoothing out some (later?) games, it doesn't take much fiddling around to use. You can keep your manual clock speed settings for emulation station if you click by game profiles when changing in the steam interface (it classes emustation as one game/app) so no more fiddling with that at least.

[Pissy F Benny]

lol actually bothered googling gt4 on deck and may have found a solution

[Polident Hive]

Powertools is helpful, and somewhat have a grasp on changing GPU clock to boost CPU heavy tasks.

Partly feel I should cut my losses on PS3. Some games run perfectly. Ridge Racer 7, Harmony of Dissonance, After Burner Climax, Skate 3. Just gets worryingly loud with the fan trying (and failing) to keep temps reasonable. Authentic to noises my PS3 fat made, but there’s plenty else to play.

That aside, light gun shooters play great on this. Either with the touchpad or gyro controls. I had this idea of using an air mouse and possibly upgrading to those camera light guns. But pretty pleased with playing it on the steam deck itself.

[Coax]

Framework (the laptop makers) are now selling 2TB SSDs for the Steam Deck in its 2230 size m.2 form factor.

Unlike the 2280-sized M.2 SSDs that the Framework Laptop uses, the handheld Steam Deck relies on the physically smaller but less common 2230 format. As a result, it can be difficult to find legitimate sources for larger capacity drives like 2TB ones...

Since we order a huge number of Western Digital drives already, it’s relatively easy for us to add one more line item and stock 2TB SN740 2230 ones

Store link. Announcement.

[pilonv1]

Finally got one of these on grey import and it's amazing.

Have a 1TB SSD coming, which I need because Wreckfest is taking up 90% of my available space

[Uncle]

this is worth watching and trying out, it's very easy and has noticeable improvements:



the guy explains what his utility does very clearly and sensibly, great tool

[Pissy F Benny]

I'll have a look tomorrow 

[pilonv1]

[Polident Hive]

10% off all models for the steam sale ($359 / $476 / $584)

Unfortunately doesn’t apply to the dock.

[Pissy F Benny]

Is the official dock even worth it? I use a jsaux one i got for about 1/3 of the price of the official valve dock and its perfectly fine.

[Polident Hive]

Probably not. It’s pricier than it needs to be from the usb c charger packed in. Compared to third party docks, it gets firmware updates from valve.

I use a cheap anker usb c hub without issue.

[D3RANG3D]

[Eel O'Brian]

You know what would be cool? If they took some of this Steam Deck money AND FIXED THEIR FUCKING SERVERS. 3.5 hours for a 60gb game, jfc

[Polident Hive]

On a similar note, wish games continued that very brief trend of separating high res textures or multiplayer modes into different downloads.

Eventually I will need to upgrade the SSD or buy an overpriced 1tb micro sd.

[Eel O'Brian]

Fuck this shader precache bullshit, every time I turn this fucking thing on every game has to update at the speed of molasses in winter and chew up more SSD space. I'm about a rat's asshair away from just wiping this thing and installing a debloated Windows.

[bork]

Fuck this shader precache bullshit, every time I turn this fucking thing on every game has to update at the speed of molasses in winter and chew up more SSD space. I'm about a rat's asshair away from just wiping this thing and installing a debloated Windows.

It's annoying, but it usually completes pretty quickly for me- why don't you leave it on and let it sleep instead?  Happens way less that way.

[Eel O'Brian]

Nah, I'm not going to leave a piece of electronics running all the time just because Valve can't get their shit together. On a related note, after spending the last half hour trying to get The Division (marked as playable, btw) running because their garbage Uplay won't update to Ubisoft Connect, I've come to the conclusion that I hope their money troubles continue and they go out of business.

[Nintex]

Whoever came up with shader caching should be loaded into a cannon and shot into the sun.

With that said I'm playing YS I and Hatsune Miku on the Deck and no caching issues. I do feel like games boot slower than they did around launch.

[Eel O'Brian]

What possesses people to lie about the performance of games on this thing? You'll be watching some YouTube video and the dude will say the game is maintaining a solid 60 and I mean, dude, I can see the fps counter bouncing all over the place and the frametime graph line jittering like it has arrhythmia right there in your video. People on protondb do this type of shit as well sometimes. Also Valve needs to start clamping down on Verified ratings instead of just handing them out like candy just to boost their numbers. For instance Valheim runs like pure dogshit no matter what you do, imo it shouldn't even be listed as playable, that shit will drop into the teens sometimes. I like this thing and think it's worth the money I paid but I'm not going to pretend it's perfect and handwave away legitimate criticisms and problems.

[bork]

Nah, I'm not going to leave a piece of electronics running all the time just because Valve can't get their shit together.

But it's made to be left on and in standby- it puts itself into a low power state with minimal battery drain. Do you turn all your game consoles, PCs, tablets, phone, etc. off when you're not using them, too?  I don't see a reason to keep turning this thing off/on unless you're not going to be using it for a few days or longer and want to maximize the battery drain.  Even then I think it drains at 10% the most, daily, when left in standby and not plugged in.  They even have a setting for long-term storage to help preserve the battery even longer that can be enabled if you're not going to use it for a while.

What possesses people to lie about the performance of games on this thing? You'll be watching some YouTube video and the dude will say the game is maintaining a solid 60 and I mean, dude, I can see the fps counter bouncing all over the place and the frametime graph line jittering like it has arrhythmia right there in your video. People on protondb do this type of shit as well sometimes. Also Valve needs to start clamping down on Verified ratings instead of just handing them out like candy just to boost their numbers. For instance Valheim runs like pure dogshit no matter what you do, imo it shouldn't even be listed as playable, that shit will drop into the teens sometimes. I like this thing and think it's worth the money I paid but I'm not going to pretend it's perfect and handwave away legitimate criticisms and problems.

I haven't seen this but if I saw someone claiming that, I'd stop watching their videos.  I dunno about Valheim but what about running it at 40hz/40 fps?  That has been my go-to for any 3D game that doesn't need to be 60 FPS (like say, a fighting game) and it works great for most games.

Does Valheim run like shit all over the game world or only in select spots?  It seems all right in this video.



But I know what you're talking about here.  I've been looking for a small form factor PC to use for more than just games and was very interested in the Asus Flow Z13.  Saw it had decent performance but this was complete bullshit when I got it and even older handhelds like the Win 3 destroyed it.   The 2023 model out now appears to actually be good, but if not back to the Amazon it goes.  I cant tell if the videos I watched on it were overhyping the performance because they were sponsored or given it by the company or if they were just fanboys, but the end result is the same.

[Eel O'Brian]

Yeah, that's a misleading video, he's still in the starting area and really hasn't started building or fighting anything yet. Even then it's dropping into the 30s at certain points. Once you start building out a base or exploring more populated/graphically intense areas you can't get a consistent fps in Valheim on Steam Deck even at lowest settings, it struggles to maintain 30fps for any length of time and spikes all over the place even with sidebar adjustments. It really stretches the definition of playable. That's not necessarily a Steam Deck flaw, it's just a poorly optimized game in general, you will see huge drops and stutters even on beefy rigs. I just fell for some, let's say overly optimistic reports on the game's SD performance.

[Nintex]

Steamdeck's VRR helps a lot to make it look 'smoother' in demanding games but there are limits to what it can do.
The 'Verified' status is still strange. Hatsune Miku isn't verified but runs perfect, while some games that are verified still won't even boot.

In my experience it does well in games that already scale on consoles and have a somewhat low memory footrpint like Elden Ring.
Games that require a lot of memory or are very demanding for CPU's don't run as well.

It also crashes more on average than a Switch or Xbox.
Overall though I'm really impressed at how it runs games from 1998 all the way to 2023.

[Uncle]

maybe I'm stupid or doing something wrong but in my experience the Deck doesn't download anything in sleep mode?

I hit the power button and I watch it wake up and reconnect to wifi and queue up dozens of updates

if I use it once a day I only have a few updates each day, but if I don't use it for a month and take it out of sleep, it has to update everything at once and takes a long time

[bork]

maybe I'm stupid or doing something wrong but in my experience the Deck doesn't download anything in sleep mode?

I hit the power button and I watch it wake up and reconnect to wifi and queue up dozens of updates

if I use it once a day I only have a few updates each day, but if I don't use it for a month and take it out of sleep, it has to update everything at once and takes a long time

It doesn't have this option for whatever reason. 

[Joe Molotov]

if I use it once a day I only have a few updates each day, but if I don't use it for a month and take it out of sleep, it has to update everything at once and takes a long time

Pro Tip: Use it every day.

[Eel O'Brian]

I'm on a hate crusade against companies adding unnecessary bullshit launchers to games well after release. You can't even launch Witcher 3 (verified, btw) from game mode on a new install since they patched in their launcher, you have to go into desktop mode and launch it from there the first time. How old is this fucking game? Why does it need a launcher now? It doesn't. And the launcher does absolutely fucking nothing except be an extra hassle, it's just there to be there. I left a negative review even though it's petty and will amount to nothing, because every time a company does this shit it fucks something up and adds nothing to the experience. Ubisoft can go fuck themselves too for adding launchers to 10+ years old games.

[pilonv1]

I'm surprised how well games from the EA app run once you get them set up. Installed it to play F1 22 via Game Pass since there's no way I'm game streaming that, and it's pretty seamless.

[bork]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/half-life-alyx/steam-deck-no-vr

[Polident Hive]

After reading concerns about offline mode with steamos, expected a headache playing it on a plane and stuff. Been fine? When I had the first GPD Win I kept to DRM free games, not that it could handle (then) modern PC games.

Also saw and used an aya neo air. It’s dramatically smaller than the deck. Like a fat switch mini. But within a few moments, yeah, got the sense it won’t be great to hold after 30 minutes. Different appeals. For my use case, the deck having controller ergonomics trumps portability.

[bork]

Proton 8 fixes issues with a number of Koei Tecmo games. Looks like the movies now work with full sound. Unfortunately, Samurai Warriors 5 is not one of them. It does now run with the movies working correctly but the game stutters and doesn't run very well. Back to the old proton for that one.

[Pissy F Benny]

GE Proton seems way better than the official version if you haven't tried that.

[bork]

GE Proton seems way better than the official version if you haven't tried that.

Definitely very familiar with it. That's what I've been using.

[Polident Hive]

I’m not smart enough to understand why, but the latest update 3.5 fixed some SMT issue or something. But as a result, it’s running cooler, quieter, giving better performance, and more power efficient with emulation. Battery estimates are adding an hour or more.