Bought the device a few days ago and wanted to share the experience of running a Bevy game on it. I developing an open source life simulation game called Project Harmonia. The game is at the prototype stage: you can build walls, place objects and move around, but no no actual gameplay loop.

Bevy engine supports it natively since it's just a regular x86 with GNU/Linux. So nothing special was needed! I compiled the game via Cargo and it works.

The game runs great. I get stable 90 FPS (90Hz is the refresh rate of the device) consuming only 13.1 W. The UI is a little big and controls aren't adapted well for gamepads, but I will fix it later.

The console itself is also a nice machine for development. Next I will write about the setup I use.

As you may know, it runs SteamOS with KDE and based on ArchLinux.

Packages mostly mirror official ArchLinux repositories, but there are some additions and everything is compiled by Valve. So you can even install SuperTuxKart or GNOME 😃

Another difference from vanilla ArchLinux is immutable file system. You can make it writable via a single command in terminal, but each update wipes all changes made to the system. Home directory remains untouched.

Because of the immutable filesystem, I decided to try Flatpak. It installs packages into the user's home directory. Therefore, such apps won't be removed after an update.

But I faced some limitations due to containerization. For example, the Firefox extension for KeePassXC does not work because apps can't interact with each other. And it's not suited for installing stuff like compilers or libraries. So I decided to explore other options.

Next, I tried to create a script that I planned to run after each update. It installs all the packages I need through the system package manager.

But packages on SteamOS are older then in Archlinux. For example, Neovim on SteamOS is 0.9, but on ArchLinux it's 0.10, so I had to downgrade my configuration. And it causes incompatibilities with AUR. For example, I couldn't install Crow Translate because of it.

Another problem with such script is that Valve nuked /usr/include directory to free space. All packages are present, but the folder is missing. It makes sense for a gaming device, but I need it to compile packages from AUR.

It can be solved by reinstalling all packages that put files into /usr/include. But it causes another problem 😃 Allocated space for / is limited and you quickly run out of space after restoring headers and installing a couple of packages.

Then I decided to try Distrobox. It creates containers that tightly integrated with the host system. It even comes pre-installed on the Steam Deck.

And I like it a lot! It is very easy to use and combines the advantages of both approaches. All packages will persist across updates and I have access to all packages that I have on my regular PC. Graphical apps look native and can interact with each other.

The game on photos was compiled on the Steam Deck 🥰

Now that my Steam Deck LCD has been relieved of his duties as a daily driver desktop PC, I finally went ahead and replaced the Delta fan with a Huaying one. It turned out to be relatively easy to do ; and lo and behold, it is indeed quieter.

Recent adopters may or may not know there was a medium-sized kerfuffle about disparities in noise profiles of early Steam Deck units. It was proved and narrowed down to a difference between 2 fan models (see Gamers Nexus detailed analysis).

Obviously the one I got was a "bad" one, emitting a high pitched noise when running at full speed. I did not find it unbearable but it was still not ideal, particularly when using the SD in quiet environments.

Took me 2 years to get to the point where I figured it was an acceptable risk to attempt the replacement. How many of you did the same and kicked the Delta out of your unit ?

Source: https://x.com/OnDeck/status/1797695554891481455

Title. It seems excessive. Even when I fully power it down it tends to drop a lot more than I'd expect.

Thanks.

I recently received a Steam Deck and I love it!

I also planning to use it for development. On my PC I get used to Fish shell and usually use it instead of Bash. I can install it on Steam Deck and set it to the default shell, but after a system update it will be wiped. I can create a script and run it after each update, will I be able to login if my user points to /usr/bin/fish that doesn't exist in the system?..

I was wondering how much you are using your Steam Deck? And did the games you play on it change since you bought it?

I find that I used it a lot when I first got it, but my usage has gone down in the mean time. That's mostly because I play games that are not a great fit for the Steam Deck (strategy, building, etc.) and I prefer to play those on my PC.

https://x.com/Capcom_amuse/status/1796372401044996564

https://www.capcom.co.jp/amusement/game/event/6steam_deck.html

The company who's handling the port is the same company that ported the previous God of War. That one ran pretty well on the deck (other than a memory leak requiring a larger swap file in some cases), so I'm hoping this one will run acceptable with the addition of FSR.

I've had nothing but issues with it. I got it to work once, and now it simply refuses to work ever again. It just crashes immediately. What the hell am I doing wrong?

According to some data mining from the guy who runs SteamDB:

Steam is still working on clip recording. It supports background recording, includes timeline markers in supported games for various events.

Clips can be shared similar to screenshots, via the Steam community.

We don't actually have any proof that this will be coming to Steam Deck yet, but I'm pretty optimistic that it would.

I recommend clicking through to the article, it has several screenshots showing how the feature will look.

Steam Deck Specific changes:

• Show battery information for connected Bluetooth devices under Settings->Bluetooth and in the Quick Access menu.
• Added a per-device toggle to Settings->Bluetooth that controls whether a device is allowed to wake Steam Deck from sleep.
• Fixed a bug that would cause the UI to show stale data for Bluetooth devices.

Rest of the changelog is here and is mostly desktop client improvements

A couple games popped up on my Steam wishlist at really low prices so I was thinking of getting them, but I’ve also had a few older computers recently that are losing Steam client support. This got me thinking I should really try to compare and get more games on GOG so it doesn’t matter if a client stops working on older hardware. But also following this community has had me thinking a Steam Deck makes a lot of sense for me, so maybe I’ll try to get one in the next year or two. It seems like Steam tries to keep things open to other sources on the device, but have you been playing non-Steam games, and how much hassle has it been?

Also the games I was considering are Donut County and Planet Coaster, if you have any thoughts on those.

This is a developer Q&A session with Steam Deck HQ. It specifically covers a lot of questions about what was involved in getting the game running well on Steam Deck.

The game seems to downscale and blur all textures, so the only thing that looks sharp is text and 3d models. Unfortunately some of the UI text seems to actually be a rendered texture, so the text of some UI elements can look blurry and pixelated. It also seems that the blurring is a live process, not a preprocess. This means that a lot of the UI elements are constantly flickering on top of being blurry.

Overall I love the game FWIW. I picked it up this week and love the gameplay loop. I'm just amazed it gets the green checkmark despite having such glaring UI issues with the default graphics settings (which are ostensibly tailored to the Deck)

Can anyone tell me if this can be fixed?

Edit: I had half-rate shading turned on and didn't realize it. I'm an idiot.

This is just talking about games approved through Valve's verification process. There are a lot of games that work that are "unverified", not to mention the entire history of gaming available through emulation.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/21835717