Steam Deck (handheld from Valve) - shipping is 4-8 days from NL to UK

[Popo]

20 minutes ago, sbrandon111 said:

So for emulation, can I just fill a sd card with roms and pop it in the deck (after installing emudeck), or do I need to format the sd in the deck first? And if I do, will my pc read it to allow me to transfer the roms on to the sd?

The card needs formatting first, otherwise Emudeck won’t even see it, and consequently won’t allow you to select it as an install directory. 
 

I just checked and Windows did not appear to recognise the file format of the card, I’m sorry to say. 

[Flanders]

I have essentially turned my Deck into a portable PS2 now. It’s made me totally baffled as to what Sony were trying to do with the Vita - instead of pursuing PS3-parity games and failing they could have just ported the entire PS2 library and tarted it up into HD, which combined with the great indies the Vita had would have made it a much more compelling offering. 

 

So many of these PS2 classics are just perfect for handheld. And even the more spectacle-y ones look great on a decent screen. 

[Paulando]

I bought another app for my Mac so it could read and write to the EXF4 format card. Tried the WiFi transfer method but I just prefer transferring directly to card, especially with PS2 games that are several gigabytes. Just start the copy and return a few hours later.

[Paulando]

2 minutes ago, Flanders said:

I have essentially turned my Deck into a portable PS2 now. It’s made me totally baffled as to what Sony were trying to do with the Vita - instead of pursuing PS3-parity games and failing they could have just ported the entire PS2 library and tarted it up into HD, which combined with the great indies the Vita had would have made it a much more compelling offering. 

 

So many of these PS2 classics are just perfect for handheld. And even the more spectacle-y ones look great on a decent screen. 

Any recommendations?

 

I don’t have a huge fondness for the PS2 - picked one up late in its life, and I’ve found most of the big games I wanted to play have since been ported or re-released in HD. I’ve put the Burnouts, NFS: Underground and SSX3 on there, but I’d like to check out some more.

[deerokus]

Avoiding games that have been released elsewhere since, Suikoden V if you like JRPGs.

[yakumo]

2 hours ago, Siri said:

I didn't play my Steam Deck that much this week. The dream is dead.

 

  Hide contents

I had an ear infection since Friday before last, so I've been utterly miserable enough to not play a lot of games, full stop.

 

Also it's event week on a mobile gacha game, so any time I do play it's to gamble the money I saved on not buying indies full price

 

Hope you get better, had the flu 2 weeks ago and I felt terrible so you have my sympathy.

[Siri]

From reading reports on twitter (not sharing it, fuck that place), a lot of people at Day of the Devs are showing off their games on the Steam Deck, including Snufkin. Very cool.

 

Meanwhile, I've installed Fallout 4, presumably from contradicting brain worms. Was having problems getting it going, until I realised I didn't create a folder on the SD card*. I did that, and it sorted itself out.

 

Runs alright, actually. Put it on the 40hz mode as running everything on medium made the image a bit soft.

 

Spoiler

*before you ask, this isn't normally how the deck works. I moved all my shader cache to the SD card by creating a Symlink.

 

As a result, for every new SD card I use, I need to create a blank folder in the root called 'compatdata'. That then allows the symlink to actually work, and allow Steam to create all the WINE/shader cache shit in the SD card's folder for the games I have on that SD card and get on with it.

 

 

EDIT: oh yeah, forgot to mention. It looks like the issue I had with the touchpad after dropping the deck has.. sorted itself out? I'm not sure how exactly, but the start-up sound is no longer deep fried. Maybe the haptics still feel weak, but it was always the sound being off that was the worst thing, so I'm alright with that.

[Simmy]

Fallout 4 from a non- steam store right?

 

I only ask because I installed Fallout 4 from Steam and seem to recall it running smooth 60 with higher settings than medium in handheld mode.

 

If I've misunderstood then safely ignore.

[Siri]

27 minutes ago, Simmy said:

Fallout 4 from a non- steam store right?

 

I only ask because I installed Fallout 4 from Steam and seem to recall it running smooth 60 with higher settings than medium in handheld mode.

 

If I've misunderstood then safely ignore.

 

No, from Steam. I started off at 40hz from the jump based on recommendations from sharedeck, didn't like how medium settings looked, and ramped to something higher while keeping it at 40hz with no difference.

 

I haven't actually bothered with 60hz yet. I'll give it a go.

[ThePixelbarks]

I tried windows 11 this week

I tried windows 10 this week.

 

My overall review, don't.

 

A slightly longer review. It always feels like Steam/Windows/GamePass are constantly fighting each other. No gamepad support where there should be, the work arounds are buggy at the best of times, and completely inoperable at the worst. When docked, I lost a good 20 fps from games I normally play in desktop mode. There were really weird delays with initial loads on any gamepass game

 

Overall, just an unpleasant experience all round. But the few hours of Persona 5, natively loaded while in bed were good... once it got going.

 

But tonight:

[AlexM]

35 minutes ago, ThePixelbarks said:

I tried windows 11 this week

I tried windows 10 this week.

 

My overall review, don't.

 

A slightly longer review. It always feels like Steam/Windows/GamePass are constantly fighting each other. No gamepad support where there should be, the work arounds are buggy at the best of times, and completely inoperable at the worst. When docked, I lost a good 20 fps from games I normally play in desktop mode. There were really weird delays with initial loads on any gamepass game

 

Overall, just an unpleasant experience all round. But the few hours of Persona 5, natively loaded while in bed were good... once it got going.

 

But tonight:

5* for being thorough. I got as far as installing Win10 on an external SSD before I decided not to continue - Windows threw in a blue screen after resuming from sleep to confirm this decision. 

[BubbleFish]

On 05/11/2022 at 12:48, denisb said:

As someone who has never once played their switch handheld is it worth me getting one of these? I keep coming into the thread and the pull of something shiny is getting hard to resist .

 

id likely just dock it to tv im sure I’d be better getting yet another gaming laptop but being sensible isn’t an attribute I posses 

I never once used my Switch outside the dock and tbh I never used it that much at all.

 

The deck however is just wonderful. I play it handheld everyday. Games look fantastic and the actual unit genuinely comfortable to use for extended periods. 

[Indy @ S.E.]

Has anyone managed to switch profiles when using the Xbox Game Pass cloud streaming option?

 

I’ve got the boys account set up on the Xbox as a family member so he’s got his own saves on Forza 5 for example but I can’t seem to find an option to switch from my profile to his on either Edge or Chrome on the deck.

 

Any one sussed this out?

[Siri]

I've always thought it was clicking on the profile picture in the top right that lets you fuck around with accounts.

 

I don't switch accounts, mind. Just experience of putting up with Microsoft UI while trying to get into work emails.

[Indy @ S.E.]

Same, that’s the first place I looked as all their work related portals have a switch user option but I couldn’t see it.

Will see if it has the option when doing it on a regular PC browser in case there’s some Steam specific weirdness going on.

 

Edit: Doesn't allow me to change profile on the PC either so I guess this is a limitation of the service at the moment.

[Strafe]

 

 

 

Sonic Frontiers running on steam deck. It’s prone to stuttering and needs low settings to work but could one assume this is the sort of thing that could be patched out or modded down the line? I mean, it looks bad but it doesn’t look THAT bad.

 

 

Such is my love for the deck I still want to buy what is an ‘average’ rated game on a device it won’t run well on. What is wrong with me

[Gotters]

I’m all for encouraging software purchases @Strafe this guy may push you over the edge later today

 

 

I had that classic puzzle experience last night you only get with the great games, I was actually dreaming of a level I was stuck on in Patrick’s Parabox. I played about an hour yesterday and even the easier levels which you solve quickly had me muttering ‘oh that is so elegant’ so many times. It’s so well designed and clever.

[Strafe]

10 minutes ago, Gotters said:

I’m all for encouraging software purchases @Strafe this guy may push you over the edge later today

 

 

I had that classic puzzle experience last night you only get with the great games, I was actually dreaming of a level I was stuck on in Patrick’s Parabox. I played about an hour yesterday and even the easier levels which you solve quickly had me muttering ‘oh that is so elegant’ so many times. It’s so well designed and clever.

 

Hgggggnnnn

[Strafe]

I hope you’re happy with yourself, @Gotters

 

Spoiler

 

[yashiro]

A 20Gig Sonic game. What a world.

[Strafe]

Sonic Frontiers on Deck! 30 mins review by Strafe from the internet.
 

Using the settings from @Gotterspost I can confirm I got a stable 30fps. The game can run at 60fps but you get this flicker that you definitely don’t want.

 

The dynamic resolution can be quite aggressive in the open world zone, it reminds me of when Final Fantasy 7 remake came out on deck before I downloaded a mod to turn that shit off.

 

I am confident that we’ll see better performance in the next week or two. Sega are mad (well, they are anyway) releasing this without deck support so I’m sure they’ll work on it or probably just take the work of a modder who’s done it for them.

 

The good news is, I think the game (played about 30 minutes) is pretty good so far. I haven’t played a 3D sonic game since Sonic Adventure on my Japanese Dreamcast shortly after launch. Controls well, no camera issues THUS FAR and a good sensation of speed and great mobility so I don’t feel like I’m just pressing forward and being bounced around like the other 3D games looked like to me.

 

My main gripe is that there’s no in game option to delete the save file so I can start fresh on Thursday when I’ll have a chance to play it properly. I looked up how to delete save files from the steam deck and it looks a fucking nightmare and I gave up.

 

Music in the cyberspace levels has been great on the two I played. The open zone music is not bad at all but I’m not sure if it fits. I’ve skipped all the cutscenes (I’ll be going in proper on Thursday) so maybe it will work better with some context. Or not.

[Siri]

10 hours ago, Strafe said:

My main gripe is that there’s no in game option to delete the save file so I can start fresh on Thursday when I’ll have a chance to play it properly. I looked up how to delete save files from the steam deck and it looks a fucking nightmare and I gave up.

 

I'm guessing the main problem is Steam Cloud, instead of the Steam Deck itself - you can effectively wipe out all files that are created as part of the WINE prefix via 'Delete Proton Files',  but if Steam Cloud's active, it will just restore your saves. 

 

Without trying it myself, my best guess to start over would be:

 

- delete Proton files via the cog in the game page

- go to properties, turn off steam cloud

- start the game again, hopefully it will be a fresh game

- close game, re-enable Steam Cloud. It'll say there's a different file and you might overwrite old data. Do that.

 

The only thing you really need to be careful of is Denuvo - while there's no problem starting games with it, fucking around with Proton can count as an additional activation, and you only get five or so changes each time you start up a game before you're locked out for 24 hours.

[Strafe]

I turned off steam cloud for the game and tried to dig around in desktop mode for the save but it’s not filed in any sort of logical order.

 

Will have another poke around today!

[Siri]

Yeah, the folders themselves are named after the Steam ID of the game, not the actual name of the game itself. And then even at that point, you basically have to find it amongst all the folders, because that folder exists to pretend to be an entire windows directory.

 

Sonic Frontiers should be 1237320, as the store's entry is this: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1237320/Sonic_Frontiers/

 

Which is why it's a little bit better to just tell SteamOS to nuke the entire proton folder, because otherwise it's a bunch of sleuthing for the same purpose.

[Strafe]

So if I turn off steam cloud and then nuke the whole thing, which will presumably delete the entire game and need a reinstall (that fine) it will be fresh?

 

An idiots guide would be useful if you know and please direct me in the manner you might instruct a 6 year old!

[Siri]

1 hour ago, Strafe said:

So if I turn off steam cloud and then nuke the whole thing, which will presumably delete the entire game and need a reinstall (that fine) it will be fresh?

 

The problem lies in what you mean by 'the whole thing'. It sounds stupid, but that's kind of the fucked up thing about Proton - you can uninstall the game, but it retains the files outside of the game install, because it's in a different location. It's the reason why 64gb deck owners are crying - if you're not keeping tabs and doing the Steam Deck game testing shuffle, all your storage gets eaten up by files that aren't properly dealt with.

 

I would do the following:

 

- disable Steam Cloud. You've already done that, so that's good!

 

- go to the game page in SteamOS, click the cog. Select 'delete Proton files'. This clears all the background stuff first. Some games put their saves in some bullshit place like My Documents in Windows. This specifically nukes those sorts of saves, and will save on space.

 

- Try the game. If there's still an existing save, then it will likely be stored in the game files. You can either uninstall the game entirely (I wouldn't recommend it), or going into Steam on desktop mode, right clicking on the game and selecting 'browse local files'. That will take you into the actual game file directory - look for a save, and nuke it from there.

[Strafe]

I’m gonna give it a go, cheers @Siri!

[Siri]

TIL: the Steam Deck is kind of shit for my train journey.

 

Well, I really do mean my train journey - it's broken up so much that it just makes it a complete ballache to lug it around:

 

Spoiler

- 10 minute walk to the train station out in the open

- 15 min train journey

- 10 minute walk to get to the bus station out in the open

- 15 minute bus journey

- 5 minutes walk to work (and however long it takes to get a chicken fajita wrap from the food van)

 

I'm still going to take it to work when I'm driving in when I got a good 30 min lunch break to blast Fallout, but unless I'm going to London, a plane journey or getting a lift it's not going to be amazing.

 

I'd still definitely take it for hotel stays, though. Makes me wish I could afford more overseas holidays 

[bradigor]

It's worthless, you should give it away.

[Strafe]

I think it’s clear that the steam deck takes priority so you should move further away from work to have a longer train journey.