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

[LaveDisco]

18 hours ago, deerokus said:

Half Life 2 on og Xbox was how I originally played it and I loved it, even at the time it had some performance problems for sure but it was a bit of a miracle port. I didn't own or know anyone with a pc remotely capable of playing it at the time.

that’s how I first played it too. I had a posh mate with a miracle pc, and HL2 felt like a game it would take me a decade to have something powerful enough to play, but then I bought a second hand xbox, and it blew me away. Played it on a duke controller too. 

 

EDIT: I watched about half of that DF Retro video about the Xbox and PS3 ports, and I know it was meant well, and I''m, sure they got more forgiving at the end, but It made me quite protective of the OG Xbox port - it was stunningly beautiful and a fantastic swan song for a brilliant, brilliant console. 

[JoeK]

I had a PC good enough to run HL2 at launch, and it was wonderful.

It didn't stop me from buying it on an Xbox just to see how well it ran, and quite honestly it was pretty fucking amazing at just how good it was. It covered all the bases remarkably well really!

[Stanley]

I bought it on PC, it was the first game I ever bought digitally, direct from Valve, sadly I’ve long forgotten the details of that account having not owned a gaming PC since then, well until now 

 

I bought the original Xbox version as well, and then The Orange Box on Xbox 360, and I still regularly play that version of Half Life 2 which received an excellent upgrade through enhanced backward compatibility. 
 

And today I bought Orange Box for Steam, back home where it belongs on PC  I can’t for the life of me get the motion control gyro aiming to work though, I can feel the motors/haptics when I move my Deck but it’s not affecting my aim at all. I’ve gone through some menus and it’s set to ‘on’ as default. Any ideas? 

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

I borrowed my brother's pc whilst he was away and bought the retail cd, which I still have. It still made me install steam and set up an account though, which I'm still using now.

 

Gonna have to watch that video later.

[Strafe]

34 minutes ago, Stanley said:

I bought it on PC, it was the first game I ever bought digitally, direct from Valve, sadly I’ve long forgotten the details of that account having not owned a gaming PC since then, well until now 

 

I bought the original Xbox version as well, and then The Orange Box on Xbox 360, and I still regularly play that version of Half Life 2 which received an excellent upgrade through enhanced backward compatibility. 
 

And today I bought Orange Box for Steam, back home where it belongs on PC  I can’t for the life of me get the motion control gyro aiming to work though, I can feel the motors/haptics when I move my Deck but it’s not affecting my aim at all. I’ve gone through some menus and it’s set to ‘on’ as default. Any ideas? 

You can turn it to off or ‘none’ under the controller settings on the game page in steam gaming mode. IIRC the gyro is enabled by capacitive touch on the thumbstick (ie gyros will only work if it detects your thumb on the stick

[Stanley]

1 hour ago, Strafe said:

You can turn it to off or ‘none’ under the controller settings on the game page in steam gaming mode. IIRC the gyro is enabled by capacitive touch on the thumbstick (ie gyros will only work if it detects your thumb on the stick

Yeah I’ve tried everything and like I say I can ‘feel’ it all moving when I move the console but it’s not doing anything on screen, you can have it always on which is the default, or like you say activated with touch on the stick or pad. I’ll try resetting the deck and seeing if that helps. M

 

edit. Fixed it. You need to choose community layout ‘Official SD config but fixed’ and the gyro now works when you touch the right stick. No idea why the official Valve version doesn’t work. 
 

It’s absolutely amazing, blows me away that I’m playing this on a handheld having spent a lot of money back in the day to get a top end PC for it. 

[bradigor]

I own 2106 games on Steam. I now want to change all of the capsule art to the white logo at the top of clean art.... That should keep me busy and a bit

[Strafe]

23 hours ago, deerokus said:

Half Life 2 on og Xbox was how I originally played it and I loved it, even at the time it had some performance problems for sure but it was a bit of a miracle port. I didn't own or know anyone with a pc remotely capable of playing it at the time.

Same, though I was unable to complete it because once you got to the citadel with the grav gun upgrade the game couldn’t handle it and kept crashing.

[Stanley]

1 minute ago, Strafe said:

Same, though I was unable to complete it because once you got to the citadel with the grav gun upgrade the game couldn’t handle it and kept crashing.

It crashed on the 360 too, seems to be fixed these days, but for a good few years it got me sometimes and I had to revert to a much older save, if I had one 😬

 

Don’t remember too much about the original Xbox port now, I quite fancy replaying it. 

[Strafe]

3 minutes ago, Stanley said:

 

Don’t remember too much about the original Xbox port now, I quite fancy replaying it. 

Imagine playing Half Life 2 but with a janky frame rate, low res textures and frequent crashing. It’s like that!

[Stanley]

35 minutes ago, Strafe said:

Imagine playing Half Life 2 but with a janky frame rate, low res textures and frequent crashing. It’s like that!

I am fascinated by these ports, like the version of Half Life 1 for Dreamcast which I believe was never released. I had the PS1 port of that and it was pretty rough tbh. 
 

Valve handled the Xbox port (of HL2) themselves according to that video. 
 

I seem to remember as well that you could only get like one or two antlions to to follow you on the Xbox version, as opposed to the four on PC and later console versions. That is about all I can remember. Didn’t it load more often? 

[Strafe]

Yeah, frequent load stutters. Don’t get me wrong, it was the only way I could play it too and I loved it at the time. Well, until my progress was gated by crashing.

[Stanley]

Sorry I meant PS2 port of Half Life, PS1 would have been something! 

[Strafe]

We’re talking about the Xbox version of HL2.

[Stanley]

Yeah I know, I was just correcting a typo in my previous post 

[Nathan Wind]

It didn’t really matter if games ran badly or looked worse on the format you had, because you were still playing them. And it was amazing. DOOM on SNES and Cannon Fodder on Atari ST really stand out in my mind. Yep, they were both inferior versions but god damn, if I wasn’t still getting to play two of the most amazing games ever, Amen.
 

That said, HL2 was the reason I bought my first ever dedicated graphics card, Xbox plebs lolololololol!

[Stanley]

That reminds me I need to get all the Doom games for Steam Deck, and, OMG, does Quake II run ok on this thing? 

[Nathan Wind]

I had my first experience of outright battery destruction today with Risk of Rain 2. It defaulted to high/ultra at 60fps so I just left it at that without giving it any thought since it ran mostly well. It emptied 75% of the battery in about an hour!

[yakumo]

6 minutes ago, Stanley said:

does Quake II run ok on this thing? 

https://www.protondb.com/search?q=quake 2

[Bobbi Champagne Jr]

22 hours ago, Popo said:

Do they? I have only really followed their weekly Direct podcast of late, and Deck doesn’t come up much, but they always seem positive about it when it does.

Yeah, they always seem incredibly positive about it. 

[Stejay]

7 hours ago, Gotters said:

Gone for a change of pace and trying something totally new to me, Age of Empires II. In the sale and people talk fondly of it, went for an older game as maybe something to cut my teeth on with a genre new to me.

 

Just going theu the tutorials and plays ok on this, up the HUD to 125% and seems legible.

Steam says this doesn’t work so I’ve never bothered. Does it need an faffing about to get it to launch?

[bradigor]

2 minutes ago, Stejay said:

Steam says this doesn’t work so I’ve never bothered. Does it need an faffing about to get it to launch?

 

Nope just a fiddle with a couple of in-game options to improve things (UI scale, v-sync off, etc) and I think I use a community controller profile too. Although hoping with a console release happening, they put those in the PC version too 

[thesnwmn]

6 minutes ago, Stejay said:

Steam says this doesn’t work so I’ve never bothered. Does it need an faffing about to get it to launch?

 

Depends what version you own...

 

https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Age of empires 2

 

The latest release is fine. The older Definitive Edition is unsupported but can be made to work.

 

Seriously, of anyone has a Steam Deck you need to be using ProtonDB. So much info.

[T Pot]

I’ve just had a hit of nostalgia with LGRs latest video. I need to get Monstertruck Madness running.

[Gotters]

16 minutes ago, Stejay said:

Steam says this doesn’t work so I’ve never bothered. Does it need an faffing about to get it to launch?

Just set compat to proton experimental

 

opening cinematic gives sound only but after that seems fine, and Protondb says no issues

 

and what @thesnwmn said, protondb more reliable than Steam for things playing on Deck

[T Pot]

28 minutes ago, Stejay said:

Steam says this doesn’t work so I’ve never bothered. Does it need an faffing about to get it to launch?

Age of Empires 2 works fine. I’ve played it plenty on my SD

[Zico]

10 hours ago, Stanley said:

Has anyone used PS5 remote play on their Deck using Chiaki? 

I've been using it to play God of war Ragnarok in my bed. I've not had any troubles once I set it up. 

[Dr_Dave]

16 minutes ago, T Pot said:

Age of Empires 2 works fine. I’ve played it plenty on my SD

 

We did a mini-LAN party at the weekend and played a tonne of AoE2, with me on SteamDeck. Worked great, though had to set it to Proton GE to stop the SteamDeck causing sync issues in the game.

 

(also - it will never stop being bewildering that a Linux handheld can hold its own at a LAN party with "real" Windows gaming PCs!)

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

I've been on a bit of a metroidvania binge recently, so bought Steamworld Dig 2, Blasphemous and Ori and the Blind Forest for under a tenner.

 

Out of interest, I tried to find these games at the cheapest price for Switch and they would have cost £54.

[MagicalDrop]

6 hours ago, Opinionated Ham Scarecrow said:

Out of interest, I tried to find these games at the cheapest price for Switch and they would have cost £54.

 

Although if you'd have bought them in the sales you'd have paid less than £15.