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

[Stanley]

You can buy every Steamworld game ever made and all their DLC’s for £15 right now, bargain. 

[Stejay]

Further to my playing Age of Empires 2 on the Deck query, I’ve just discovered, and I have no idea why either being a Mac only user for years, that I already own AoE 3. I’ve installed it on the Deck and it boots ok so I assume it all works. Is there any reason why therefore that I should still buy 2 whilst cheap, and play that instead?

 

I have no experience with these games and about which are the best in the series 

[Gotters]

All I gathered from reading comments on Steam was that 2 seems to be considered a classic and  some people take the view that 3 is a misunderstood classic in it's own rights, whereas others don't like 3

 

Having no clue about either can't offer an opinion myself, other than 2 is a far smaller install than 3 !

[Stejay]

Cheers. Sounds very similar to the Civ series then.

[T Pot]

4 hours ago, Stejay said:

Further to my playing Age of Empires 2 on the Deck query, I’ve just discovered, and I have no idea why either being a Mac only user for years, that I already own AoE 3. I’ve installed it on the Deck and it boots ok so I assume it all works. Is there any reason why therefore that I should still buy 2 whilst cheap, and play that instead?

 

I have no experience with these games and about which are the best in the series 

2 is the best in the series

[Gotters]

I've got almost 3h today into AoE2 and am not even out of the basic tutorials ! Done some of them twice to help make things stick as I'm a total noob to the genre, but quite enjoying pootling about so far. So much so I stumped up for AoE3 too in the sale as less than £4. 

 

Tried Rimworld today but just not for me, even the tutorials were losing me rapidly so hit the refund button very quickly on that. 

 

Had a little fiddle with Oxygen Not Included as well, interesting, looks nice and whilst still having a huge amount going on felt a little more accessible than Rimworld from the off, and only £7 in the sale so will stick with that for a bit. 

 

[bradigor]

Has anyone got or played They are Billions in the Deck? I really fancy it but could do with knowing how it handles? Also anyone who can tell me if any visual accessibility settings? UI scale, that sort of thing.

[Strafe]

As of this evening my steam deck has started throttling downloads. I’m getting max 4mbs. I usually get 50-60.
 

My internet is running fine and I haven’t changed any settings on my router or on my steam deck prior to the issue

 

I have:

 

- restarted my deck.

 

- Restarted my network

 

- Checked if it was a disk write speed thing (it isn’t, getting the same speed on internal HD and SD card).

 

- Put the download limit up to 100,000 (default is zero which is uncapped)

 

- Tried connecting to different data centre locations

 

None of these work. Any other options? Or has steam decided to cap the download speeds today and no one told me?

[Strafe]

7 hours ago, Strafe said:

As of this evening my steam deck has started throttling downloads. I’m getting max 4mbs. I usually get 50-60.
 

My internet is running fine and I haven’t changed any settings on my router or on my steam deck prior to the issue

 

I have:

 

- restarted my deck.

 

- Restarted my network

 

- Checked if it was a disk write speed thing (it isn’t, getting the same speed on internal HD and SD card).

 

- Put the download limit up to 100,000 (default is zero which is uncapped)

 

- Tried connecting to different data centre locations

 

None of these work. Any other options? Or has steam decided to cap the download speeds today and no one told me?

Annnddd it’s working properly again this morning at a healthy 75ish mbs. Thank you all for your support during this difficult time

[Stanley]

Did you get Forspoken running? 

[Strafe]

2 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Did you get Forspoken running? 

It’s downloading now! I didn’t want to leave it on overnight when the download was showing as having 15 hours to go.

[jonamok]

Steam was a bit borked for many people last night for a little while.

[Strafe]

52 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Did you get Forspoken running? 

I got it running. It looks awful, though still impressive. I managed to bump texture and model quality up which improved things a little though changing from preset ‘low’ to ‘ ‘medium’ settings crashed the game.

 

Unfortunately any changes to graphics means being booted back to the main menu so it’s tricky to do it on the fly to get a good handle on the effect of each change.

 

When this game goes down to £5 on cdkeys I could see myself picking it up when I was drunk.

[Stanley]

Are you getting 30fps with everything on low? Tbh it doesn’t look that great, with muddy textures, on PS5, and even on a 4090 it struggles with everything maxed out, and the textures are still poor. 

[deerokus]

I saw a screenshot of someone playing it on steam deck and it looked comically ugly. PS1 draw distance.

[Siri]

2 hours ago, jonamok said:

Steam was a bit borked for many people last night for a little while.

 

Doesn't Steam go down for maintenance every Tuesday? I normally don't notice it because it's usually 'merica time.

 

Anyway, it's my birthday tomorrow, so I've decided to push the boat out like a mad cunt and.. buy a dock. Just a cheapy JSAUX with the gigabit port, but something I can plonk the deck on so I can use a Saturn controller (or the Bluetooth 8bitdo m30).

 

I'm still expecting the docked experience to be dogshit, but there's plenty of games out there that are low rent to run and just plug and play. It'll help for downloads too while I'm not around to keep an eye on the machine as it gently balances on the side of the case it came in.

[Strafe]

2 hours ago, Stanley said:

Are you getting 30fps with everything on low? Tbh it doesn’t look that great, with muddy textures, on PS5, and even on a 4090 it struggles with everything maxed out, and the textures are still poor. 

I was getting 30fps* with everything on low bar textures and models upped to medium.

 

Regardless of that it’s not a very consistent 30fps, though shader compiling might also be affecting it.

 

But yeah, it looks like dirt and has no appeal beyond seeing just how bad everything has to look to make it run, perhaps in the same way you might slow down to check out a car crash.

The main character looks serviceable, trees are real N64 style, the sky looks like a flat jpeg posted in from MS Paint. 

*it’s a janky 30fps.

[Popo]

45 minutes ago, Siri said:

use a Saturn controller (or the Bluetooth 8bitdo m30).

 

If you get this working can you let me know how you got on?  I tried, only once, admittedly, and while it paired with the M30, the buttons didn't work.

 

Happy birthday. 

[Siri]

4 minutes ago, Popo said:

 

If you get this working can you let me know how you got on?  I tried, only once, admittedly, and while it paired with the M30, the buttons didn't work.

 

Happy birthday. 

 

Sure! I'll play around with the input modes - that always caught me with the SN30+ on the big computer.

[Stanley]

7 minutes ago, Strafe said:

I was getting 30fps* with everything on low bar textures and models upped to medium.

 

Regardless of that it’s not a very consistent 30fps, though shader compiling might also be affecting it.

 

But yeah, it looks like dirt and has no appeal beyond seeing just how bad everything has to look to make it run, perhaps in the same way you might slow down to check out a car crash.

The main character looks serviceable, trees are real N64 style, the sky looks like a flat jpeg posted in from MS Paint. 

*it’s a janky 30fps.

Doesn’t sound great, but I am pleased that it runs at all and could therefore perhaps be improved with time. 
 

I’m really hoping The Last Of Us Part 1 runs nicely, I’m nearing the end of my PS5 play through and it’s so good, still, after all these years. I’d happily double dip and, all fingers and toes crossed, Returnal. 

[Strafe]

In my uneducated opinion I reckon there is stuff Square Enix could do to get it running better on deck (and PC in general) but I strongly suspect it will tank and they won’t bother beyond more basic obligations.

[bradigor]

Is it a proper game? Or a live service to be shut down later in the year?

[Strafe]

It’s a proper single player thing.

[Gotters]

Mass Effect Legendary just got a playable tick (for text input and touch needed on launcher), it’s also on sale at £12

 

That seems a lot of game for the money, though falls foul of my new storage thinking.

 

It may be £12 of fun but is it 120gb of fun (see also Titanfall 2).

[Stanley]

43 minutes ago, Strafe said:

In my uneducated opinion I reckon there is stuff Square Enix could do to get it running better on deck (and PC in general) but I strongly suspect it will tank and they won’t bother beyond more basic obligations.

Yeah more likely that players themselves will come up with solutions, or at least ways of improving. 
 

In other news I am shocked how well Cloud Gaming works on Deck, it’s amazing. I needn’t had bothered buying Tunic, all I am glad I did actually. 

[bradigor]

23 minutes ago, Gotters said:

Mass Effect Legendary just got a playable tick (for text input and touch needed on launcher), it’s also on sale at £12

 

That seems a lot of game for the money, though falls foul of my new storage thinking.

 

It may be £12 of fun but is it 120gb of fun (see also Titanfall 2).

 

I am guessing a proton update fixed some issues with origin as lots of titles from EA the updated 

[Fry Crayola]

28 minutes ago, Gotters said:

It may be £12 of fun but is it 120gb of fun (see also Titanfall 2).

 

Titanfall 2 is definitely worth the install. And it's six beautiful hours, so you can reclaim that time when you're done.

[Stanley]

Do you have to install all of Mass Effect in one go? 

[thesnwmn]

36 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Do you have to install all of Mass Effect in one go? 

 

Yes. Yours for just 110Gb

[Stanley]

5 minutes ago, thesnwmn said:

 

Yes. Yours for just 110Gb

😬