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

[bradigor]

1 hour ago, Gotters said:

I like Noita a lot, bastard hard and clearly hates the player but just fun to noodle about in and watch the physics.

 

In a similar but more accessible style is my £1.09p code shop game of the day Wildfire (also available via Humble choice library free) - quite clever stealth/platform/puzzler which is not about just jumping thru levels, you have to plan your use of the environments a bit and can't just steam in full tilt. 

 

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/431940/Wildfire/

 

I backed this on KS years back. Turned out pretty nice.

[simms]

I have a spare code for The Long Dark: Survival Edition.  Let me know if anyone wants it.  I think its deck verified

[TheShend]

Before I begin tucking into Disgaea 5 as a lamb to the Steam Deck fold, is the Xbox GamePass workaround a complete ball ache or worth it?

[Stanley]

1 hour ago, TheShend said:

Before I begin tucking into Disgaea 5 as a lamb to the Steam Deck fold, is the Xbox GamePass workaround a complete ball ache or worth it?

For Xcloud do you mean? I think it works really well and definitely worth it - follow the instructions direct from Microsoft, I messed up a bit at first but I haven’t a clue about PC stuff, took me about half an hour to get it all sorted, but I would definitely consider hooking up a keyboard mouse if possible as it makes things a lot easier. 

[Siri]

I know I'm not one to talk about things being complex because of my posts in this thread, but if you've got a spare half an hour to follow a guide it's fairly easy to get XCloud working and it's a decent experience on home wifi.

 

And, well, it's free to try. If you think it's crap, you can buy the game and you get the benefit of playing it without an internet connection. If you like it, it's a few bob saved.

 

That you can spend on Pizza Tower.

 

[Stejay]

I've asked in the retro folder, but asking again here with the extra traffic.

 

I've only just started to dip my toes into EmuDeck on my Vampire Survivors Player.  Other systems I've tried so seem fine, but can anyone tell me while I'm getting duplicates of PSP games appear please?

 

And how do multi-disk games work?  I fancy some Twin Snakes action.

[Lorfarius]

3 minutes ago, Stejay said:

I've asked in the retro folder, but asking again here with the extra traffic.

 

I've only just started to dip my toes into EmuDek on my Vampire Survivors Player.  Other systems I've tried so seem fine, but can anyone tell me while I'm getting duplicates of PSP games appear please?

 

And how do multi-disk games work?  I fancy some Twin Snakes action.

 

Might be worth asking in the Retro folder Steam deck thread.

[Stejay]

I did, on Sunday.  As mentioned in my post.

 

Apologies if anyone is offended by my asking here as well.

[Stanley]

I’ve eschewed emulation for now because tbh, apart from the odd GameCube classic, I don’t really feel the need for it with the wealth of what’s already available on the Deck.

 

I absolutely frickin’ adore this machine 

[bradigor]

Multi disc games (infact all disc games) I would suggest creating an m3u file and tell whatever frontend you used to only look for m3u format files. 

 

Not sure on the PSP issues, can you show some images of what is happening

[Siri]

Regarding the multiple PSP thing, My guess without seeing what's actually happening is that either the scraper is seeing two file formats at the same time which are in the same folder (like, idk, FFT.eboot and FFT.pbp I guess), and as a result making two entries - or you have two scrapers on for different emulators.

 

Have a look at what Steam ROM Manager is doing for PSP games. If there's more than one file extension, remove them in the field to the one file extension you know works when you press play on it. If there's multiple scrapers (I doubt this, as PPSSPP is really the only emulator worth a shit for PSP), turn it off.

 

And play Pizza Tower.

[Gotters]

On 31/01/2023 at 08:35, bradigor said:

After completing The Last Campfire (it's wonderful and you should play it)

 

looks lovely, and is only £2 on Humble at the moment.

 

I couldn't resist Super MagBot either for 90p via a key store, interesting platformer with no jump button but you use magnets to attract/repel your character - feels a bit tricky but hard to complain at the price

 

[bradigor]

Yeah it's pretty good and one I need to finish

[Stanley]

Noita is immense. I have little idea what I’m doing but I love the nature of the chemistry interacting with the pixels, feels very unique. Hard as fuck. Find it’s fine with the pad too. 

[Gotters]

2 hours ago, Stanley said:

Noita is immense. I have little idea what I’m doing but I love the nature of the chemistry interacting with the pixels, feels very unique. Hard as fuck. Find it’s fine with the pad too. 

 

seems like how I feel about it too, I'm not one for mods much but there is a simple one which lets you edit your wand spells at any time, not just at the end of level safe areas, apparently the game started like this then switched it. means if you constantly die in the first caves you can at least experiment with the wand spell casting options a lot more

 

I said in the Noita thread it somehow feels organic as stuff burns, drips and interacts - it's so clever, probably too clever, would love to see the systems/engine used in something a little more accessible.

[Siri]

Alright, after talking about buying Pizza Tower without actually playing it, I found the demo for Pizza Tower and played Pizza Tower.

 

https://pizzatowerguy.itch.io/pizza-tower-demo

 

Again, I have no experience in Wario Land games. Apparently it's a homage instead of a straight clone, but I wouldn't know.

 

What I do know after playing it is that it's pretty great. The rough Cartoon Network visuals look fantastic in motion, and it's so fucking fast for a precision platformer.

 

Apparently, there's a pricing error on the full game because the regional discount thing messed up and they can't change it for a month, but I'm going to blast through the whole demo this evening and just chuck money at the developers anyway.

[Gotters]

I looked at that Pizza Tower game and know they namecheck Wario but looks as much like a Sonic game to me, which is always a hard pass, hated them since the Megadrive days !

 

The Last Campfire is teeth achingly twee, it's OK I guess but feels like something an arts council subsidised from the EU or Quebec and a team of 75 spent 7y developing it.

[TheShend]

22 hours ago, Stanley said:

For Xcloud do you mean? I think it works really well and definitely worth it - follow the instructions direct from Microsoft, I messed up a bit at first but I haven’t a clue about PC stuff, took me about half an hour to get it all sorted, but I would definitely consider hooking up a keyboard mouse if possible as it makes things a lot easier. 

 

Ta.

 

I did like @Siri suggested and sat down with it for a spell but couldn't use keyboard and mouse. A couple of small errors slowly corrected finally got it up and running. All the games I will actually play now!

[Siri]

Yeah, I didn't use KBM to set up XCloud either. I found it easy enough, outside of fluffing the spacing somewhere and all I needed to do was copy the thing exactly as it was presented instead of being clever.

 

In other news, I found out today that a Steam Next Fest is going to happen next week! Very exciting, I love downloading a bunch of brand new games to demo. Scratches that 90s demo disk itch.

[T Pot]

On 27/01/2023 at 15:07, Wiper said:

 

I mean, it's pretty poor as far as portable games machines go — 4 hours in a best-case scenario puts it on a par with a Switch (which is itself correctly recognised as having too short a lifespan), except that the Switch's worst-case scenario is over 3 hours, whereas the Deck drops to around 1.5 hours for more challenging/unthrottled games.

Depends what you’re playing. I’ve been hitting 6-8 hours in some games recently (best case obviously)

[Siri]

2 minutes ago, T Pot said:

Depends what you’re playing. I’ve been hitting 6-8 hours in some games recently (best case obviously)

 

Yep, 2D and older 3D stuff that's native to PC (not really post-Dreamcast emulation) definitely chugs along for 6+ hours. I think it was showing 8 hours for PSO Blue Burst

 

And while games can run down the battery in an hour and a half, it's games you couldn't fathom on other portables. Hell, even most cheapy laptops.

 

Although I think my personal best was about 50 minutes of Generation Zero. That was, however, running at double the FPS of the Series S version. I'm impressed it didn't blow up in my hands 

[bradigor]

I actually play plugged in most of the time at my sofa and more intense games. 

[Siri]

The actual play is playing something that's silly amounts of TDP for an hour or so, and then charge it while playing a 3w game.

 

Like New Vegas at 30fps.

 

Actually, fuck it, I'll just play New Vegas

[deerokus]

Pizza Tower probably deserves its own thread, it's like a lost classic SNES game. Amazing music. Looks like ren and stimpy mind.

[Gotters]

Big new Steam OS update pushed out last night, to Reddit to see what it breaks before upgrading, need to make sure they not snuck back out that path/folder change they did before xmas that buggered up the whole of emudeck.

[bradigor]

I think this one is ok based off the beta channel updates ahead of it. 

 

So in my pursuit of actually finishing games I've just got through Spider-Man MM. Not sure what to move onto next.

[Gotters]

I put a bit more time into Super Magbot last night, initially it's quite hard to get to grips with the gameplay mechanic as it's just unlike any normal platformer, but your head gets used to the attract/repel mechanics quickly and it's a really polished little gem, especially for less than a quid.

 

Not quite as elegant as Elechead but a great fit for the deck.

 

Still love Train Valley 2 as well, now I understand it's a puzzle game at the outset you just pause a level and work out the plan of attack and what order you need to do things, then you can get into executing the plan - never just start building without any thought as you'll join up the wrong buildings. 

 

 

[bradigor]

2 minutes ago, Gotters said:

I put a bit more time into Super Magbot last night, initially it's quite hard to get to grips with the gameplay mechanic as it's just unlike any normal platformer, but your head gets used to the attract/repel mechanics quickly and it's a really polished little gem, especially for less than a quid.

 

Not quite as elegant as Elechead but a great fit for the deck.

 

Still love Train Valley 2 as well, now I understand it's a puzzle game at the outset you just pause a level and work out the plan of attack and what order you need to do things, then you can get into executing the plan - never just start building without any thought as you'll join up the wrong buildings. 

 

 

 

I asked the Devs about adding a dark UI and they said they would look into it. The light UI is the only thing stopping me from getting into TV2 properly

[Gotters]

1 minute ago, bradigor said:

 

I asked the Devs about adding a dark UI and they said they would look into it. The light UI is the only thing stopping me from getting into TV2 properly

 

that's a shame, hopefully they do as it's another gem I'd totally missed and am catching up on now. 

[earlymodernsteve]

13 hours ago, Siri said:

Yeah, I didn't use KBM to set up XCloud either. I found it easy enough, outside of fluffing the spacing somewhere and all I needed to do was copy the thing exactly as it was presented instead of being clever.

 

In other news, I found out today that a Steam Next Fest is going to happen next week! Very exciting, I love downloading a bunch of brand new games to demo. Scratches that 90s demo disk itch.

Got early access to NextFest with my 'press' credentials. Mainly using the desktop but will bung in some Deck suggestions as I find them

 

Some demos are already up. I'd recommend Spiritfall - equal parts Hades and Smash Bros. Generous demo too.