https://store.steampowered.com/replay/

It's pretty common to hear about people replacing their thumb sticks to avoid drift in the future, but I almost never actually hear about people having drift or other issues with the original OEM thumb sticks (outside of the occasional person who broke their stick by dropping the Deck).

I'm also curious to hear what people's experience has been with replacing the sticks, both the difficulty of the actual replacement, if there were any issues after, and if they think it was worth it.

I posted about this game once before when it started becoming playable on Deck. It's another PlayStation published title, but at launch it was unplayable on Deck due to various performance issues. I just think it's cool to see games intentionally optimized until they're Deck viable.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40144630

If you buy PC games at all (especially over the last 12 months given how positive the news around them has been) then you’ve probably heard of GOG.

GOG is a platform that sells games completely DRM-free, meaning there’s no Digital Rights Management shoehorned into the games. For a lil context, Mass Effect Legendary Edition or GTA V use DRM. Their system checks for an online connection and will outright stop you from playing your legally purchased, single-player game if you’re offline for too long. Gross, right?

GOG though refuses to sell games with this nonsense. Every game on GOG must have no DRM attached. From AAA to indie titles, with a lot that lean heavily toward older and classic releases.

I use programs like Heroic or Junk Store to play my (extensive) GOG collection on my Steam Deck. It makes it a breeze, and really builds on what the Steam Deck is capable of, in my eyes anyway.

Anyway...

I got the chance to chat to the developer of GameSieve. This is a site which lets you search, track and filter games for sale. GOG's site does a reasonable job with selling you games, but something like GameSieve was purpose built just to make all of this easier.

I chatted to them about how they made it, why they did, what goes into maintaining it, and a little on the future. If you've not visited the site before, make sure you do!

https://gamesieve.com/

They do such lovely work, I think it deserves a lot more recognition!

So, if you want to read through my interview with the dev, you can follow this link here. I do hope you enjoy this one too, I love GOG so much, so this was a blast to me!

From the patch notes:

Handheld PC improvements:

• The game is now certified on Steam Deck and ROG Xbox Ally!

• Global improvement of text legibility

• Fixed multiple fog and lighting issues:

• Overly intense effects during the Flying Manor boss fight (which also impacted some cinematics)

• Overexposed areas in the Visages

• Overly dark areas in the Endless Tower

• Fixed FPS being capped at 30 on Steam Deck

• VSync can now be properly disabled in the settings when playing on Steam Deck

• Graphic settings are now adjusted for Steam Deck users

• Improved first-time setup flow:

• Controller input is now supported in installation wizards (no longer touchscreen-only)

• External controllers now switch seamlessly with the Steam Deck controls

==========

At the game awards last night the game won all but two categories it was nominated for, coming away with:

• Game of the Year
• Best Game Direction
• Best Narrative
• Best Art Direction
• Best Score and Music
• Best Performance (for actress Jennifer English as Maelle)
• Best Independent Game
• Best Debut Indie Game
• Best Role Playing Game (RPG)

The December blog is out!

This is a solid benchmark of how the Steam Deck holds up when it comes to many of the top games of the year.

The TL;DR is that the deck plays most titles on the list pretty well, and a few that are rough performance wise but playable.

There were only about 6 titles I counted that weren't playable on deck at all, mostly due to anticheat. 2XKO, fortnite, battlefield 6, F1, and EA Sports all couldn't run due to kernel anticheat. Finally Monster Hunter Wilds was the only game nominated that couldn't run due to performance.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/40058414

Everyone has its own favourite console. Whether it's Xbox, which might also be a handheld next year, or PlayStation, whose this generation sucks and it's way too expensive. But there is a console that I've been searching for good deals on: Steam Deck.

Valve spokesperson told Road to VR that they're not promising to support stereoscopic 3D for flat games but they are looking into it.

The company further said it’s considering a system-level implementation that could display any stereoscopic 3D content, whether it’s stereoscopically rendered games, videos, or photos. Should the stereoscopic 3D feature be built, Valve told me it would “be our goal” to be able to display such content when streamed from a PC or rendered directly on the headset itself.

The TL;DR is that the organization that controls the HDMI standard won't allow any open source implementation of HDMI 2.1.

So the hardware is fully capable of it, but they'll get in trouble if them officially implement it.

Instead it's officially HDMI 2 (which maxes out at 4k @ 60Hz), but through a technique called chroma sub-sampling they've been able to raise that up to 4k @ 120Hz.

However there are some minor reductions in picture quality because of this, and the whole thing would be much easier if the HDMI forum would be more consumer friendly.

In the meantime, the Steam Machine also has display port as a completely issue free display option.

Based on my research, the steam deck lcd should be able to wake when a controller connects with it. Yet when I paired and enabled wake on Bluetooth for any of my controller it doesn’t work or connect.

Am I doing something wrong?

The controller I’ve tested are

Xbox One

Xbox Series X

PS4

PS4 V2

All controller have been updated by their respective systems.

I installed Fedora 43 with this command distrobox create -i registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora:43 --init --additional-packages "systemd" -n test then I installed Mullvad VPN with these commands sudo dnf config-manager addrepo --from-repofile=https://repository.mullvad.net/rpm/stable/mullvad.repo and sudo dnf install mullvad-vpn. Once it's finished, I tried to type mullvad status but it gives an error message

Error: Management RPC server or client error  

Caused by:  
         0:   transport error  
         1:   No such file or directory (os error 2)  
         2:   No such file or directory (os error 2)  

How to solve this issue ? I just want to use mullvad-cli

I've been lucky to interview a lot of my friends over the last few years now; developers from plenty of projects, programs and apps. But this is one I've been looking forward to sharing for a long time now!

I interviewed the team behind Decky Loader, all about their history and work keeping it running.

If you don't know, Decky Loader is (from my own article):

...[an] indispensable little tool that turns a brand-new Deck from ‘fun handheld console’ into a full-blown customization powerhouse. From adding plugins to tweaking the interface, Decky Loader quietly powers a lot of the creativity and convenience that Deck owners have come to take for granted.

Download it, and you can customize the heck out of how your Steam Deck looks and functions, by community-made plugins.

Anyway, I'm quite proud of this one, and really grateful that they all took the time to chat to me to make this one happen. If you're at all interested in development, Steam Decks, open-source, or just gaming in general, then I think you'll enjoy this one too!

The link to my article is here, please let me know what you think of it! I love doing these interviews, and I've been lucky that so many have followed along with them so far :)

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/starcitizen/p/1533992/getting-star-citizen-running-on-a-steamdeck-complete-guide

Edit: Updating crosspost with edits from OP.

Getting Star Citizen working on the SteamDeck was actually a bit easier than I thought it would be. A lot of the heavy lifting has already been accomplished thanks to the Linux Users Group. The game usually runs around 15-20 fps which is somewhat playable, although there are some places that will bring it down to 5-10 fps (certain parts of Levski). You'll see better FPS when you're out away from Cities/Stations. Total RAM used seems to be a little over 21GB (in SC v4.4).

Some pre-setup:

You'll need to increase the swapfile on the Steam Deck to use a small portion of the built-in SSD as some slower RAM. I set it to 16GB and it seems to be working fine, although LUG recommends a 32GB swapfile. So, if the game starts crashing and the game.log points to an issue with RAM, be sure to increase your swapfile.

Switch the SteamDeck to Desktop mode

• Go to "Power" -> Switch to Desktop

Open up a console and enter the following commands, one at a time:

passwd # Create a root password, for example "deck"
sudo steamos-readonly disable # Disable the read only FS
cd /home # There is a "swapfile" located here we'll reuse it
sudo swapoff -a # Stop swap process
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1G count=16 # Increase swap to 16GB, change to 32 if desired.
sudo mkswap swapfile # swap ready file again
sudo swapon swapfile # Activate swap
sudo steamos-readonly enable # re-enable the read only FS

Download Star Citizen

Download the flatpak made available by the Linux Users Group and run the script for installing the Launcher.

Add the repo

flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists RSILauncher https://mactan-sc.github.io/rsilauncher/RSILauncher.flatpakrepo

install the rsi launcher flatpak

flatpak install -y --user --noninteractive RSILauncher io.github.mactan_sc.RSILauncher

run the rsi launcher flatpak

flatpak run io.github.mactan_sc.RSILauncher

Add the Launcher to Steam

While in Desktop mode, open up the desktop version of Steam.
Go to "Games" -> "Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library..." And select the RSI Launcher

Note: The launcher works better in Gaming Mode. Just make sure to maximize the window while in gaming mode by dragging it to the top of the screen. I've found that the touchscreen keyboard doesn't work well when using desktop mode for the launcher.

Add icons for the RSI Launcher in Steam (Optional)

While in Desktop mode, open up the desktop version of Steam.
Right click on the RSI Launcher
Go to "Properties" -> "Customization"
"Change" the "background", "Logo", and "Wide Cover" to the splash screen. Browse to this folder for the icon:
/home/deck/.var/app/io.github.mactan_sc.RSILauncher/data/prefix/drive_c/Program Files/Roberts Space Industries/StarCitizen/LIVE/EasyAntiCheat/
Note: Delete the *.jpg filter at the bottom to reveal the icons and select SplashScreen.png

For the "Cover", I found a logo from the StarCitizen Subreddit that works very well: https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/EmKaZzz1TqvrqdV2qbpqbXEHD9hRMrxK13aALdIb3IE.png

Fix Mouse Warping Issues

Sometimes entering interaction mode will make your view warp quickly to another direction which can be annoying when trying to use kiosks/ASOPs/shops. To fix this, go to the following folder location:
/home/deck/.var/app/io.github.mactan_sc.RSILauncher/data/prefix/drive_c/Program Files/Roberts Space Industries/StarCitizen/LIVE/

Then create a file called user.cfg
Edit the file and enter the following:

#use software cursor
pl_pit.forceSoftwareCursor = 1

Graphics Renderer:

I would recommend changing the Game Renderer to Vulkan (for 4.4 only. With 4.5 you'll want to use DirectX until a fix/workaround has been found for Vulkan issues).

*Note: If the game starts crashing while loading up, try switching the renderer back to DirectX.
Modify the user.cfg file we created/edited before, add a new line and enter:

r.graphicsRenderer = 0
Note: Enter a 0 value for DirectX or enter 1 for Vulkan.

Disable animations on launcher (optional)

Click the gear icon -> Game Settings -> Accessibility:
Then disable background video.

The first time I tried to start the game, it wouldn't load. Restarting the SteamDeck got it working.

Setup Useful Keybinds

After launching the game, press the "Steam" button, then go to "Controller Settings".
The default controller keybinds usually have issues with the normal mouse button clicks, but using trackpads for the mouse works very well.
My configuration:
L4 - Spacebar
L5 - Ctrl
R4 - '[' key (for accepting shared missions/invites)
R5 - 'B' key (The Cycling mastermode keybind isn't set by default for GamePads).

Switch this up however you want, but I found that the R4 and R5 keybinds were essential to being able to play the game without any mouse/keyboard hooked up to it.
L4 and L5 can be whatever you want. Setting an 'N' key might be another good option in case you use autodocking.

Under Current Button Layout, Click Edit Layout -> Trackpads
For "Right Trackpad Behavior" set this to "As Mouse"

• Set Click to "Left Mouse Click"

For "Left Trackpad Behavior" set this to "Scroll Wheel"

• For Clockwise Command click "Add command" and set it to "Scroll Wheel Down"
• For Counter-Clockwise Command set it to "Scroll Wheel Up" (or vice versa depending on what you like).
• Set Click to "Right Mouse Click"

Note - The Mobiglass works really well with the SteamDeck's touchscreen.

Additionally, there are some community Layouts available.

Graphics Optimizations:

I initially used the Performance Tuning guide from the LUG wiki for some settings, but ultimately set most options to Low/Very Low.
If anyone finds some better settings feel free to comment below.

Graphics Settings
Set Quality to Low.
Set Scattered Object Distance to Low
Set Planet Volumetric Clouds to Medium
Water - Low
Set Motion Blur to Off
Set Sharpening to 100
https://wiki.starcitizen-lug.org/Performance-Tuning

Some troubleshooting:
Usually the first time you run the launcher, the window size will be off. Just drag the top of the window up to the top of the screen and it should resize correctly (works in Gaming Mode as well).

This should also solve the issue where the "acknowledge" button is cut off at the bottom.

Occasionally, the launcher will think that it has no internet connection. A temporary workaround is to log out and then log in again to the launcher. A more permanent fix is to clear the launcher's cache.

Sometimes, if the game is having issues loading up the first time, simply restarting the SteamDeck gets everything working.

Sources:

• https://wiki.starcitizen-lug.org/Alternative-Installations#flatpak-installation
• https://wiki.starcitizen-lug.org/Troubleshooting/mouse-keyboard-issues
• https://old.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/waiujt/how_to_increase_the_swap_on_the_deck/

Edit:
Added notes about restarting the SteamDeck.
Added trackpad layout configuration.
Reordered Graphics Renderer section.