Steam! Now on your Couch! The Steamdeck Coming this Winter!

[John]

I’ve got an Anker PD Powerbank that is Switch branded, and does fast charge on those devices. I tried plugging that into my deck, and got an info message that I was connected to a slow charger, and it probably won’t keep up with power drain.

Anyone have the specs of what the deck accepts as fast charging inputs, like what protocols it uses?

I never researched what protocols the deck likes for fast charging, but I did see this Insignia branded battery pack being touted on Reddit. It's a 26,800mAh one that people say does fast charging. It's on sale for $40, which is great for the capacity and output. Hopefully its 65W PD port works better than the 24W PD port on my Anker one.

 

[John]

It's so tempting to just order a fan and take it apart, but I'm deathly afraid of breaking the thing lol. Though if they ever offer different shell colors, I'd probably bite...

The replacement guide looks really easy, as far as these things go.

It looks to be on par with taking apart a modern controller like a Joycon or Dual Shock.

 

[Sarge]

It's the battery replacement that looks terrible. Ugh.

 

[John]

Has anyone tried to setup the internal drive and/or the SSD as an SMB/Samba network share, so you can move things to/from it? I've been able to get Assassin's Creed IV loading from both desktop and handheld mode, but they aren't syncing saved games up to Ubisoft's cloud yet. I figure if I can set it up as a network share, I can manually copy saves to and from my desktop, if I want to play over there.

 

[Becksworth]

So I finally got non steam Windows games working. It's weird because I could have sworn I tried what was ultimately the solution to make it work (setting a specific proton version to use in the properties). Now I'm wondering if they broke that functionality and only recently fixed it with the latest update.

 

[John]

Has anyone tried to setup the internal drive and/or the SSD as an SMB/Samba network share, so you can move things to/from it? I've been able to get Assassin's Creed IV loading from both desktop and handheld mode, but they aren't syncing saved games up to Ubisoft's cloud yet. I figure if I can set it up as a network share, I can manually copy saves to and from my desktop, if I want to play over there.

I used this guide to install Warpinator on both systems, which works flawlessly. Found the saved games and transferred them, plus it saves them as default files, so when I need to send them back in, it already knows which ones to move.

 

[John]

I never researched what protocols the deck likes for fast charging, but I did see this Insignia branded battery pack being touted on Reddit. It's a 26,800mAh one that people say does fast charging. It's on sale for $40, which is great for the capacity and output. Hopefully its 65W PD port works better than the 24W PD port on my Anker one.

This one arrived today, and works just like plugging it into the official charger. I drained the deck down to 80%, and the deck says it will take 20 minutes to fully charge, same as from the stock charger. It is a large, heavy battery, over a pound, so that could be a factor for tossing into a backpack. It's still a win for me.

 

[Kazin]

I found a "Verified" game that runs like crap - Sonic Generations. Classic Sonic plays fine, but 3D Sonic, particularly in Chemical Plant Zone, drops to like ten frames a second in parts, which is worse than on the Xbox 360 ffs (where I played it originally). Is this a game known to run poorly on PC? Is the Linux version bad? I tried it without Proton compatibility on and with the experimental build, I couldn't detect a difference. Settings are "low" and set to the default Deck resolution, so it's not like it's trying to push 1080p to the screen or something. Wild.

 

[Sarge]

Hmm, I have that installed, but haven't messed with it long enough to go into the 3D Sonic areas. According to ProtonDB, either swapping to Proton-GE or dropping back to Proton 6.3-8 helps.

 

[John]

One game that works fantastically is Paradise Killer, probably because there's not a ton going on with it, no shooting, just walking around solving demon/god/human crimes. It still worked well with the FPS limited to 30, which dropped the fan noise considerably, because at 60 it ramped up to full.

That's still my chief complaint, but I put my email in on an iFixit replacement, whenever those are restocked. I did see a reddit post that said iFixit's getting their stock direct from Valve, and they can't guarantee the manufacturer of the fans. People say the Delta fans have the higher pitched noise profile, with Huaying being the better one. I'd be a little upset if I ordered a replacement which had the same exact issue.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/uxhm7j

 

[Becksworth]

As a footnote to my bricked micro sd card saga, my replacement came in, I was fortunate enough to get a brand new one over a refurbished model, and I was able to format this one without it bricking on me.

Copying everything over from the older card I was using took a couple of hours, but with the exception of one save file which had its user permission locked down that appears to have gone smoothly.

 

[Kazin]

Hooray! That's a relief, I'm glad that worked out.

 

[Positronic Brain]

I just got my notification for mine and I'm not sure I want it =/ I have my Switch and a decent gaming PC, so not sure about getting it.

There's also the factor that I'll be traveling in a few weeks. How long did it took for yours to arrive after you paid? A week?

 

[Becksworth]

It took about a week for me. For me at least being handheld and having a reliable suspend feature are game changers with PC gaming. Prior to getting a Steamdeck the most time I've ever put into a single Steam game was 15 hours.

 

[Paul le Fou]

One game that works fantastically is Paradise Killer, probably because there's not a ton going on with it, no shooting, just walking around solving demon/god/human crimes. It still worked well with the FPS limited to 30, which dropped the fan noise considerably, because at 60 it ramped up to full.

All the more reason for anyone who hasn't played Paradise Killer yet to play it now!

 

[JBear]

Still loving this thing, still never left Big Picture Mode's walled garden to look an an OS desktop, still haven't heard a fan.

 

[YangusKhan]

I pretty much haven't played anything else since I got mine.

 

[YangusKhan]

Is there a way I can put my Steam Deck asleep with a game still open, and have Steam not track that time as play time?

 

[Kazin]

It should recorrect itself once you close the game and Steam has a chance to reload, though if you're talking about in-game clock, it varies from game to game. Crystal Project, for example, last I checked, tracks sleep time as in-game time. Various other games I've tried do not.

 

[Kazin]

You may have seen that resolution changing was added to the Steam Deck on the latest firmware, btw - don't get too excited! Depending on your TV, it may still be useless (like it is for mine). Even "forcing" the resolution to 720p does nothing in gaming mode, so playing piddly little Sonic 3 is a slideshow in 4k. Though, it may have something to do with the Steam Deck/Retroarch thinking my TV only does 30hz refresh rate, which isn't true... Not sure what the problem is there. Good thing I like playing this thing portably!

 

[Behemoth]

My Steam Deck arrives on Monday! I got this thing mostly because I wanted something to play indie games that aren't available on (or run poorly on) the Switch. So, what are the must have indie games that run well on the Steam Deck?

 

[Kazin]

Crystal Project!

 

[Becksworth]

For as many indie games as there are on the Switch, there are still a ton on Steam that never saw release there. A sizeable number of indie darlings that predated the Switch for instance.

 

[Becksworth]

In terms of RECENT stuff, I think Tunic and Sable are Deck Verified. Vampire Survivors is good too. I've been meaning to try out Anno Mutationem as well, but haven't gotten around to it.

 

[Sarge]

The Deck is a huge boon for playing indies - they're almost always cheaper via Steam than on the eShop.

 

[John]

I got Vampire Survivors a couple days ago, and have been playing nothing but. It’s really good, and works perfectly on the hardware.

 

[John]

Every now and then I try to get the Marathon games running through the Aleph One source port. I first tried to directly install it via their Linux version, but I couldn't get the syntax for the installer to run. I found somebody had compiled the games into Flatpaks, which did install and worked with a mouse/keyboard, but I couldn't get it to recognize the deck's controller.

Finally today I copied over the Windows version of Marathon 1 and tried to get it running via Lutris and Wine, and it worked! Speed is good, resolution looks good, though it doesn't look like all remastered textures made it in. The controller's a little jumpy, but I think I can get it working pretty well with some tweaking. It even mapped the mouse to the right touchpad as well, which worked good for trying to do twitch stuff, but it was hard to stay on target while squeezing the right trigger to fire.

Now I just need to figure out how to uninstall the Flatpak version, and if/how to add a shortcut to the Lutris install in Steam for Big Picture mode. Also I need to test with Marathon 2 & Infinity, see if those have any issues.

 

[Behemoth]

My Steam Deck arrives on Monday! I got this thing mostly because I wanted something to play indie games that aren't available on (or run poorly on) the Switch. So, what are the must have indie games that run well on the Steam Deck?

My Steam Deck did not arrive on Monday. And now it says "delivery date pending."

 

[Becksworth]

It doesn't always help with the battery life (might as well been running at full 60 fps in FFVII Remake for example), but when it does the variable refresh rate is nice. For F.I.S.T. for example I was able to get good battery life at 40 fps. Plus whatever issue I was having where 30 fps in that game seemed more like 20-24 fps seems to vanish at that framerate.

Also kind of weird seeing a non-janky 40 fps. Not use to that.

 

[John]

I had my first major problem. My Vampire Survivors save game disappeared on the Deck, but was still synced up on my desktop. I read that other people had this issue, who would uninstall and reinstall, and the save sync would come back. That worked for a little bit, but eventually the clear save overwrote the played save on both, so now I've lost 12 hours of coin gathering and unlocks. It's not the worst, but means I'll take a break from this awesome little game for a bit, and figure out where the saves are stored for manual backups later.