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

[PaB]

15 minutes ago, Rorschach said:

The reservation system is back. Might be a consequence of Valve launching in new markets at the end of 2022.

Ah… might be a good time to think about selling mine then. I’m not just using it that much. 

[Rorschach]

Not using mine a ton at the moment either (since I sorted out my main PC) but planning on doing a fair bit of travelling over the summer and I'm sure it will come in handy then.

[bradigor]

Got a cheap code for car mechanic simulator 21 and yeah... That shit is addictive. 

 

If @Lorfariusneeds any work doing on the truck, then send it to my garage.

[Fry Crayola]

I've a job for you...

 

 

[alex3d]

For those playing docked: how do you connect your controller? Xbox controller wired? Or does BT work fine?

[Lorfarius]

35 minutes ago, alex3d said:

For those playing docked: how do you connect your controller? Xbox controller wired? Or does BT work fine?

 

Xbox pad on BT for me. Only annoying thing is it won't turn the system on with the X button.

[LaveDisco]

PS5 controller is the best in my opinion (or ps4 I guess) cos the touchpad doubles for a the deck touch pads. And gyro is fully supported. Super useful.

 

connects via Bluetooth and the OS swaps to the PlayStation icons. 

[Siri]

6 minutes ago, Lorfarius said:

 

Xbox pad on BT for me. Only annoying thing is it won't turn the system on with the X button.

 

I think the only controller that works that way is the Steam Controller with its own dedicated dongle, or something that can pretend to be a USB keyboard - the deck only wakes from sleep with USB input which the controller replicates in Lizard Mode.

 

It's super finicky even then - I tried waking it with a HTPC remote, and it wouldn't budge.

 

RE: controllers, as mentioned, it's all Bluetooth. XBox controller dongle support isn't official and you need to do command line shit to get it working, which I haven't bothered to do.

 

Conversely, PS4 controller support is pretty much flawless, which is a big difference from my experience with using the controller via windows.

[Stanley]

I’ve been playing mine docked today for the first time and I’m pretty blown away. I haven’t changed any settings just plugged it in and everything worked. I especially like how when using the Xbox controller the little Xbox icon appears on the UI, it’s a nice little touch. 
 

I’m putting together a little gaming room in one of the spare bedrooms, only a smallish room, and it’s great to be able to have basically a PC I can just hook up to the TV that doesn’t take up any room, I have my original Switch and Steam Deck side by side on a bookcase 

 

I’ve also got a small wireless keyboard and mouse in there, best of both worlds. 

[Siri]

Of all things, the docked experience was trying hard to convince me that I really, really should buy a small projector that I can hook the deck up to for absolutely no reason other than the hubris of having my entire gaming setup on the other side of the room, because I'm stupid.

 

In other news, I have the demo of Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom. I think it will have its fans as it's a very nice looking mash-up of Mario 64 and Crazy Taxi, but it's not for me - having to do platforming in a car for the initial part of the demo is no Bueno, the characters are a bit too blatantly ripped off, and I had a ' @LaveDisco hears one track from Pizza Tower and hates it' moment with the sound effects throughout the demo, of all things. Can't put my finger on it, but they're incredibly grating - might be the audio quality, might be the balancing, but it's like nails on a chalkboard and it's rank.

 

No Monster Hunter tonight, so I'm going to spend some quality time with Supraland: Six Inches Under - which, unlike its predecessor, runs really well on the Deck and doesn't attempt to murder the battery in the process.

[bradigor]

Everyone too busy enjoying their decks to post? 16hours this thread has been quiet!

 

[Gotters]

I haven't bought a new game in 16h, which I think is an achievement.

 

I have got 4h into Trackmania though, which is just brilliant.

 

I'm looking at the older versions of it on Steam, namely Trackmania United which seems to offer different types of vehicles and environments ? Wishlisted it for when on sale.

[HarryBizzle]

I’m surprised to find that Pillars of Eternity runs better on Steam Deck than my windows PC. The latter is on Win 10 and that seems to cause all sorts of weird hitching and pausing that lots of people have complained about. Smooth as anything on Deck. 

[Lorfarius]

 

[Siri]

1 hour ago, bradigor said:

Everyone too busy enjoying their decks to post? 16hours this thread has been quiet!

 

 

It's dead, Jim.

 

Like PC gaming. ⚰️

 

Anyway, I tried sorting out Twitch in Kiosk mode to be handled in an app, like YouTube. It's not quite there, but it's letting me navigate and start streams, so that's quite alright for the moment.

 

Did you know, at 3w TDP and GPU downclocked to 200Mhz, you can watch about 6 1/2 Hours of AI-generated Seinfeld?

[T Pot]

On 02/02/2023 at 20:27, Mr Majestyk said:

The new trackmania runs well on deck. Need to use proton experimental due to the ubi launcher. 

I’ve been waiting for this one, installed it the other night and very happy with it.

 

Does anyone know if United Forever works? I have an itch to play the OG stuff and Sunrise stuff, but I doubt those very originals will run.

[ontwofronts]

19 hours ago, Stanley said:

I’ve been playing mine docked today for the first time and I’m pretty blown away. I haven’t changed any settings just plugged it in and everything worked. I especially like how when using the Xbox controller the little Xbox icon appears on the UI, it’s a nice little touch. 
 

I’m putting together a little gaming room in one of the spare bedrooms, only a smallish room, and it’s great to be able to have basically a PC I can just hook up to the TV that doesn’t take up any room, I have my original Switch and Steam Deck side by side on a bookcase 

 

I’ve also got a small wireless keyboard and mouse in there, best of both worlds. 

What dock are you using?

[T Pot]

On 03/02/2023 at 19:24, bradigor said:

Really disappointed that AoEIIDE hasn't been updated with the console controls so decided to try the cloud version. It works really well.

I read somewhere that it should be. Would be nice if it does, either way there’s some custom confits that make it playable.

[bradigor]

25 minutes ago, T Pot said:

I read somewhere that it should be. Would be nice if it does, either way there’s some custom confits that make it playable.

 

Yeah been using community layouts, but the console UI is also better for Accessibility so hoping that carries over with it

[HarryBizzle]

What sort of resolutions and games are people playing docked? I would have thought it would start struggling quite a bit with 1080p and up.

[Stanley]

1 hour ago, ontwofronts said:

What dock are you using?

This one

 

The Jsaux one seems to get a lot of praise, but I didn’t like the way the stand covered part of the rear vent on the Steam Deck, probably fine but it’s unobstructed on the Ivoler one I went with. I’m happy with it and it works as expected. 

 

 

[Stanley]

11 minutes ago, HarryBizzle said:

What sort of resolutions and games are people playing docked? I would have thought it would start struggling quite a bit with 1080p and up.

I’ve played Half-Life 2 at 1080p and Vampire Survivors, they both look great although I’m not that fussy, I’m used to the Switch docked and it’s better than that. 

[Strafe]

Sunset Overdrive can be picked up for £5-6 on one of the reseller sites and is still great fun.

 

It’s unsupported but works just fine. You’ll get a hardware error when you boot it up that can be dismissed. It will say save files are corrupted, you can ignore that too as it’s something to do with cloud saves not being supported. Local saves work just fine.

 

It defaults to 1080p 30fps so go into settings and drop to 720p and put the frame rate up to 60fps. You can then use system level FSR to sharpen it up a bit. It crashed a few times to begin with but since switching to Proton GE it hasn’t crashed once.

 

Enjoy!

[Stanley]

Papers Please is currently on sale, worth a punt? 

[Rorschach]

23 hours ago, alex3d said:

For those playing docked: how do you connect your controller? Xbox controller wired? Or does BT work fine?

 

Bluetooth is the best option, seems to work just fine. I have the dongle, but you need to take the system out of read only mode to install the drivers for it, which really doesn't seem worth it, as I haven't had the same issues (latency and other wierdness) that I experienced with my PC many years ago which prompted me to buy the dongle. Probably a combination of bluetooth tech getting better since, and Linux having a better stack for wireless devices than Windows does.

[Curtis]

This is the best videogame related hardware I've bought in like...forever!

 

The amount of games I've been re-visiting due to the handheld convenience factor is unreal. 

 

I spent all day today lounging about in sweatpants playing Yakuza Zero on the sofa and/or bed. Sunday gaming done properly. 

[Stanley]

This is quite a boring video but if you’re in the market for a dock you might find it useful, although the networking capabilities on the official dock he was sent were broken so that’s not a great start. 
 

For value and input latency (which is really all I care about) it seems I made the right choice with the Ivoler, although the official dock has a smidge lower input latency, I doubt it’s detectable when actually playing though. I quite like that more pricey JSAUX model with the built in SSD although for everything else it didn’t come out the best 

 

[Mogster]

I'm still playing Crisis Core Reunion on my Deck, and it's such a perfect game for the system. It runs flawlessly at 40fps, and indeed 60 but there's no need for that. It's also obviously a game designed for a handheld, and the short missions are great for a small pick up and play session.

 

The story is complete nonsense though. I played the PSP version back in the day and couldn't remember anything about it, and no I think I remember why. The FFVII fan service is all cool though.

[HarryBizzle]

25 minutes ago, Mogster said:

I'm still playing Crisis Core Reunion on my Deck, and it's such a perfect game for the system. It runs flawlessly at 40fps, and indeed 60 but there's no need for that. It's also obviously a game designed for a handheld, and the short missions are great for a small pick up and play session.

 

The story is complete nonsense though. I played the PSP version back in the day and couldn't remember anything about it, and no I think I remember why. The FFVII fan service is all cool though.

I think I played it on PSP and all you need to know is Zack is basically a saint and Aeris is his waifu, not that loser Cloud’s. 

[Stanley]

I bought Dishonored Definitive Edition for £1.79 from cdkeys