Steam Deck

[Caliga]

I am thinking of getting one of the OLED versions.  Do any of you people have one?

I would probably mostly be playing stuff like Stardew Valley, JRPGs, and using C64/SNES emulators on it, but would be interested in streaming stuff like BG3 from my PC to it also.

[The Minsky Moment]

There's another thread below about this re Valve

You can play all those things on it.  It can run BG3 natively on the deck, or you can stream it via GFN or you can use Moonlight, etc. for PC streaming (can also do gamepass, chiaki for PS4/5 streaming, many other things).  All those things work well and are pretty easy to set up.

I had the original and flipped it for the OLED.  For me, subjectively, it's the best gaming device of any kind I've ever had. 

[Caliga]

There's another thread below about this re Valve

Didn't notice it... thanks!

[Jacob]

I'm waiting about a week and they'll order a Steam Deck.

I think I'm going to get Fallout 4 and see how easy it is to mod on the deck. I expect I'll put Skyrim on there too.

... but also catch up on some of my backlog.

[The Minsky Moment]

I booted it up. Runs 60 FPS pretty solid.  Looks like you can install Bethesda hosted mods from the game menu normally - need to use the virtual keyboard or an external KB to enter the credentials. Anything more fancy than that I would presume you could do but you'd probably have to go into desktop mode.

[Jacob]

I booted it up. Runs 60 FPS pretty solid.  Looks like you can install Bethesda hosted mods from the game menu normally - need to use the virtual keyboard or an external KB to enter the credentials. Anything more fancy than that I would presume you could do but you'd probably have to go into desktop mode.

I've found a few guides on how to use Nexus mods, so that's what I'm going to try out. I don't have any desire to explore the Bethesda hosted mod-eco system, to be honest.

[Jacob]

By the way, do you have any inside tips or tricks on what to do when you first start using the deck? Any settings you should obviously change or must-have utilities etc?

[The Minsky Moment]

To install Nexus mods you'll need to go to desktop mode. It's actually pretty easy to navigate for even someone like me with zero Linux experience; it's got a normal folder type structure and downloadable apps. The one thing I'd recommend if you plan to spend a decent amount of time in desktop is a cheap dock so you can navigate using a KB, mouse and external monitor.  You can easily program the trackpads to act like a mouse but for longer work its not optimal.

Desktop mode is needed for some other things, like adding non-Steam games to steam.  That includes things like setting up an internet browser that can be accessed from game mode. You also need to go there if you want to run emulators (which EmuDeck makes really easy to do). I also used it to set up GFN access from game mode - I find GFN to be Deck complementary in that it allows you to run high-spec games through streaming at minimal battery drain.  The only downside is that you can't configure Steam Input separate for each game that way (see below).
 
One of the first things to do is get and play Aperture Desk Job (it's free).  It's basically a demo for the Deck control scheme and features and a pretty fun game to boot.

In terms of utilities, I think it's worth adding "Decky Loader" which gives access to a bunch of useful plugins.  Eg one of gives times to beat for your steam games, one of them notifies you when Epic or Gog has free game promotions, etc. Another one allows you to set up the ability to run games from those other stores.

You may want to enable the performance overlays. There are different levels. I find the most useful are Level 2 (just gives FPS in top left), and level 3 - also gives power usage and estimated remaining battery.

You can change the boot up screen and other cosmetics. There's a bunch of available boot up screen videos, which finally gave me a chance to use my "steam points"

The biggest thing to tweak is steam input for the controls, which can be done on a game-by-game basis. The customizability is amazing and it's a key factor that puts Valve above the competition. For most significant releases you can access "community" configurations, some of which are quite good, and you can tweak and edit them as you wish.  If you are not accustomed to playing around with steam input, there are tons of YT videos on the subject. I watched the ones from the NerdNest guy because he's closer to my age range and has mostly similar attitudes about gaming.  He's got some about using the trackpads to build customizable radial menus, which can help playing something like BG3 or strategy games. But there's a lot of options.  You can get in real deep and start playing around using gyro and Flickstick for FPS like the cool kids do these days.

[Jacob]

Thanks for all of that

[FunkMonk]

After getting used to gyro for aiming I genuinely cannot play fps games on Steam Deck without it now.

[Jacob]

Ordered the deck last night, and a dock (thanks Minsky for that recommendation).