Cookington
Published
Set WillowEngine.ini as read-only after setting graphics settings the way I wanted them to prevent a known issue with Enhanced that resets several video settings on every start.
If the in-game VSync option is enabled, combat can cause inconsistent framerate dips that do not happen if you disable it. Turn off VSync and use SteamOS's own framerate limiter.
If you run into strange framerate drops during combat or looking around in certain locations, disable the in-game VSync setting and use SteamOS's own framerate limiter.
You can still do config edits to resolve certain known issues with the Enhanced remaster as listed on PCGamingWiki, but they're less neccessary on Steam Deck since you won't be using a mouse. If you're playing co-op you'll still want to disable VOIP through the config to solve the desync issue, and setting WillowEngine.ini as read-only is recommended to stop the game from resetting several graphics settings on every start but not a requirement.
Cannot reach 60FPS and constant random judders
Has a tendency to randomly crash, but also not always? Sometimes stable with no issues, no rhyme or reason to when this happens
Consistent stable performance is a requirement for rhythm games and at the moment, there's a massive issue with the game's framerate that will never reach 60FPS the moment you're at the menus and in-game. There's supposedly a WINE patch that fixes this that you can find on the Proton GitHub issue tracker, but requries making your own custom build of Proton specifically for this game to fix.
There's also a random chance of the game just crashing within a minute of the game being open on the new stable SteamOS 3.5, but this is also incredibly inconsistent. Earlier I was having the crashing issue, but upon trying to post a report comment to the issue tracker and getting logs for the game I didn't run into a single crash. Your mileage may vary.
Either lock at 30FPS or change the Render Scale to 2 at 60FPS to reduce battery usage.
A handful of the game's UI fonts seem to scale incredibly low-res at the Deck's 800p resolution, but nothing that makes the game unplayable. Namely the charge number in the top left, and the titles when entering an area are lower resolution than what I saw on my desktop.
No performance issues whatsoever, you can even raise the cap up to 90 FPS if you want the camera to feel smoother at the cost of battery (around 14-15 watts). A small handful of the game's text seem to scale themselves incredibly low-res compared to other elements of the UI, but they're not super important either.
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="d3d8=n,b" %command%
Installed 'dotnetdesktop7' for SA Mod Manager
Stock game works fine, but you really should play this using the SADX Mod Installer to restore the original Dreamcast assets and fix a huge number of issues with the PC version of the game. Before running the mod installer with a tool like Protontricks, use Protontricks to install dotnetdesktop7 so the included mod manager opens correctly.
If you're playing on a Steam Deck OLED, change the framerate cap to 60 FPS for proper smooth frame-pacing.
