Blizihguh
Published
Game stuck at title screen, does not accept any input. Tried different controller configs and Proton versions, no dice.
I honestly wouldn't be shocked if this has nothing to do with Proton since Divekick is kind of old and janky.
First launch has a popup that shows your controls with some weird squished text, but otherwise fine. I'm not in love with tagging on left trigger, either, but I think that's just me. In all respects it plays just as well as the Windows version if not better.
Persistent stuttering
Not sure why this very lightweight game has such bad performance. It hitches for a few frames every 2-4 seconds. Not unplayable, but rough for such a momentum-driven game.
Media Foundation workarounds are required to play pre-rendered cutscenes. This isn't very complicated, but it will require you to go into Desktop mode on your Deck, and unfortunately the documentation is pretty spartan. The developer of mf-install thinks you're an idiot if you can't solve this ("It's Computing 101 stuff"), so I'll provide more in-depth instructions.
First, you'll want to go to https://github.com/z0z0z/mf-install and download the files. If you're not familiar with Git, the fastest way to do this is to press the big green "Code" button and click "Download ZIP." Extract the ZIP somewhere and enter the folder for it, then open a terminal window in that folder. You'll need to run the following command:
WINEPREFIX="/home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/889600/pfx" PROTON="/home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Proton 7.0" ./mf-install.sh -proton
After that, you can go back to Gaming Mode, and it should run fine. More explanation in the concluding notes.
You'll get stuck at the name entry screen without a keyboard to input text. I assigned onscreen keyboard to one of the back buttons.
If you're not familiar with the command line, here's a run-down of what that command does, in case you need it for another game. The first part, WINEPREFIX="filepath", tells the script what game you're trying to install to. The first part of the filepath is just where your steam folder lives; the numbers are the end are the steam ID for The Caligula Effect. The second part, PROTON="filepath", tells it which version of Proton you're trying to install to. I used Proton 7.0.1 here. The rest of the command just runs the script. You need to run this from the folder that you extracted the script to. This is all pretty straightforward for someone with CS experience, but it can be pretty daunting for a novice. Hopefully this helps!
Game lags very slightly when there are too many bullets on screen, but it's rare and doesn't impact gameplay much. Usually it's gone within a few frames.
Changed d-pad and joystick mapping to "Joystick." Also turned off the back buttons and bound focus and fire to LT and RT.
Steam Deck doesn't support Japanese locale by default, so the initial popup is all ????s. Pick the right button, and untick the box to make the popup go away next time.
Text is slightly cut off at the top. Admittedly not sure if this is intentional, since I usually play with the English patch on Windows. It makes reading kanji a bit harder, but still readable.
No audio on Native; forced Proton 7.0.1 and relaunched, which fixed it
Crashed on Native about an hour in; forced 7.0.1and it worked fine
(I'm only 90% sure Steam Deck defaults to Native tbh -- it doesn't say anywhere -- but forcing Proton 7.0.1 made it run totally fine for me)
