thelolrus
Published
As another report said, it can run at 90fps easily, but for some reason it does feel TOO smooth. I think the game is best experienced at 40fps/80hz or 45fps/90hz due to the retro feel, but that is mostly personal preference. Expect about 7 hours of battery life at 40-45fps on OLED with bright screen. Default graphics settings, but using the smooth filtering and the bitcrush filter for extra retro vibe.
No problem loading saves, but be aware the game does not have cloud saving. You need to set up syncing yourself or do it manually if you wish to play on another device. (Back up your saves please)
Everything just works out the box with this game, you just need to apply a community control layout since there is no gamepad support.
The existing community layouts I found were lacking certain inputs or had some glaring issues. For example, putting the skill and item hotbars radial menus on the left trackpad. This game requires a lot of movement, putting the radial menu on the left trackpad forces you to stop in place to trigger skills/items.
I strongly recommend using my 'Almost Perfect' community config. I took note of everything lacking in the existing layouts and spent at least a few hours perfecting my own to fill those gaps. As such, my report will be mostly centered around explaining my custom layout choices:
I decided to put radial menus on the right trackpad instead. Allowing access to all 6 skill slots, and all 5 item slots + recall using LB as a mode shift. This allows you to stay moving while using skills/items, and if using gyro, it allows you to simultaneously aim as well.
Menu navigation was another issue I encountered with existing layouts. The D-Pad allows you to cycle through all the tab menus: left holding Skills & Stats, right holding Items/Quests/Who. Additionally, up on the pad allows you to open the Lexicon, and down to sit.
For attacking, a single pull on RT will trigger nomal attack, a double pull will trigger your charged attack (req. lvl 12). This was the best way I could put both attacks, rather than using separate buttons, you may prefer a different method.
R3 will allow you to lock on to enemies. RB allows you to toggle strafing on and off.
Last input guide to cover: L4 + R4 are meant to be user-customizable extra inputs; I've set them to jump and dash respectively. L5 and R5 will allow you to zoom your camera in and out. If you press L5 and R5 at the same time, it will open up the chat and system keyboard, for quick chat access.
Gyro aiming note: Gyro is enabled by default, triggered by touching right stick or right trackpad. This is personal preference, but I recommend leaving it on so you can aim while using skills on the right trackpad.
The rest should be fairly self-explanatory; I've tried my best to use descriptive naming so the labels on the layout preview are clear.
Hopefully you try my layout and I hope it helps you enjoy this game!
I didn't try co-op campaign, which in the past seems to have had issues, but recent reports suggest it's working.
Pretty straightforward report here.
Everything just worked out the box, despite EAC.
Really the only annoyance is occassionally needing to login to your Xbox account..
Depending on the specific title you're playing, it can push 90fps stable. Otherwise, stable 60 everywhere else on 'Standard' graphics, in my experience (I did not try Halo 4, gross).
As a life-long Halo fan, it's a childhood dream come true to take the franchise on the go.
Not recommended whatsoever until a working community input config is created, which will require some extensive work.
Needs extensive input configuration.
The only layout available seemed to be unplayable. Mode shifts and other inputs were just not working at all for some reason.
Perhaps will revisit and take the time to make a better layout specific to Steam Deck rather than Steam Controller.
Either play on 30fps lock or lower all the settings and play on 40-60. Either way, you probably aren't getting more than 2-3 hours out of this one.
Lots of small text
Frame drops on default settings if targetting 60fps. 30fps should be fine.
Not well optimized but it runs without any trouble and stable framerates are definitely easily achievable.
Good luck playing at all with the existing controller configs.
If I ever get around to making a solid input config for this game, I'll submit an updated report.
By the way, this game is not multiplayer; it is single player with an online chat feature.
Easy 60FPS but recommend running at 45fps/90hz for better battery. Expect about 4 hours at 45fps, but it does depend on the map. Some community maps are not well optimized, but the official content is all very performant. Singleplayer vs. Multiplayer can make a difference as well.
It feels perfect for the deck. I do recommend adding some mods for a more in-depth, sim-like experience, but it is not necessary.
If you prefer street-skating and want wider mod compatibility, go to the game properties and switch to the "alpha" build, 1.2.2.8
If you prefer transition or vert skating, stick with the public branch, 1.2.7.8. It still supports the essential mods, albeit with less features on Dawg's XLMod for custom stats. This branch also has somewhat better animations and ragdoll.
Don't listen to those who say you cannot save stats on public branch XLMod, they absolutely do. If you want to be certain, after making stat changes, bring up the modlist menu that normally appears when you boot the game, and hit 'save'. The core features missing from this version of XLMod are lack of preset loading and steeze/stance customization, which honestly aren't very impactful to the experience. Essential adjustments are gravity increase and/or pop height decrease, and realistic manual catching.
- Personally I prefer this branch because I love transition skating. The only mod I miss is the object dropper, which I still didn't use very much.
- You will want to do some minor input config to be able to toggle mod menus and interact with them. I personally use the rear buttons, with different combos such as double tap, hold, etc. If you are using a lot of mods with menus, a radial menu will be better suited. Enable mouse movement and click on one of the trackpads.
I'm not sure if linking is allowed here, but you can find all the modding related info/links if you search 'skaterXL mod docs vercel'
Either use the non-steam-game method or protontricks to run Unity Mod Manager. I used protontricks and ran it under the existing SkaterXL prefix.
If manually installing map/gear mods from Mod.io rather than in-game, you'll need to go to Steam's compatdata folder for the game, and navigate to C:/users/documents/SkaterXL. The destination folders are clearly labeled.
If using Northern UI Away + Major Jim's UI - Northern UI Patch to add gamepad support back to the game, use default gamepad layout with right joystick switched to 'Mouse Joystick' (preferred) with sensitivity set to 175%. Built-in joystick support feels 'low-detail', like it is almost locked to X/Y input and nothing between those axes. Set trackpad to mouse movement and mouse click for map navigation, joystick is very slow.
If using vanilla, use FlameController config. Still works great, but it is not ideal.
On OLED Deck, I'm able to get about 8 hours of battery life at 45fps/90hz. At 60fps, it is closer to 6-7 hours. Max vanilla settings without ini tweaks for further fidelty.
Rare crash on autosave, known engine bug. Results in a corrupted save, so you must use a previous save. Not much issue if you save often. It's a bethesda game so you should no matter what.
This can be resolved with community patches, but I encountered this crash once in 20 hours of play, so it's not necessary.
I found the first 20 hours very enjoyable strictly vanilla with the FlameController config. I wanted to add the community patches for engine fixes, stability, etc, but could not get the Linux MO2 installer to recognize the GOG version of the game no matter what I tried.
Steam version was easily detected by the MO2 installer. Though vanilla works fine, ideally I'd encourage going through the trouble to get basic stability and QoL mods enabled, and keep everything else vanilla. However, it can be a bit troublesome if you are still getting to grips with Linux quirks, but as a noob myself, it's nothing that can't be figured out.
Mods I'm running for a stability-only modlist on Steam Deck:
[Engine Related]
- xOBSE
- SkyBSA
- All unofficial community patches: UOP/USIP/UODP
- Oblivion Display Tweaks
- OBL Mod Limit Fix
- EngineBugFixes
- Blue's Engine Fixes
- Mercantile Experience Fix - Simplified [Gamepad Support]
- NorthernUIAway
- NorthernUI Wheel Hotkeys
- MajorJims UI - NorthernUI Edition - Tweaked and Improved
The last 3 above add the original gamepad support back to the game, with Xbox 360 glyphs. This also maintains the original look of the Oblivion UI rather than replacing it with the dumb Skyrim-like UI, one caveat being the font change, which does take away from the original character somewhat. I think it is a worthy trade-off for the improved controller support, however.
If using the config above, I recommend using the default steam gamepad config, but tweak to change right joystick to 'Mouse Joystick' for better detail and control over the joystick output; the built-in joystick feels awful for whatever reason.
If playing vanilla, use FlameController by FlameMan.
Kept pretty much everything the same just enabled 'Joystick as Mouse' and Gyro and changed the defaults on the Back Grips to my personal preference.
I've had a great experience with is on the deck so far. Performance is generally great but it can vary greatly depending on the scenario.
60fps is no problem to hit but for the open-world areas you will need to turn some things down, but not to the point where the game looks bad (in my opinion)
In 20 hours with it on the Deck I've never had a single crash.
SD keyboard input seems to work perfectly fine for me too.
There is an option to switch to DX12 (beta), I have only tried DX11. Testing will need to be done to see which is more performant.
