KieueCaprie
Published
Changed one of the back grip buttons from "Dodge" to "Shoot" with "Hold to Repeat" enabled
Most in-game text can be a little hard to read. For some reason, the button prompts are also comically small as of launch.
Despite the Bronze rating (It was listed as such on 2-11-2023 for those of you coming from the future), I was able to play Alien Hominid Invasion on Steam Deck without any issues outside of maybe a long initial start-up time.
As of right now, it seems to be working fine out of the box, gameplay is fine, framerate is fine, didn't see any slowdown or graphical errors outside of the comically small button glyphs on the menus.
Played the game from start to finish and found no issues worth mentioning, everything just works!
However, performance overlay kept reporting 59 FPS instead of the expected 60. Could be my Deck's update channel (Main as of this writing), could be the engine used, could be anything. But since losing one frame isn't enough to adversely affect the game, I'd consider it negligable at best.
Tokens made from the demo cannot be brought over. Rhapsodies cannot be shared due to the inability to connect to the Online Rhapsody System.
Pretty much works as well as expected, no notable issues here in terms of performance or what have you.
However, I'd like to note that even if you've played the demo, Thunder Goober will not ask if you want to port a Token over during the New Game setup. It MAY be possible if you transfer the Tokens over to this game's prefix but I have not personally tested this.
In addition to this, it is currently impossible to connect to the Online Rhapsody System meaning that any and all Rhapsodies generated on Steam Deck are rendered un-sharable.
And finally, achievements are not working at the moment. At this time of writing, the developer is currently working on a fix but there is no ETA on it atm, heck, they could release the patch as soon as I submit this report just to spite me at the starting line, which would render this issue moot.
However, despite all of this, the game is perfectly playable and does not need any tweaks to actually play the game.
- As of the aforementioned update, the issues regarding the Online Rhapsody System (and Token Redemption on New Game setup) and Achievements have been solved, it seems.
- The game still runs perfectly fine out of the box with no real roadblocks.
TDP Limit - 6W GPU Clock Frequency - 700 Mhz
Mild crackling while loading into a new level, does not appear to happen all the time.
Only tested with 2 players (One using Deck controls, the other using an Xbox Controller) but no issues have yet to be found from brief testing.
The game works perfectly fine. All splash screens are present and accounted for. Ran into no major issues besides the game locking up when exiting through it, although opening up Steam and closing it from there shuts it down fine.
Played with both Deck controls and Xbox controls and the input seems to be fine.
Deck System Settings
- Refresh Rate - 40Hz
- Half-Rate Shading - ON (However... please see concluding notes for more info)
- Thermal Powder (TDP) Limit - ON @ 10-12W (10W is playable but causes frametime hitches. 12W is the lowest I could go before incurring such issues)
- Manual GPU Clock Control - ON @ 800-900MHz (Auto seems to float around there in combat phases, 900 probably gives best overhead)
- Scaling Filter - FSR @ FSR Sharpness 5
In-Game Settings
- Resolution - 1152x720 (Chosen because of its similarity to the Deck's 1280x800 resolution, would not recommend anything below 960x600)
- V-Sync - On (Can't force 40 FPS otherwise)
- Target Frame Rate - Unlimited (Can only set to 30 or 60) - Alternative to VSync to try.
Text can be a little hard to read, especially when using FSR to scale up.
Conclusions
- Half-Rate Shading (henceforth HRS) works but however, it causes some elements of the main menu and some UI elements in game (particularly those that pop up next to your character, whom is often far away) to look blurry. If you wish for the game to remain readable, you can potentially forgo using HRS.
- The game seems to be CPU intensive as I've found that adjusting TDP has had more effect on the game than adjusting the GPU clock.
- Performance is fine @ Low and Medium OOTB during combat sequences. The Deck cannot maintain 60 FPS in village sequences once you have a few more followers in your cult, particularly if you have them worshipping. This may or may not have been resolved in future SteamOS updates.
This report was written for Steam Deck - Stable (08-03-2022)
As of SteamOS 3.5, the game is prone to constant crashing and shows no signs of getting any better any time soon either on the developer's front or Valve's.
When it isn't crashing, the game plays spectacularly well but unfortunately, I cannot maintain extended play sessions without it crashing to desktop each time.
I have performed all troubleshooting procedures such as using different versions of Proton, using Proton Experimental, clearing shader cache, clearing Proton files, etc, etc, but have found no headway to making the crashes go away, outside of potentially downgrading to SteamOS 3.4, where the game ran perfectly fine before.
Does it run? Yes. Is it remotely playable? If you can stand the gameplay being incredibly slow, sure, otherwise, No.
Game slows to a complete crawl (around high 10s-low 20s) when rendering anything
Initial tests were of the immediate title screen and I could already see the performance issues present. During my tests, I was able to get up to 22 FPS with forcing the GPU clock to be as high as it can go but no changes I could make managed to make it go any higher. The 22 was not stable.
CryoUtilities didn't improve framerate, resolution scaling did not improve framerate (in fact, it just made the menu cursor go awry!), FSR set to Ultra Performance might've helped keep the frames more steady. I have not tested undervolting and overclocking but I assume there'd be little headway made if pursuing those methods.
The game does boot up fine, no issues here. It's just that the game itself is very CPU-hungry and the Deck isn't capable of keeping up. Capcom has stated that they are aware of the performance issues that plague even higher end PCs and are looking into it, will update my report if these supposed patches push the FPS over the playable mark.
As another thing to note: the game, at this time of writing, has Denuvo which does not play very nicely for anyone looking to try out different versions of Proton. So if one were to try out different versions of Proton, take this as your advisory warning.
In short, game can boot up but framerates are around 20-22 idle and can drop into the 10s during gameplay at this point in time. Had it been capable of holding a 30+ for good periods of time, I would've recommended it but as it stands, I hope you got a console or PC capable of running it.
In Dawntrail, the Deck continues to hang on despite the graphical overhaul. XIVLauncher is recommended for ease of use...
Used FFXIVLauncher, the instructions to install it can be found at https://goatcorp.github.io/faq/steamdeck.html
Left Trackpad was changed to be a scrollwheel. Top-Right and Bottom-Right back buttons were relegated to modifiers. Right Trackpad was changed to a touch menu accommodating a party of 8 (F1-F8), with the modifiers targetting Alliance 1 and Alliance 2 respectively.
I do not know if this is the fault of XIVLauncher or the game itself but sometimes it will launch in "1280x720" even though the screen is cut off at the edges. Changing screen size in the graphics settings back to "1280x800" fixes this. It only happens occasionally.
On Wifi, larger-scale battles the likes of Frontlines will be extremely laggy and floaty but still playable to some extent.
- Framerates on Deck after the graphics overhaul seem to be mostly fine. Continues to sit at 60 for most expansions in 4-man content with a few framedrops here and there thanks to the new lighting.
- Framedrops from larger groups of people are more noticeable, although in my testing I have yet to see frames drop below 30 (admittedly, I am using certain mitigations such as the new "Hide players around quest NPCs" feature to claw back my frames).
- Content remains clearable on Deck with no real pressing issues to report, would still highly recommend playing around with changing the controller layout to suit you.
- The inclusion of proper FSR allows us to use slightly higher graphical settings without much issue, particularly the anti-aliasing, although it will still have an impact in busy instances. Also would recommend setting the Render Resolution to 99 if the game turns into Vaseline Vision.
- In conclusion, the Deck gets to live for another expansion, expect slightly lower frames in older content than you'd be used to and be sure to play around with the new system settings.
- Also, the "Hide PCs near Quest NPCs" can be found in Character Configuration > Controls > General and by scrolling all the way down. This can net you a small breather in terms of both sanity and framerate.
Text can be a tad grainy, no idea what's causing the issues.
- Initial testing shows that FUSER now works fine on Steam Deck, although it cannot hold 60 FPS at default settings, so cranking the graphics down is advised.
- Cutscenes now play but it seems like the campaign cutscenes are using the wrong dubs. In-game campaign dubs play just fine, however.
- Freestyle is playable, as always.
- Modding for this game is a complete headache, I have been unable to apply the custom song loader despite multiple attempts to tell Proton to use the DLL Override. Hopefully someone will be able to come up with a solution for modding this game as all posted solutions on the FUSER subreddit (r/fusergame) has not borne fruit in my case. This could just be a unique situation to me and other people may be able to apply mods just fine.
- It should be noted that multiplayer will become irrelevant soon due to the servers sunsetting at this time of writing, unless someone manages to mod the game to re-enable multiplayer functionality.
Addendum to previous report, please see the final section (Concluding notes) for information
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winhttp=n,b" %command%
Concluding Notes
Multiplayer
- Now that the servers are dead, multiplayer is impossible to do with a vanilla setup. However, there is currently, at the time of writing, an attempt to at least restore some server functionality.
- ReFUSED is easy enough to setup and although it only allows for very basic functions (logins, mix sharing, profile search), it's enough at least to bring back some functionality.
- It SHOULD be noted that the server is currently in testing and may not be up all the time. However, if you are able to run your own instance of the server, you can use that in lieu of the default ReFused server.
- One must navigate to the following on Steam Deck/Linux to follow the mod dev's instructions: steam > steamapps > compatdata > 1331440 > pfx > drive_c > users > steamuser > Appdata > Local > Fuser > Saved > Config > WindowsNoEditor > game.ini
Modding
- Searching the unofficial Fuser discord (link can be found on the /r/fusergame subreddit on the customs spreadsheet), a brief search yields an answer to my woes from last time. I'm going to be posting this in this addendum to help spread the word while also being frustrated at myself for not thinking of trying that sooner.
- The steps to installing the custom songs mod is practically the same as Windows, however, there is one step that is needed: Run the game under GE-Proton7-17 as well as the launch command laid out above, this will allow for the custom songs mod to be loaded.
- Unfortunately, I do not know WHY later versions do not work or why Valve's Proton doesn't work with the mod (as in, the mod fails to load).
- This information was sourced from the Unofficial Fuser Discord, I don't know if specific people wish to be named so I'll be leaving them anonymous out of courtesy.
Singleplayer
- With using a different GE-Proton version comes with a new round of testing, and it seems that, much like the previous report, cutscenes load in perfectly fine. It does appear that the cutscenes are now using the proper dubs (albeit I only tested in English so I cannot say for certain). Game loads in perfectly too and with the custom songs mod, the custom songs load into the campaign fine too!
Deck System Settings
- Refresh Rate - 40Hz
- Half-Rate Shading - On (*1)
- Thermal Power (TDP) Limit - 6W (5W is acceptable but can cause some slowdown on results screen/crowded areas)
- Manual GPU Clock Control - 600MHz
- Scaling Filter - FSR (*2)
In-Game Settings
- Graphics
- Resolution - 960x540 - 60hz (*3)
- Display Mode - Windowed/Exclusive Full Screen (*2)
- Limit FPS - 40FPS
Menu text is fairly small and it can be hard to read some icons (e.g. L3 button) in the in-game controller config.
Concluding Notes
The game works perfectly fine at 720p60! Weirdness concerning the videos since the demo's release (i.e. distorted rainbow videos in the background when a new enemy type is being introduced) has been seemingly resolved as of Proton 7.0-3.
Footnotes
- Half-Rate Shading may cause the main menu to look blurry, albeit still navigatable. It should be noted that the in-game sprites and objects are largely unaffected by this.
- FSR does not activate unless the game is set to either Exclusive Full Screen or Windowed. Linear filter also provides a similar look to FSR, choose your own preference.
- Resolution can potentially be set lower if utilizing the scaling filters to improve battery performance further, however, it can make small text even harder to read.
Triggers
- Disabled Analog Input for both Left and Right Triggers
- Left Trigger was bound to X
- Right Trigger was bound to B
Buttons
- X was bound to B (Fire)
- B was bound to X (Aim)
- B got an Extra Command bound that fires a B button command upon release. (Release Press)
Sticks
- Right Stick X Axis was inverted. This was down to personal preference.
- Refresh Rate - 40Hz
- Half Rate Shading - ON
- Thermal Power (TDP) Limit - ON @ 5W (Could potentially go a little lower.)
- Manual GPU Clock Control - ON @ 600 MHz (Could potentially go a little lower.)
- FSR - ON @ Sharpness 5 - In-game resolution set to 1024x640
I made some modifications to the control scheme to better suit me as the B button on the Steam Deck can be a bit slippery to press, especially in situations of high pressure (i.e. race levels)
After the fix with the anti-cheat, the game is "playable" but a consistent 30 won't always be on the cards.
At low resolutions, text can become incredibly blurry. At the default resolution, the text can be small and hard to make out.
Using the built-in render scale option in the game, there's potential for some black artifacting, mostly present when looking at the map when selecting a mission.
Depending on settings and game difficulty, performance can, and will, be impacted, this is mostly prevalent whenever a lot of explosives are used (i.e. the eagle cluster bomb, anything to do with automatons on difficulties higher than Challenging, etc.) or whenever a large crowd of entities (enemies and players) are on screen, the latter is most notable when fighting Terminids.
The game is perfectly playable at lower difficulty levels due to the lower enemy density but the framerate is not exactly steady or stable especially at higher difficulties (and player counts, said enemy density scales with party size).
In my time playing the game on a variety of difficulties, against Terminids (the bugs) and Automatons (the, well, robots) alike, solo, I have found that while it is possible to hit 30, certain situations can and will cause slowdown, especially when a large number of enemies are on-screen or when a large amount of explosives are used.
It is, however, possible to mitigate this as best as possible by utilizing resolution settings on Steam's side and the render scale in-game, alongside with fiddling with graphic settings. Most people have found success with playing on Low with Ultra Quality render scale.
In short, the game can definitely hit 30 well enough and 40 is not off the table either, but the game can and will dip to the mid-20s in certain situations. In my experience, it doesn't impact gameplay too much but it is very important to note this as a caveat (and also why I wish I could just say "Well, sorta" instead of Yes or No when it comes to Steam Deck reports but that's not what this report's about.)
Steam Deck Profile
- Refresh Rate: 40Hz
- Half-Rate Shading: On (1)
- GPU Clock Control: 1200MHz
- FSR: On (2)
In-Game Settings
Video
- Resolution: 1024x640
- Fullscreen Mode: Windowed (2)
You could potentially play around with the video settings to get better battery life but 40 FPS is easily achievable with Medium Texture Quality, Low Shadows, and Medium Anisotropic Filtering with Bloom and Fur enabled.
The main menu, options menu, and the quest menu all have small text that does not scale with the resolution.
Out of the box, the default settings is fine enough for the house phase of the game but when it comes to races and eating contests, the FPS starts to drop to the 40-50 area. The FPS may also start dropping as you obtain more hamsters for your home.
Footnotes
- Half-Rate Shading may cause some UI icons to look pixellated. However, most of the game is unaffected by this.
- Attempting to change resolution outside of default involves having to switch to Exclusive Fullscreen, changing the resolution, accepting the change, and then switching to Windowed to force the new resolution on. This may or may not have been fixed in future after this report has gone up, be advised.
Game refuses to start up. No version of Proton worked. Desktop Mode did not give any insight.
I have tried the following:
- Proton 7
- Proton Next
- Proton Experimental
- Proton Hotfix
- The oldest available version of Proton
And for the sake of being thorough, even though it wouldn't yield anything, I even tried Steam Tinker Launch and Luxtorpeda on the off-chance that I'd somehow conjure a miracle, no dice there either. Even tried booting it in Desktop mode and it seems like it starts to launch and then immediately shuts itself down.
I think it's safe to say that between this and the other report(s), this game is borked at the moment, at least, for Linux.
Steam Deck Profile Settings
- Refresh Rate - 40Hz
In-Game Settings
- Video -> Graphics - Very Low
EXTREME slowdown in outdoor segments, the game has the ENTIRE MAP RENDERED AT ALL TIMES.
After my first report, I found that someone managed to get the game running on Steam Deck (Their video can be found Here) which galvanized my efforts to find a way to make it work. Fortunately, I just got off a fresh reimage of my Deck, meaning that I could actually try it in a more vanilla environment.
So, with using CryoByte33's script to alter swap file size, swappiness, and TRIM enabling, I redownloaded the Prologue and just launched it straight up. To my surprise, it launched and actually booted into the menu! However, this is where the miracles stopped.
Getting into the game led to HUGE framedrops that not even downgrading the settings could fix. Tried altering the TDP Limit because the GPU was being throttled hard but no dice. Indoor segments are reasonable but going outside led to a massive frame drop to around 10-15 with lows as low as 8!
In conclusion, while the game boots up and runs, it's not in a good state to be played. If anyone could find a way to eke out better performance from this, go right ahead.
OOTB, the game crashes after skipping the intro. Switching to Proton 6/Proton 6-GE allows play.
Some textures are ultra low quality regardless of setting. This seems to be a general issue, however.
- First, I'm gonna preface this report by saying I did not test past the first area, I do not know if there are any unforseen issues that may arise from using an old version of Proton.
- By default, the game boots into the title screen, shows a white screen for a cutscene, and then crashes when skipping it. This seems to happen regardless of Proton versions up until Proton 6.3-8.
- On Proton 6.3-8, the cutscene shows the test pattern and immediately throws the player out into the game world. From there, the game is actually playable.
- On Proton-6.21-GE-2, the intro cutscene actually plays and allows the player out into the game world when finished. Like the previously mentioned Proton, the game is actually playable.
- I have also tested this with a version of Proton-GE on Proton 7, however, the same issues from the first version mentioned crops up: White screen, skipping scene allowed, game crashes.
- As for the textures, it appears that the ultra low quality textures is a common issue and is currently, at this time of writing, being addressed by the devs. This seems to be happening on multiple systems which suggests this isn't a Steam Deck issue. However, I've decided to note this graphic degradation down either way.
- As for the game itself, despite the poor quality textures, the game runs perfectly fine once the initial hurdle is cleared. It seems perfectly capable of hitting around the 50-60 FPS range. I'd imagine that once the textures are fixed, this may drop a bit, may make another report once a patch is pushed.
Game initially lags when loading into a new level before evening out. Framerate tends to dip harshly in crowded areas.
Game dips below 30 at times but is capable of at least maintaining at least 30 for a reasonable period of time. Since only the demo is out, much remains to be seen how the performance will fare whenever the full game comes out.
Title card movies play fine. Title screen shows. Cannot log in, possibly due to the anti-cheat.
As of the opening of the Global Racing Test, it is impossible to get past the title screen. According to the official Discord, Linux is currently unsupported, which means that this title is unplayable on an unmodified Steam Deck (read: using only SteamOS) for the time being.
Game does start up and lets you go to the title screen. However, you'd need to switch to GE-Proton before the game can let you log in.
DXVK_ASYNC=1 %COMMAND%
Lobby UI can be a little hard to read on the Deck's screen. Most of the more important UI elements are big enough, however. In-game UI is perfectly fine.
Game hitches a lot, using the above-mentioned launch command seemed to have solved SOME of the hitching issues. Though I'm uncertain how much of that was placebo.
Hitching may be an issue as it could make other players seem choppy. Again, the above-mentioned command seemed to take the edge off.
With GE-Proton7-43, the game boots up, lets you log in, and can be played, which is a huge change from the Global Racing Test where it wouldn't even let you in at all.
The game's menus are completely navigatable with controller, fortunately, so there's no need for a keyboard control layout, at least, as far as I can see atm.
While it does seem to hold 60 FPS fairly well, I do recommend at least allowing tearing to ensure it maintains that mark (as well as reducing input latency, if any).
The launch command did help with the odd hitching issues I had upon inital testing but, again, I don't know if it does anything to help. That said, it's at least worth a try if you're also running into issues.
- TDP Limit - 10W
- Manual GPU Frequency - 900 - 1100MHz
- Refresh Rate - 50Hz (Can drop to 40 but frames seem to drop more often, maybe 45?)
At default settings, the game runs at 60 FPS with no issues.
- During Story mode, initial testing suggested that 60 FPS was, indeed, attainable under the right conditions but after entering a race against Clutch Revvington, 60 FPS was impossible to maintain or even achieve.
- During activities, the game can somewhat keep close to 60 at Medium preset with some settings set to low (anti-aliasing, post-processing, view distance, foilage detail).
- During races, however, FPS drops tremendously and cannot remain steady under a 60 FPS lock, hovering around 30-50 throughout the whole race, suggesting that locking to 30 in-game or using the FPS lock on the Deck's side is viable.
- At high default settings, I was able to keep a locked 30 throughout the race. Medium and Low prove to be fruitful for greater stability and potentially running at higher framerates.
- However, try as I might, I could not keep the game running at 60 (or close to 60) without making major compromises to the point where it's just more preferable to play at 800p30 Medium/High than it is to play lower than that.
Swapped Item and Drift with Aim Left and Aim Right.
CRT Filter may make certain words hard to read. Highly recommend turning it off if it bothers you.
Out of the box, the game runs perfectly well, got no complaints here outside of altering the in-game controls and disabling the CRT filter in places. The latter may be a problem if you have difficulty reading text, this may be fixed by navigating to Options > Graphics > ALL CRT FX and switching it off. (The same menu can be used to raise the FPS Cap, which is set to 30 by default, if you wish to have more frames.)
Resolution seems to be a fixed 4:3 and does not appear to have the Steam Deck's full resolution (although it does have the 720 resolution in the list), this doesn't seem to impact very much and the Deck is good enough to fill up the screen so this wouldn't be much of an issue, just something to note.
As of Update 237, the native client is no longer supported. Recommended to switch to a version of Proton before launching instead.
As of Update 237 (See HERE for more details.), the native Linux client is no longer up-to-date with the Windows version due to the cross-play implementation between EGS and Steam via Epic Online Services.
It is HIGHLY recommended that you set the game to use a version of Proton in order to continue playing Payday 2 in its most up-to-date form as Native Linux players will be stuck on Update 236 indefinitely.
As of the time of writing (27/6/23), there are currently multiplayer issues spanning across all platforms, most likely due to the implementation of EOS and the problems that come with it. This may or may not have been fixed in the future but in the event that it hasn't, consider this a fair warning before attempting multiplayer.
If you've been playing on the native linux client previously, your save between Linux and Windows may be different due to the changes made to cross-saving in Update 228. Please refer to the PCGamingWiki for more information about this.
Base game works out of the box. Petal Crash Online does not launch without switching to Proton.
As the game is incredibly light as it is, adjusting for battery performance seems like overkill. However, if you're keen on squeezing blood from a stone, the following settings for the per-game Steam Deck profile are:
- Thermal Power (TDP) Limit: On @ 3W
- Manual GPU Clock Control: On @ 300MHz
Enjoy your 5+ hours of Petal Crash gaming on the go.
Concluding Notes
The game works perfectly out of the box with the exception of Petal Crash Online, which requires switching to Proton (7.0-4 works fine but you can never go wrong with Experimental!).
Quitting the base game is not immediately apparent since the option to quit the game is buried underneath two menus (Config & More > Game Config > Exit Game), meaning it may be best to have a button that presses ALT+F4 for you, memorize the force quit shortcut (Steam + B), or just quit via the Steam Menu if you're playing in Gaming Mode.
Otherwise, this incredibly light game works perfectly fine on the Steam Deck despite its Unsupported rating. As others have stated, you just need to put it behind Proton and it'll work as intended.
Steam Deck Per-Game Profile Settings
- Refresh Rate - 40Hz
- Half Rate Shading - On
- Thermal Power (TDP) Limit - On @ 7-8W
- Manual GPU Clock Control - On @ 1100MHz
- Scaling Filter - FSR
In-Game Settings
- Display Mode - Windowed
- FPS Cap - Set to Refresh Rate (In my case: 40 FPS)
- Graphics Preset - Low to Medium will yield better battery life results. High may be preferable if you do not wish to sacrifice graphical fidelity.
- Other options are as to-taste as it gets. (Highly recommend turning off Landing camera rotation, even if this is irrelevant to the report)
Some tooltips can be a little hard to read, especially when picking out a whip from the entrance.
Mild slow-down, particularly in moments where there are a lot of objects on-screen (i.e. at the start with phantoms numbering in the high double-digits/low triple-digits).
Concluding Notes
You may need to drop the graphics preset to Low or Medium to achieve a more consistent 60 FPS but locking at 40 at High will do the trick nicely. You could potentially push Epic at 40 if you wish.
Runs well as-is, can run at 40 with High settings but can chug. Medium or Low may be better. Tinkering may allow for better consistency.
Config File Location:
From PCGamingWiki:
- Steam Play (Linux): /steamapps/compatdata/989440/pfx/ The GameUserSettings.ini file can be found from there in:
- /drive_c/users/steamuser/appdata/local/PhantomAbyss/Saved/Config/WindowsNoEditor/
Config file explanation:
The config contains settings to adjust the quality of the game's graphics settings without fiddling with the game's presets. This may be useful to those looking for a more consistent framerate. There was also a line for bUseDynamicResolution, turning it on did not seem to cause any negative impact, so it can't hurt to try.
Altered Steam Deck profile settings:
- TDP Limit - On > Off
- Manual GPU Clock Control - 1100MHz > 900MHz
Under heavy stress situations (i.e. room full of traps with phantoms running around opening chests), the performance dips ranging from mild to significant. Further testing at 40 Max FPS resulted in a framerate as low as 24-26 while in said situation on High preset.
Concluding Notes
- From the previous report, I found that my former Steam Deck settings wasn't sufficient to keep it consistent when met with the game at its heaviest.
- Consulting PCGamingWiki yielded a way to edit the graphics settings at a more granular level that the devs have not yet implemented, at the time of publishing, in-game. Initial testing seems positive and I am certain there's a good way to get a compromise between graphical fidelity, framerate, and battery life as a whole.
- All in all, the game is perfectly playable on the Steam Deck as-is. Tinkering is advised only if performance issues get a bit too much to handle and you desire your framerates to be much more consistent.
Added a small radial menu on Left Trackpad to:
- Open the Global Menu (Ctrl+F5)
- Open the Save Prompt (S)
- Open the Load Prompt (L)
Haven't found a way to make it completely full-screen so it is stuck in a 4:3 format. However, it is very definitely playable and perfect for the Steam Deck's touchscreen and touchpad mouse capabilities.
Out of the box, the game doesn't work. Switching to Luxtorpeda or Proton 5.13-6 fixes menu issue.
Steam Deck Settings
- Refresh Rate - 40Hz
- Half Rate Shading - On
- TDP - 5W
- Manual GPU Clock - 500MHz
Notes
When booting up with default settings (Proton 7.0-4), the menu is virtually unusable since the screen seems to stick to just a frozen fire image.
Using Proton 5.13-6 allows the menu to be usable and the game runs fine with the default settings! Luxtorpeda also works, although you would need to install ProtonUp-Qt in desktop mode first in order to be able to install it.
Works out of the box, not a steady 60 during action sequences but definitely sits above 30.
Steam Deck Settings
- Refresh Rate - 40Hz
- Half Rate Shading - On
- Manual GPU Clock Control - 400MHz (Could be lower? Could be higher? 200MHz seemed to work on the first level but uncertain about the rest...)
Concluding Notes
The game works perfectly fine out of the box and can achieve 60 FPS during quiet segments with no enemies. However, whenever enemies are around, the FPS drops to somewhere between 40-50.
Adjustments to the GPU Clock Control seems to have helped ease the frame loss but active gameplay will see the frames dropped, probably best to set refresh rate to 40/50Hz and lower resolution as far as it can go.
It should be noted that Inzane difficulty has the highest enemy density of all four difficulties and, as such, will result in heavy frame losses, it's perhaps best to drop the frame cap to 30 on 60Hz mode when attempting to play through the aforementioned difficulty.
OOTB it works fine, just adjust the graphics setting and resolution as needed if severe frame drops aren't your thing.
FPS drops down to 40 on "High Fidelity" and "Balanced" graphical settings at race start.
As mentioned above, the game drops down to around 40 on a 60Hz display during the start of the race due to all the entities on screen. Some testing suggests that lowering the resolution or switching off of "High Fidelity" to "Performant" or "Balanced" yields a more stable framerate. This may have changed since this report has been posted (9th March 2024 at time of posting).
A word of caution when lowering the resolution: It will cause text to become incredibly blurry and the UI may be rendered unreadable. I'd suggest you stay away from the absolute lowest resolution and set it to 768 x 480 at the barest minimum for readability's sake.
Other than odd frame drops, the game plays perfectly fine otherwise.
Sits at around 40-50 FPS on Low for most of the game. Some problem areas drop that to around 25-30, still playable.
Text gets hard to read on lower render scale and resolutions. May also be difficult to see when playing undocked.
Upon startup, the game is set to High settings, which is around 30 FPS. Lowering that without altering resolution or render scale is adequate enough to keep the framerate above 30 for the most part.
Certain areas of the game (i.e. Spark City, Tanktown) comes with immense slowdown, perhaps due to the sheer intensity of particle effects in the area, putting the FPS at around 25-30 while using the default view staring out the window. Reducing resolution and/or render scale brings it back up above 30.
It should be noted that despite this, the game feels plenty tolerable even at its worst so far, however I cannot confirm for sure if lategame suffers even worse performance issues.
Half-Rate Shading is not recommended for this game due to it blurring up the text on the truck's HUD, making it difficult to make out what the consoles are saying.
Works at a Solid Sixty on Steam Deck. Even reaches the coveted Solid Ninety on the OLED models.
Used various software modifications, including plugin loaders and performance enhancements.
Strangely, the game itself has the ability to adjust the device's clock speeds and FPS on the fly, doing so may improve battery performance of Steam Deck on the Steam Deck.
Had to use Steam on a PC in order to gain access to the game...
Initially, the game took months to load, but Valve has recently reduced loading times to about a week or so in recent times. Please take this with a grain of salt.
Steam Deck has its flaws, such as the lengthy startup times on initial launch, but it is most definitely one of the most stable things I've ever had the pleasure to test. The frametimes are glorious and its uncanny ability to boot up other games, while it may impact performance of Steam Deck, it is quite unparalleled!
That's not even getting into the controls, a masterstroke by Valve themselves, although on some versions, the touchscreen is not as good as it should be, but the touchpads work brilliantly and all buttons work as they should.
All in all, I can confidently say that the Steam Deck runs at a Solid Sixty on Steam Deck and, if I may be so bold, it also runs at a Solid Ninety on OLED models as well. However, when running other games in tandem with Steam Deck, your mileage may vary depending on the game's demands.
64-bit update currently unable to launch on Stable. Switching to Beta works. Read notes for more info and alternative workarounds.
Changed update channel for Deck from Stable to Beta
- As of April 18 2024, Team Fortress 2 now has a 64-bit client. This is great news as performance has increased across the board!
- Bad news is that, as of this time of writing (April 21 2024), trying to launch the game on Deck is met with it not loading at all.
- Loading with Proton works but ends up causing the game to be stuck in insecure mode.
- So how does one fix this? I've found success by going into the System tab of the Settings menu on my Deck and flipping the update channel from Stable to Beta. Alternatively, if you're using advanced update channels, you'll need to change the Steam Client Update channel to Steam Deck Beta.
- Alternatively, there is a workaround on the Source 1 Games github with a guide written up by doonv. You can find it here.
- One thing to note is that, if you're a Deck user, you can skip the 2nd step and go straight into step 3.
- Hopefully this gets fixed soon as despite that, I've been able to play it just fine at 16 players with bots (the bots TF2 provides, not the ones haunting the official servers!).
[DEMO] Works out of the box, sits at 60 FPS for a very good portion of time! Just remember to go into the graphics settings first.
- When I first booted the game up, I found that my framerate was sitting at around 45-47, which doesn't sound right for a game with rather simple graphics. It wasn't until a little ways into the demo where I found that I should've set the resolution from 1080p (which was set by default when I first loaded the game btw) to 720p, which immediately made a big difference.
- You can find this option by navigating to Pause Menu > Settings > Graphics > then find the Resolution option.
- When running at 720p resolution, the game ran pretty much flawlessly afterwards. I'd imagine if you, for some reason, really wanted to play with 1080p, you could lock your framerate to 30 and play that way but given the nature of the game, I'd advise against it.
[FULL GAME] Addendum to my previous report, full game needs you to select a version of Proton to play.
- For some unknown reason, Steam, at this time of writing, did not auto-select a version of Proton for the full game, requiring you to set one yourself. You can do this by navigating to the cog wheel on the game details page and navigating to: Compatbility > "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" > Proton 8.0-5/Proton Experimental.
- Either of these seem to be fine. I have not found any big issues using 8.0-5 over Experimental and I do not expect to run into any issues.
- Game runs at 40 in big areas without fixing the resolution (Settings > Graphics > Resolution (set to 720p) and will run at around 58-60 once fixed. Larger areas may need more fiddling with graphic settings but the starter hub world and the first two worlds are perfectly playable.
- Otherwise, the game runs fine!
Absolutely works out of the box. No real changes required to enjoy this logical journey.
Steam Deck Settings
- Refresh Rate - 60Hz
- Half-Rate Shading - On
- TDP Limit - 5 Watts (OLED)
- Manual GPU Clock - 300MHz (The game seems to sit around 600-700 when this setting is not active)
Game works pretty much as well as you would expect. No real issues to report. Due to the simplistic 2D nature of the game, getting more battery life is like getting blood from a stone as the battery life while playing this is already good enough as-is. Nevertheless, I have included my settings above that I see has had an impact on battery life without compromising framerates too much.
