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Valve Steam Deck

steamdeck.com

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Re: Valve Steam Deck

#521

Post by CreepGin »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #400
modeless wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a great link. Perhaps even more interesting is this: Valve is working with anti-cheat vendors for Linux (Proton) support. So one of the biggest remaining obstacles to Linux gaming may soon be addressed as a side effect of this.

I hope they put some effort into anticheat on Linux for their own games. Team Fortress 2 has been barely playable for the past year because of cheaters running bots using widely available software which Valve seemingly can’t detect on Linux.

With YOLOv4-based aimbots on the rise, it's really a losing battle even for the most anticheat infused games.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#522

Post by [deleted] »

jchw wrote: post #263
css wrote: post #135

From the FAQ [0]: - What OS is Steam Deck running? SteamOS 3.0, a new version of SteamOS based on Arch Linux. - Will people be able to install Windows, or other 3rd party content? Yes. Steam Deck is a PC, and players will be able to install whatever they like, including other OSes. [0]: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/faq

I’m super excited to see that they’ve chosen Arch as a base for SteamOS. I understand fully why they originally chose Ubuntu, but I feel like Arch actually hits a lot of sweet spots for consumer use cases and could be adapted for such use quite effectively. (To be fair, I feel similarly about Gentoo, which was similarly adapted for ChromeOS quite successfully.)

[deleted]

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#523

Post by Siira »

modeless wrote: post #211
css wrote: post #135

From the FAQ [0]: - What OS is Steam Deck running? SteamOS 3.0, a new version of SteamOS based on Arch Linux. - Will people be able to install Windows, or other 3rd party content? Yes. Steam Deck is a PC, and players will be able to install whatever they like, including other OSes. [0]: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/faq

That is a great link. Perhaps even more interesting is this: Valve is working with anti-cheat vendors for Linux (Proton) support. So one of the biggest remaining obstacles to Linux gaming may soon be addressed as a side effect of this.

Anti-cheat is not exactly consumer-friendly.

They should design their games such that the client is not trusted, and then the only possible cheats would be UI/AI assistants to the human players, which is not really cheating.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#524

Post by checkyoursudo »

klodolph wrote: post #395
Gadiguibou wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding that storage thing: in the hardware section, they specified that the storage could be expanded with a microSD [1] card which should already improve storage capacity by a lot if you wish. [1]: https://www.steamdeck.com/en/hardware

Micro SD is an order of magnitude slower than the NVMe option, though.

I am not sure I can tell the difference between games that load from my SSD versus my NVMe. Is there real benefit?

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#525

Post by caconym_ »

Ashanmaril wrote: post #478
caconym_ wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about Valve's record with hardware is that the products aren't bad , just extremely niche. If this thing really can play most of most people's Steam games in a Switch-like form factor with a standard gamepad layout, I think it stands to be a hit in a way their past hardware attempts weren't. It's also an interesting counterpoint to all the streaming services popping up these days. PC game streaming to mobil…

I'd argue the Steam controller was kinda bad. But more in concept than execution. The touch pads were just not a good replacement for a thumbstick or a D-pad But I agree with what you're saying. If this thing is actually good, it could have some real mainstream appeal.

> I'd argue the Steam controller was kinda bad. But more in concept than execution. The touch pads were just not a good replacement for a thumbstick or a D-pad

There are plenty of people with great things to say about it, but they largely seem to be people who wanted to play FPS games without a mouse and keyboard, and were willing to put in some effort to get it configured right. I can imagine it being more successful if it had gotten first-class out-of-the-box support for more games, but it seems like it never reached the level of adoption where that was worth it for developers.

I've never tried it myself, though. If the Steam Deck is a success, maybe we'll see the Steam Controller model finally take off (since the Deck has similar touchpads built in). Or maybe it will be like the Kinect, a pet feature deleted in later hardware revisions.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#526

Post by rewq4321 »

> "Steam Deck starts shipping December 2021 to the United States, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. More regions coming in 2022—stay tuned for more info."

Does anyone know why hardware product launches tend to be region-constrained initially? Is is for shipping/logistics reasons, or legal/tax/etc stuff?

Software/SaaS launches never have these constraints, so I figure it must be shipping related, but that would amaze me. Is there still no company that makes international shipping painless/simple? What would be the difficult part for Value here?

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#527

Post by dvogel »

gorgoiler wrote: post #347
jchw wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m super excited to see that they’ve chosen Arch as a base for SteamOS. I understand fully why they originally chose Ubuntu, but I feel like Arch actually hits a lot of sweet spots for consumer use cases and could be adapted for such use quite effectively. (To be fair, I feel similarly about Gentoo, which was similarly adapted for ChromeOS quite successfully.)

I love a good distro story but it doesn’t seem very relevant here. A Linux distribution like Ubuntu, Arch or Gentoo provides a platform for users to configure their system. The distro is a toolkit for finishing up a generic OS into the specific workstation needed by the user to do their work. Steam Deck on the other hand has one job to do: launch /opt/steam and run things linked against libsteam. The end user won’t b…

Game developers end up using the distro tooling when they port the game to SteamOS. One of the tensions with Ubuntu was that developers felt familiar with it (good) but the system libraries lagged what was needed by new games (bad) so developers would need to run their game in a SteamOS Ubuntu-esque chroot instead of their Ubuntu host system despite them being very similar. Arch does provide the promise of easier native porting because testing the game during active development (on an Arch host system) will be closer to the SteamOS Arch-esque system. It's small but meaningful for those who try to support SteamOS to the maximum extent, which is important when you're trying to seed a new ecosystem.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#528

Post by andrewmunsell »

rewq4321 wrote: post #526

> "Steam Deck starts shipping December 2021 to the United States, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. More regions coming in 2022—stay tuned for more info." Does anyone know why hardware product launches tend to be region-constrained initially? Is is for shipping/logistics reasons, or legal/tax/etc stuff? Software/SaaS launches never have these constraints, so I figure it must be shipping related, but…

Shipping (distribution from local warehouses to avoid unnecessary customs surprises), taxes, certifications, (and I know it's not the case here but for some HW projects) regional electrical differences (50/60hz, 120/240v), and of course supply-- there's a number of differences that could lead to a hardware project restricting the initial launch.

Re: Valve Steam Deck

#529

Post by pqdbr »

danso wrote: post #300

IGN has a detailed hands-on which really boosted my interest: https://www.ign.com/articles/steam-deck-hands-on-impressions... The joystick layout looks funky to me, but apparently it works? > However, as soon as I held it myself, the layout felt completely natural: the intuitive hand orientation when you grab the Steam Deck is more straight up and down, like holding the sides of a steering wheel, whereas with a contr…

As a Mac user, I'm very interested as well. I don't play any games nowadays because I cant justify spending all that money for a latest generation PC, let alone the space it takes.

If I can have a dockable PC that can churn decent frame rates, It's just a matter of switching the input on my monitor and switching the bluetooth mouse/keyboard to it. For me, the fact it's portable is just icing on the cake to be honest. I'd buy it even if it didn't have a screen or controls to be honest.

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