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Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

larian.com

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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#251
post #174

This is a gigantic effort from Larian, who among all things is still updating its software instead of resting on its own laurels. But the Deck is limited in hardware. It makes sense that it has some difficulties running gigantic games and is more aimed towards simpler games. In parallel I don't understand gamers with 15 years old hardware leaving bad reviews or whining when a game chokes above 720p with minimum setti…

> In parallel I don't understand gamers with 15 years old hardware leaving bad reviews or whining when a game chokes above 720p with minimum settings. Because they bought the game. After decades of PC gaming, it's totally absurd there is no system that tell you how bad or how well a game is going to play on your system. And if it's too difficult to make, how can we expect regular people to know themselves ?

Steam literally has a section called Hardware Requirements under every game.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#252
post #174

This is a gigantic effort from Larian, who among all things is still updating its software instead of resting on its own laurels. But the Deck is limited in hardware. It makes sense that it has some difficulties running gigantic games and is more aimed towards simpler games. In parallel I don't understand gamers with 15 years old hardware leaving bad reviews or whining when a game chokes above 720p with minimum setti…

> In parallel I don't understand gamers with 15 years old hardware leaving bad reviews or whining when a game chokes above 720p with minimum settings. Because they bought the game. After decades of PC gaming, it's totally absurd there is no system that tell you how bad or how well a game is going to play on your system. And if it's too difficult to make, how can we expect regular people to know themselves ?

Steam makes it easy to get a full refund for a game you don't like for any reason. So there's no risk in trying an install of a game that might not work well on your below-specs device, but then you shouldn't give it a negative review.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actual static binaries (so including libc) should run just fine anywhere, right? The Linux kernel has always had a very stable ABI.

Yes but that limits you to command line applications. GL and X11 (and I assume Wayland) are always linked dynamically. Granted, those don't suffer from glibc's "DLL version hell", but not sure what happens when you link the main executable statically against musl and then load DLLs which dynamically link glibc. Another option is to dynamically link against an old glibc version, the Zig toolchain makes that easy also…

If you statically link musl, dlopen doesn't work at all. You can't load any shared library.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Steam deck is really not that limited. Every game could be made to run well on it if some time was spent actually making the low settings work well. Something often skipped on modern games which optimise only for people with a $1000 GPU chugging 400w.

It's not like we have seen anything in gaming that wouldn't be possible on PS3/Xbox360 era hardware, certainly not in terms of complexity. Just remember that stuff like red dead redemption ran on those things with all of 512 MB of unified memory. It ran and looked better than borderlands 4 does on current consoles.

I think you're looking back with rose-tinted glasses.

The 360/PS3 was a huge jump forward but very limited by today’s standards. RDR was one of the better looking games of the generation but could not maintain a steady 30fps at 1080p/i (and I’m not sure it was even true 1080).

The PC version came later, had higher resolution textures and other graphical improvements so it compares more favourably to modern games when you play it today. It still had problems running on all but the highest-end PCs of the time.

Of course even low-end PCs can run it without breaking a sweat, because they’ve become much more powerful.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a gigantic effort from Larian, who among all things is still updating its software instead of resting on its own laurels. What makes this story even better is how it actually came about - this wasn't initially a top-down corporate initiative, but rather a passion project from a single engineer who worked on it after hours. The fact that Larian immediately recognized the value and threw their full support be…

Do they name the engineer somewhere in the public messages? Super glad the company recognized the value and supported the release!

They probably would have to get the permission of the engineer to name them publicly. With how the gaming community behaves on social media I wouldn't be surprised if the engineer doesn't want that. Because that could mean death threats for you and your family the next time a subset of the community gets upset with your employer.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#256
post #174

This is a gigantic effort from Larian, who among all things is still updating its software instead of resting on its own laurels. But the Deck is limited in hardware. It makes sense that it has some difficulties running gigantic games and is more aimed towards simpler games. In parallel I don't understand gamers with 15 years old hardware leaving bad reviews or whining when a game chokes above 720p with minimum setti…

The Steam deck is really not that limited. Every game could be made to run well on it if some time was spent actually making the low settings work well. Something often skipped on modern games which optimise only for people with a $1000 GPU chugging 400w.

Or in the case of Borderlands 4 and a plethora of other Unreal Engine 5 titles: they’re optimized for nothing and there aren’t even options to turn off most of the expensive graphical effects, despite the engine being able to scale down to mobile devices.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Steam deck is really not that limited. Every game could be made to run well on it if some time was spent actually making the low settings work well. Something often skipped on modern games which optimise only for people with a $1000 GPU chugging 400w.

It's not like we have seen anything in gaming that wouldn't be possible on PS3/Xbox360 era hardware, certainly not in terms of complexity. Just remember that stuff like red dead redemption ran on those things with all of 512 MB of unified memory. It ran and looked better than borderlands 4 does on current consoles.

Yeah, sure...I'd like to see something like MSFS2024 or BeamNG.drive running on a PS3.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they name the engineer somewhere in the public messages? Super glad the company recognized the value and supported the release!

Not that I'm aware of. I thought that was weird at first as well, but I assume it might be in a way to protect the engineer. Unfortunately, singling out any individual developer, even for praise, can attract unwanted negative attention online. By acknowledging the passion and the work without naming the person, Swen gives them full credit internally while shielding them from becoming a public target. This doesn't eve…

This is an interesting perspective... I'd be at a loss to think of an example of an engineer who's been publicly pilloried (having been highly regarded for great work) for the failings of their company. Perhaps you could cite and example?

Seems enormously more likely to be the all to familiar story in the games industry of not providing credit to individual devs. Something that goes back to the earliest days of Atari.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Steam deck is really not that limited. Every game could be made to run well on it if some time was spent actually making the low settings work well. Something often skipped on modern games which optimise only for people with a $1000 GPU chugging 400w.

Or in the case of Borderlands 4 and a plethora of other Unreal Engine 5 titles: they’re optimized for nothing and there aren’t even options to turn off most of the expensive graphical effects, despite the engine being able to scale down to mobile devices.

Yeah, UE5 games don't even run well on 5090s these days -_-

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Steam deck is really not that limited. Every game could be made to run well on it if some time was spent actually making the low settings work well. Something often skipped on modern games which optimise only for people with a $1000 GPU chugging 400w.

It's not like we have seen anything in gaming that wouldn't be possible on PS3/Xbox360 era hardware, certainly not in terms of complexity. Just remember that stuff like red dead redemption ran on those things with all of 512 MB of unified memory. It ran and looked better than borderlands 4 does on current consoles.

Cyberpunk 2077 proved that one wrong very easily :D
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