Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by pmarreck » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 12:55 PM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #233

ernst_klim wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is true tho. The games by Loki Software are still running great for me. It's a matter of skill and discipline. SDL, OpenGL and alike are very stable. The problems start when developers start to use lots of small third-party libraries and depend on particular versions of them, but IIRC on Windows it's also solved by simply shipping all the libs with the game.

Discipline? In gamedev? The industry which famously modeled trains as hats and was proud of it?

Meanwhile I love the "trains as hats" hack.

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

#372

Post by xd1936 » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 12:55 PM UTC

voodooEntity wrote: post #291

whs wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had that with MHW and I nailed it down to shader (fossilize-replay - https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Fossilize ). From my guess, Steam support Vulkan shader pre-compilation so that you don't have to wait in game (like the infamous 10 min Monster Hunter Wilds startup delay). They also seems to also be able to download the compilation cache from Steam if someone already have done the process on the same GPU + driver…

I have massive doubts about the "They also seems to also be able to download the compilation cache from Steam if someone already have done the process on the same GPU + driver version." This would imply that if I already calculated the shaders for the current game state than i could reuse them and not have to go through the whole compilation step (if no changes happen inbetween). Matter of fact, i have to recompile t…

No reason to doubt nor speculate. It's been a feature of Steam since 2017.

https://www.techpowerup.com/239687/latest-steam-client-beta-...

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

#373

Post by pmarreck » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 12:56 PM UTC

p_l wrote: post #365

badsectoracula wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

glibc doesn't suffer from DLL version hell as long as you are not doing anything stupid (like using private symbols). If you commit to using just the "C library" bits you can compile a binary linked against glibc on a distro from 1998 and it will work on modern distros just fine. There are many issues with libraries breaking backwards compatibility on Linux (like pretty much all GUI ones) but glibc, X11, OpenGL (and…

glibc very much suffers from version hell, because: a) glibc will drop older versioned symbols over time making your binary not work at all b) glibc owns ld.so and is not afraid to make incompatible changes, which is why running Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri linux port requires that you dig out not just libc, but the entire dynamic linking stack and know how to bypass default executable interpreter in ELF files.

...aaaaand stuff like this is exactly why NixOS is the only sensible Linux distro

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

#374

Post by pmarreck » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 12:57 PM UTC

a_humean wrote: post #185

SchemaLoad wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often the linux builds do work when they are released, but then an OS update changes some dynamic linked library which then breaks them.

Except valve runs these games in well defined container runtimes to avoid these issues: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steam-runtime-tools/-/b...

Pinch me when a single flake.nix takes equal care of this.

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

#375

Post by pmarreck » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 12:58 PM UTC

KolibriFly wrote: post #353

mbStavola wrote: post #139

I had tried to run BG3 on my Steam Deck a couple months back. It ran... okay. Lot's of hitches and I had to tune things way way way down, but somewhat playable. I'm very grateful that they took the time to build a native Steam Deck release for the game, not really something I had ever expected. Hopefully with this I can actually jump in and enjoy the game!

Really didn't expect a native build either, especially post-launch. Huge props to Larian for going the extra mile

Huge props to the dev who burned his free time to do this, and to Larian for then backing it.

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

#376

Post by teamonkey » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 1:01 PM UTC

flohofwoe wrote: post #288

teamonkey wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most Xbox360 and PS3 games were 720p at 30fps. 720p was mostly fine because 1080p TVs were luxury items back then. The performance problems in modern games are often not caused by fillrate-vs-resolution bottlenecks though, but by poor engine architecture decisions (triggering shader recompilations in the hot path).

Shader recompilation causes stuttering not general performance problems. Shader complexity will though, which is a function of render quality.

But I’m confused about why you think fill rate isn’t an issue? If you are now upgrading from 1080p to 4K your GPU needs at the very least 4x the pixel pushing power and even then that’s only to maintain the same detail; you bought a 4K screen for more detail.

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

#377

Post by jheriko » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 1:12 PM UTC

andruby wrote: post #230

sReinwald wrote: post #223

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!

[dead]

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

#378

Post by foldor » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 1:15 PM UTC

flohofwoe wrote: post #288

teamonkey wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most Xbox360 and PS3 games were 720p at 30fps. 720p was mostly fine because 1080p TVs were luxury items back then. The performance problems in modern games are often not caused by fillrate-vs-resolution bottlenecks though, but by poor engine architecture decisions (triggering shader recompilations in the hot path).

I might be misremembering, but I seem to remember most games of that era were 540p scaled to 1080p. 720p would have been an upgrade. But your point still stands.

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

#379

Post by stavros » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 1:21 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #331

nopurpose wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I left my phone (out of battery) on a plane, I went to the flightradar and checked all airports the airplane was visiting after. Then contacted lost&found at each of them individually and eventually got my phone back. It was found only a fifth flight!

Wow, I would read a write up about that. I think I would’ve given up after the second try

I think you just read the writeup!

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

#380

Post by suncore » Wed, Sep 24, 2025, 1:27 PM UTC

array_key_first wrote: post #361

thefz wrote: 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. IMO it's because a lot of these newer games just don't need that much horsepower. BG3 is not one of them, but looking at the broader industry. A lot of times were seeing maaaaaybe a 5% bump in fidelity or graphics quality in exchange for 400% less performance. Like ray…

There is an interesting discussion about the need for ray tracing in one of the later Digital Foundry videos. The argument goes that sometimes baked lighting is impractical due to the size of the maps and how much dynamic lighting you need. The latest Doom game is one such game where light maps would be 100s of GBs. But I guess most other games are fine with baked lighting.