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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

#391

Post by giancarlostoro »

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.

I game on 1080P and never have issues with any games I play, though I am on a 3080. It's definitely people trying to max out every setting for their 4K monitor that they overpaid for. I might be giving 2K monitors a try soon on the other hand.

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

#392

Post by hackernudes »

baq wrote: post #160
klardotsh wrote: post #115

This 12GB update managed to trigger the bizarre Steam behavior on my Linux desktop where the game patching process pegs all cores to 100% and thrashes the disk so hard the system eventually stops allowing eg. launching new processes (though the system isn't frozen stiff like running out of RAM - switching Niri desktops is fine, but launching eg. htop hangs forever, and eventually browsers stop responding). After walk…

The linux kernel’s handling of IO under memory pressure is abysmal. I have to tune dirty ratios and write back ages and swap and whatnot just to get the system to not hard lock when running multiple node microservices in stages which run fine, just slower, when starting them all at once on a MacBook. Disclaimer: I don’t even like macOS.

I've had similar problems but no amount of tweaking vm and vfs cache settings helped. Swap or not, both 32gb and 128gb of ram. Manually reclaiming memory would un-lock the system (/sys/fs/cgroup/memory.reclaim).

I wrote a user space memory reclaimer and have not got a lockup since. https://gist.github.com/EBADBEEF/f168458028f684a91148f4d3e79...

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

#393

Post by mbStavola »

whatevaa wrote: post #347
october8140 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played the entire game on Steam Deck and had a great experience. 100+ hours

No offense, but some people requirements are really, really low. I played God of War on Steam Deck and it was not a good experience, it was at the bottom of 'okay', and only because at that moment I wasn't at home to play on better hardware. This is the reason why I don't believe when people say that it runs great without trying it myself.

> No offense, but some people requirements are really, really low.

I think you kinda hit the nail on the head, but I believe there is an extra dimension to this: desire.

For BG3, it looked fun and I had good memories of BG2 so I was interested in playing it. After tuning the settings a bunch and not being able to get a consistent framerate / not have micro-freezing, I just said "oh well, I'll play it on some other platform in the future." I cared about BG3, but not that much.

This is in contrast to Elden Ring Nightreign, which also had issues. I was able to get it to a somewhat stable 30FPS and celebrated that success before dumping 100+ hours into the game. Why? Well, because I love FromSoft games! I really really really wanted to play the game and was willing to put up with a somewhat subpar experience in order to get it. BG3, among other games, is just not that exciting for me personally so my tolerance of technical hitches is very different.

... which brings us right back to this native release. Hopefully the improvements we see are enough to get me over that "hill" and actually enjoying the game. I have the update queued on my deck now so I can try it out after work.

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

#394

Post by [deleted] »

hackernudes wrote: post #392
baq wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linux kernel’s handling of IO under memory pressure is abysmal. I have to tune dirty ratios and write back ages and swap and whatnot just to get the system to not hard lock when running multiple node microservices in stages which run fine, just slower, when starting them all at once on a MacBook. Disclaimer: I don’t even like macOS.

I've had similar problems but no amount of tweaking vm and vfs cache settings helped. Swap or not, both 32gb and 128gb of ram. Manually reclaiming memory would un-lock the system (/sys/fs/cgroup/memory.reclaim). I wrote a user space memory reclaimer and have not got a lockup since. https://gist.github.com/EBADBEEF/f168458028f684a91148f4d3e79...

[deleted]

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

#395

Post by baq »

hackernudes wrote: post #392
baq wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linux kernel’s handling of IO under memory pressure is abysmal. I have to tune dirty ratios and write back ages and swap and whatnot just to get the system to not hard lock when running multiple node microservices in stages which run fine, just slower, when starting them all at once on a MacBook. Disclaimer: I don’t even like macOS.

I've had similar problems but no amount of tweaking vm and vfs cache settings helped. Swap or not, both 32gb and 128gb of ram. Manually reclaiming memory would un-lock the system (/sys/fs/cgroup/memory.reclaim). I wrote a user space memory reclaimer and have not got a lockup since. https://gist.github.com/EBADBEEF/f168458028f684a91148f4d3e79...

I don't know how to give more visibility to this hack, but it deserves it. Bookmarking and deploying on my boxen.

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

#396

Post by dkersten »

kcb wrote: post #360
dkersten wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they don’t, it would be crazy to say they would support all the different possible distros and configurations that people might run, when the majority of users are in steam deck. But that doesn’t mean it won’t run, just that if you have issues, they don’t promise to fix them. Seems reasonable to me. BG3 already ran well enough on Linux, so I imagine this will only make it run better, official support or not…

I don't think they have to do that for a Steam Linux release. Steam has Linux native runtimes to provide games with a consistent environment across distros. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime/blob/master/R...

Ah, that’s true. Steam Linux is a smaller target than Linux in general. You’re right.

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

#397

Post by sombragris »

> 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.

I won't leave a bad review or whine on BG3, and my (otherwise very capable laptop) is just 6 years old with an Intel UHD 620 integrated GPU, and BG3 barely reaches the 10fps level on 1024x768 with lowest settings on everywhere. So it's not even 720p, and BG3 chokes a lot in this somewhat recent hardware.

I see BG3's graphics and while they are beautiful, they're nothing out of the ordinary in comparison to other games. That is, there are good games that could run very well in my laptop and which look good.

In sum, I see BG3 as being needlessly demanding, and pushes out a large sector of machines and potential buyers. I'd love to have an RTX-class GPU (and have the cash to afford it), but all I have it's a laptop whose GPU cannot be upgraded, and that is perfectly capable in all other areas.

Every time when I point out this limit in games, which I see as silly, I get flamed to death. People in the gaming communities are seemingly unable to understand why making extremely high minimum requirements is not a good sales strategy.

Games can look good with integrated GPUs. See the Wolfenstein games (id engine). Even more recent games like Generation Zero (Apex open world engine) can be run decently at lowest settings on my hardware. MGS5:PhantomPain also runs and looks very good. But no luck with BG3.

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

#398

Post by array_key_first »

suncore wrote: post #380
array_key_first wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There's also much cheaper methods of dynamic lighting that aren't real time ray tracing. You can approximate, you can cheat, and it will look almost as good.

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

#399

Post by sailingparrot »

sombragris wrote: post #397

> 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. I won't leave a bad review or whine on BG3, and my (otherwise very capable laptop) is just 6 years old with an Intel UHD 620 integrated GPU, and BG3 barely reaches the 10fps level on 1024x768 with lowest settings on everywhere. So it's not even 720p, and BG3 chokes a l…

To be fair, there is world between "extremely high minimum requirements" and a 6 years old laptop, considering laptop of even the current year are never considered super high end rigs.

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

#400

Post by spaceywilly »

drnick1 wrote: post #162

It's worth noting that the native Linux version of games is often buggy and a far worse experience than the Windows version running on Proton. Valve itself is infamous for this: the Left 4 Dead 2 native game has multiple very annoying bugs that have been known for 15 years, and that Valve still hasn't fixed. Unfortunately, there is (another) bug that prevents the Windows version running on Proton from connecting to V…

I would tend to agree, I think dev time is better spent supporting Proton. I have even seen benchmarks where Proton on Linux outperforms Windows. As a Steam Deck owner, Proton is fantastic.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2024/08/21/linux...

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