New Steam Deck owner - Recommendations, Tips and Tricks?

[middler]

Not necessarily exclusive to the steam deck but if you have good internet and a gaming PC I highly recommend looking into Moonlight to stream games from your PC to your Steam Deck. It works a way better than Valve's official streaming implementation and lets you control the bitrate so you can fine tune it to get a nice balance between video quality and latency.

I've been using it to play FFXIV and other games that don't run too well natively on the steam deck during my downtime at work and it's amazing.

Moonlight is only needed if you want to run non steam games from your PC to your Deck. Steam has its own internal casting ability. I found this out when I had both my steam Deck and my steam link both going at the same time.

 

[Pockets]

Moonlight is only needed if you want to run non steam games from your PC to your Deck. Steam has its own internal casting ability. I found this out when I had both my steam Deck and my steam link both going at the same time.

Unfortunately for me, Steam's casting option was way too laggy, which is why I recommended Moonlight as an alternative.

 

[middler]

Unfortunately for me, Steam's casting option was way too laggy, which is why I recommended Moonlight as an alternative.

You won't catch me talking badly about Moonlight. It was awesome when I used it on my Vita.

It's a strong recommendation for any handheld you can install it on

 

[prnzo x BOOZE-o ka-BEER-o]

I hate using mine in its Linux environment OS desktop mode. even with a good stylus. makes me feel like a bull in a china shop with its ins and outs striking me as somewhat counter-intuitive. was a pain to clean up all those shortcuts that flooded the desktop display as I bought games. but luckily it didn't take long to set up the emulation to be easily accessible from gaming mode. it's been a while since switching to desktop mode - and believe me, I'm in no hurry to get there. I'm sure I just gotta brush up on Linux hotkeys/shortcuts/things to smash when it inevitably pis... I mean, yea I should study up !!^_^!!

 

[gekiganwing]

After a couple months of Steam Deck use, I've had good experiences, but also a lot of hitting my head against the wall trying to solve problems.

1. Peggle and Bejeweled 3 work. However, the touchscreen never seems to function correctly. Every gesture seems to go in the wrong direction.

2. Arcade Paradise should work on the device. After I get to the title screen, the game freezes. No buttons or touchscreen presses do anything.

3. While Castlevania Advance Collection functions well, my save data vanishes after closing the game.

4. Some file sizes are larger than I expected. Trials of Mana (2020) is almost 11 GB on Switch. Its Steam edition is at least 20 GB. I noticed a similar issue with The Cowabunga Collection.

5. Downloading Emudeck was easy. However, the program doesn't recognize my microSD card. Afterwards, I tried to format the card through the Steam interface. I couldn't click the Format button. A few minutes later, I double checked the microSD card with my Windows computer. No problems there. The card doesn't seem to be damaged.

6. I installed Stardew Valley (Steam version) and started a new game file. It took a few minutes to install SMAPI. It wasn't tough to get all the required files for the Welcome to Mineral Town mod, and extract their contents into the Mods folder. The SMAPI program doesn't display any errors. So I'm still not sure why I can't access the modded content. I've tried uninstalling and then re-installing both Stardew and SMAPI.

 

[prnzo x BOOZE-o ka-BEER-o]

ok while I can't comment on your 1st listed issue (don't have Peggle or Bejewled 3) or 2nd (only have Arcade Paradise on Xbox Live Gaming Pass) n 6th (don't have Stardew Valley on Steam) - I can at least partially comment/help with the rest:

#3 - while I do have all Castlevania collections on Deck n they have never erased my savegames - I've noticed the Steam cloud has failed to keep longtime saves (such as Sonic Generations GRRrr but I have Sonic x Shadow Generations so I'll try again this time with the ReBast... I mean Remastered version xD)... Code Shifter n other games intermittently end up with 2 conflicting saves askin me which to keep - but with Castlevania Advance Collection, do you hold LB + RB on exiting any of the 4 included games or do you have SteamDeck itself hard-close it for you? OG Castlevania (n Contra) Collection seem to leave you no choice but to hard-exit but CV Advance Collection has that (obtuse n obv shoehorned in at the last minute) 'proper shutdown' option. it took Konami/M2 till Dominus Collection to offer the standard, intuitive exit that most other games have had as standard on Steam-PC games for an awful long time now (no excuse Konami but wutevR l3Lz)

#4 - didn't know about the filesize differentiation since I am sans traditional modern gaming consoles n don't have the .NSP or .XCI of the TMNT comp but anytime you're down to grind on The Cowabunga Collection or Shredder's Revenge or any of my 300-somethin other games on Steam just find me there as 'Prnzo x Futurist Intonarumori'

#5 - I've purchased a total of 9 SD cards for my Deck (1 a 128GB that was already lying around, n ordered 8 256GB SDs.) n while they all worked at first just fine - I refused to buy any more as all but 3 of them function now n Steam Deck even acts like the 3 cards that still work are empty n need to be formatted after I (properly) eject them n require re-entry at times or other fiddle-finagle jackassery to get goin. man I regret gettin the 512GB Deck instead of forkin out the extra $100-ish to get the 1TB model *sigh* still love my Deck nontheless though ^_^

I hope something somewhere in my personal experience here assists or at least comforts you in knowing that DeckFouLz are bound to occur but it still manages overall to be a great device (except: die Linux!!! >=D jk jk... or only half-kidding anywey...)

 

[gekiganwing]

with Castlevania Advance Collection, do you hold LB + RB on exiting any of the 4 included games or do you have SteamDeck itself hard-close it for you?

After reaching a save point, I've shut down the game through the Steam interface. (There's a prompt stating I will lose data that hasn't been saved.) I will remind myself to use these buttons next time. In the past, I've bought other Konami collections, but they're arcade or 8-bit games, so I haven't used their save / load functions.

Incidentally, I haven't had any save data issues running GBA games on my modded 2DS.

*Update* -- I tried to format the microSD card through the Steam interface one more time. It worked. I've installed Emudeck. Unfortunately, my Windows computer no longer recognizes the microSD card. I assume the card is now in EXT4 format.

As far as I can tell, I can use the Steam Deck to partition the 256 GB microSD card. Or I can find a larger external drive, connect it to the Steam Deck by USB-C, and partition it. I don't know which option is better. Either way, it seems like jumping through a lot of hoops just to use Emudeck.