Quoting: ElamanOpiskelijaAnother thing that it's a serious question from me and I still don't get is: what is this device offering that is so important, that a small laptop cannot? What is the use case?

Can't play on a laptop while standing up on the train*. :smile: Goodness knows I've spent enough days on Melbourne public transport where there was no place to sit in the past…

*At least, not without additional hardware and looking really goofy.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Huh, so is it also a game engine? Or can you edit levels for use in another engine with it? I'm confused.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Ok, that 427 → 4/27 for the release date was clever. Didn't think of that until I saw it. :grin:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ShabbyXKnow what I'm saying?

Yes, that clarifies things. Thanks.:smile:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

We're going to be adding in some Steam Deck related questions too. What do you want to see?

Hmm, maybe add "Steam Deck" to "Main gaming machine" category, along with desktop and laptop? Maybe if you select "Steam Deck" as your main machine it auto-fills all the information it can for you? :grin: Other than that, there's not that much to customize about the Deck compared to a desktop…maybe if you've stuck with SteamOS 3 or have another OS (whatever that might be) on it?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: Purple Library GuyWell, no it doesn't. The distinction between "verified", "playable", and "unsupported" doesn't actually have anything to do with crashes. Something can be "unsupported" even though it plays smoothly and fairly satisfyingly with never a crash--if there's a cutscene that doesn't play, it's "unsupported". And technically, a game can be "Verified" even if it crashes quite a bit--as long as every single bit of the game plays correctly, and it works well with the screen size and the Deck controls. So no, that heuristic wouldn't tell a thing about the categories as Valve draws them.

Yes, but! The crashes are part of the heuristic, but not all of if. If you paid attention, I also mentioned the amount of time users play. Obviously they can't exactly infer the class the game belongs to, but as an *indication* that valve should look into it, I think that's pretty sufficient (i.e. no need for the users to spell it out)

The point is that crashes are not actually part of the heuristic at all, as Valve have currently designed it; nowhere in the criteria for the categories does it actually say anything about how stable a game is. These are the current four criteria a game must pass in order to marked Verified, as listed here [External Link]:

• Input: The title should have full controller support, use appropriate controller input icons, and automatically bring up the on-screen keyboard when needed.


• Display: The game should support the default resolution of Steam Deck (1280x800 or 1280x720), have good default settings, and text should be legible.


• Seamlessness: The title shouldn’t display any compatibility warnings, and if there’s a launcher it should be navigable with a controller.


• System Support: If running through Proton, the game and all its middleware should be supported by Proton. This includes anti-cheat support.

I'm not saying that's how it should be, just how it currently is. The problem is that they've designed this very objective, engineering-friendly system ("does game tick boxes? It's Verified!") without considering the emotional axis of playing games and losing an hour of progress to a crash and a save bug. I don't think you're wrong to assume that Verified should mean something like "plays basically flawlessly, or at least no more than the random crashes you'd get playing it on Windows", and I bet a lot of people are thinking along those lines as well, so I'm glad to see it looks like Valve are polling people's responses and possibly shifting to incorporate some more subjective criteria rather than purely objective ones. (Like, if the one movie that doesn't play in an otherwise flawless game isn't actually that important to the story, maybe it should be moved from Unsupported to at least Playable, that sort of thing.)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ShabbyX

Quoting: PhiladelphusJust tried Warpinator for the first time yesterday for my use case of, every so many weeks, getting the photos I've taken off my phone and onto my computer, and it worked great. (Much better than connecting via cable, which always seems to randomly unmount if I so much as bump my phone once it's connected.) Thanks for making me aware of it!

Does your cable not get plugged in all the way? You might have gunk in the usb port (of the phone). I used a tooth pick sliced in half to be super thin, then scraped all the gunk out.

I've got one of these [External Link] magnetic cable tips in my phone, and while the cables can handle data transfer it's a little flaky. (It's actually probably kept my USB-C port cleaner than it would be normally.) :smile: But thanks. I did have to clean out another port (on I forget what) some time ago.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Just tried Warpinator for the first time yesterday for my use case of, every so many weeks, getting the photos I've taken off my phone and onto my computer, and it worked great. (Much better than connecting via cable, which always seems to randomly unmount if I so much as bump my phone once it's connected.) Thanks for making me aware of it!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

What's Steam Deck Rewards? Haven't heard that term before. :huh:

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Purple Library GuyBeats the alternative. I always have the feeling that you can tell when society is starting to collapse--it's when the maintenance isn't being done any more.

Oh, for sure. I like to gripe, but it certainly needed it, and I've driven over some of the newly-paved sections and they're pretty nice.

View this comment - View article - View full comments