In Desktop Mode there are plenty of free and open source games available, which can be manually added to Steam Launcher.
Xonotic by far and away!
Xonotic is like if you took the inspired weapon alt-fire modes from Unreal Tournament (video rundown of weapons) and bolted them onto the downright spiritual movement of Quake (I feel my soul drawing closer to the Flying Spaghetti Monster with every strafe jump I make). You might wonder how the hell you play one of the fastest Quake multiplayer derived shooters in existence using the joysticks on the Steam Deck (the answer is Gyroscope massively complements Joystick aiming once you get used to it). Check out my post on the Xonotic forums detailing the important bits of the control scheme.
https://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=9846
Xonotic cont.
I am dead serious the Steam Deck should just come preinstalled with Xonotic and a control scheme like this, it is brilliant and Xonotic is probably the most resource efficient 3D competitive multiplayer game in existence so your Steam Deck battery will love it too… your deck’s fan can take a nap while you play, it is never needed with this game outside of one little brief whir to load a level.
yes that is a restaurant POS machine running objectively the best FPS ever, suck it DOOM
As a last note the bots in Xonotic can be set up to BRUTALLY hard difficulties but the bots are fun to play against so long as you set the difficulty right for you, they move how players should in a strafe jumping game, they push for good items when they spawn on the map and they try to escape when you pin them into a corner with a decisive advantage. It makes a superb pick up and play experience with no internet connection required that you can jump in and out of as chaotically as you want while you are on the go with your deck.
Beyond All Reason
https://www.beyondallreason.info/
Beyond All Reason is the latest in over a decade of Total Annihilation inspired games made on the open source Spring Engine (though I believe most energy is behind a recent fork of the Spring Engine called the Recoil Engine). The RTS genre picking to hedge it’s bets on StarCraft style rts games and not Total Annihilation style rts games I think is a tragedy (though understandable) and in my opinion helped lead to the stagnation of the genre (well except Forged Alliance Forever/SupCom 1 and well… Planetary Annihilation got pretty decent after I stopped paying attention it seems like). Thankfully the open source Spring Engine has been a perennial source of refinement and innovation on full scale RTS games, and the various TA inspired projects over the years have taken ideas originally introduced in TA and elevated them to a level that is honestly pretty shocking for a series of open source community projects in an essentially dead genre of games (classic RTS games).
Beyond All Reason cont.
Brilliant game and like the original Total Annihilation being able to hold shift and que up many commands as well as easily instruct units into formations makes playing BAR so much less of a headache than trying to micro the shit out of everything in a game like StarCraft (see 6:50 in this video). Also unlike StarCraft the fighters and bombers actually fly around like planes instead of being exactly the same as land units except they hover.
Really all you have to do to get the Steam Deck’s controls working well is start with the default WASD and Mouse template and bind a key to toggle gyroscope so you can use it for making your quick fiddly mouse movements with the joysticks perfectly precise and then figure out what key you want to bind shift to in order to make queuing orders up for a unit easy to do (with that template it defaults to a joystick click which for something you will do a bazillion times over the course of a battle ain’t gonna do it chief).
…and sure I wouldn’t jump into competitive games with mouse and keyboard players who have been munching on TA-style RTS mechanics for a good portion of their lives at this point but the reason I recommend this game is over the last 5 years or so the AI has gotten REALLY good, it isn’t like you are playing a dumb unit spamming algorithm that gets an upper hand over you by just cheating on eco, the AI plays fair (at least on moderate settings) and will probe your defenses, tech up and react to your choices. There is also a mode where you fight dinosaurs (called chickens) in a co-op horde survival fashion.
sigh it looks like most of the community has moved to discord though, I fear it will end up killing the community long term if the community only really gathers there to interact. Now is the time for a fediverse Beyond All Reason & Spring/Recoil Engine community on a fediverse reddit-like such as lemmy, kbin etc…!!!
——
Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead taught me that in the apocalypse bicycles and slings (NOT slingshots) will be your two most useful tools.
…Or roller skates lol. Seriously though I love this game and the community around it from the bottom of my heart, what a stunning tour de force of an open world survival game. Check out the Sky Islands Mod (included in the vanilla game as an option) if the main game doesn’t feel focused enough to you. Also please join the Lemmy community around Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, there is a decent amount of activity and it would be a perfect place to ask new questions as a newbie!
https://sopuli.xyz/c/cataclysmdda@lemmy.ml
I don’t have a control scheme for this one yet, but I have no doubt it will be easier to play this game on a Steam Deck than a normal laptop without the number pad (we can just use one of the joysticks!). One of the very very nice things about CDDA is that as overwhelming of a game as it is to learn the control scheme is actually very thoughtfully laid out and when you forget a command just press ? and you can search for commands by describing what they do. You just gotta remember ? and you can learn the rest of the keybindings on the fly.
**Edit: I just finished creating a Steam Deck mapping for Cataclysm DDA that maps the full keyboard to the Steam Deck in an intuitive (in my opinion lol) fashion.
https://sopuli.xyz/post/12374907
——
Rigs Of Rods An odd one, an old one, it is an open source driving game with advanced physics.
If the point of the Steam Deck is to play games in contexts that you otherwise would never have been able to, having a game you can mindlessly drive around and crash into things while watching how pretty and cool it looks is a no brainer. This game has years and years of updates and is a quasi-predecessor to BeamNG which is another superb game (though not as resource efficient I believe). It also actually has a more generalist, capable engine than BeamNG appears to (with vehicles being able to have fully articulating parts like cranes that interact with the world).
I really think this game will just keep chugging along doing it’s own thing long into the foreseeable future and it makes a great companion to the deck especially if you have a kid that you might want to give them something to play that is more a simple physics toy than some complex game with lots of rules to memorize or comprehend. Bonus points, the realistic physics emulation of crashes will make it so your kid will never doubt how dangerous driving in reality is :)
Great Thanks for your write Up. I would love the idea that Steam Deck comes preinstalled with an Open Source Game like Xonotic!
Yeah I mean I would totally understand if people in the Xonotic community felt weird about this, you can already download Xonotic off of flathub in 5 seconds on the deck, but regardless in my opinion it would be perfect as a fun open source game that came default on a gaming device like the deck.
Why sticks and gyro instead of trackpads and gyro (I come from a Steam Controller, so that setup is usually my go-to for FPS games)? Seems like you can get faster turnarounds and more precise aiming versus a stick, which has a fixed maximum movement rate.
Honestly, if that is your jam hell yeah.
The point isn’t the joysticks, it’s the use of a gyroscope aim as a complement to whatever other input method you like. I vastly prefer the joysticks and I can attest to being able to play Xonotic at a fairly competitive level (I am NOT good but I can play Xonotic the way it is meant to be played with strafe jumping, rapid weapon switching, blaster jumps and immense dynamics of aim and movement). I imagine you can get that synergy with gyroscope and trackpads but I just haven’t personally seen it in action so I figured I would let someone else be the champion of that control scheme!
I love playing shooters with joysticks because I grew up playing Halo 1-3 on the Xbox as well as Call Of Duty and all the other controller shooters that came out in that era on Xbox. It wasn’t that I wouldn’t play a shooter with a mouse and keyboard, I just never had the money for a gaming computer and neither did my family. It is how I feel at home in a shooter, but it always frustrated me (like everyone else) that fine aim control is just shit with joysticks even though they are a blast to use (and then you have to layer a big dollop of auto-aim on to make controller shooters work). For me, gyroscope is like magic because it allows my subconscious to “fix” my joystick aim with the gyroscope and I don’t ever have to think about it except to remember how fun it is to do when I pull a flick shot with the vortex (rails) mainly using a gyroscope.
Also please try steering devastator rockets with gyroscope aim, it is like realizing you have been petting cats and dogs with an oven mitt on your whole life and haven’t been getting the real experience.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !cataclysmdda@lemmy.ml
Good bot!
Dude, I just started getting into BAR and, while a complete noob with a strong nostalgia for TA, I can’t even begin to imagine playing it on the Steam Deck. Not that I’m naysaying here, I’m just more in a kind of “I want to believe” state since it’s pretty much becoming one of my all time favorites.
All that said, brilliant write up! Share some of your control details for BAR too if you have a chance!
Yeah I get that vibe, and yes it is definitely a bit intimidating at first but here is the thing.
The biggest shift in gaming right now by far is gyroscope aim input maturing into a serious control scheme in many different contexts (primarily mobile shooters like COD mobile and Farlight 84 that also confusingly have competitive and usable touchscreen claw setups for playing shooters that most pc gaming fans are utterly oblivious about and would confidently dismiss as a joke idea).
People are starting to realize gyroscope is amazing for shooters, but what almost nobody has put two in and two together about yet is that the same fine aim control problems controllers have with shooters, they have with real-time or even turn based strategy games with complex UIs. While gyroscope isn’t as fun to use in this context, it works just as well. A “flick” shot from the center of your screen to the build menu on the side to quickly up cue some flashes, stumpies and samsons, with a quick flick shot back to center screen to give a construction unit instructions is exactly the kind of mouse movement that Gyroscope excels at introducing mouse-like precision to once you get used to it.
I can definitely share a control scheme but BAR is already so brilliantly designed with every single damn command in the game being able to be shift clicked to make it into a series of tasks for a unit or factory… that you don’t honestly need to do much. It is basically just:
What button do you want shift (as well as ctrl and alt and to a lesser extent spacebar) to be bound too? This should be comfortable and easy to press as shift clicking is at the core of BAR and TA. The back buttons L5 L4 R4 R5 are good for these controls
What button do you want gyroscope to be toggled on and off by? You don’t have to use gyro but I really recommend giving it a thorough go, if you hold your device comfortably than it will be still and thus you can just focus on the joysticks or trackpad and let your subconscious brain begin integrating gyro. Personally I always leave gyro on when playing and just use the toggle to turn it off for navigating menus
What buttons do you want zoom in and zoom out to be bound too? I recommend to bind zoom in and zoom out to the bumpers on the deck, the normal WASD and mouse template for the Steam Deck comes with this binding as the default if I remember correctly. Using a radically new control scheme can feel claustrophobic or constricting, having intuitive buttons for zooming in and out is critical to combating that in my experience
Common All You Need For A Minimal Setup Ctrl, Shift, Alt and SpaceBar commands, Screenshots and Manual Links included!
Que Sequence Of Instructions -> Shift + Instruction
add to front of que -> Spacebar + Leftclick
Set Move Orders For Group Of Units Along A Line -> Shift + Right Click (+ Shift to cue when desired)
Move In Formation -> Ctrl + Right Click (+ Shift to cue when desired)
add shift to this to que up multiple Move In Formation commands
Build Structures In A Grid -> Shift + Alt, Z increase gridstep X decrease
useful for structures that when destroyed by an enemy can detonate and destroy nearby friendly buildings and units
Now, you can go so much farther than that obviously. For example I found a great BAR control scheme that looked like someone put a lot of care and time into it called “BAR perfecto” but it didn’t fit my conception of how I wanted things so I just started from the factory default WASD and Mouse template.
I hesitate to build up this crazy complicated control scheme and then recommend it though, because most potential fans I can poke and prod enough to try BAR on the deck probably feel the same as you. So honestly at this point I would rather point out that just starting with the default WASD and Mouse control template and making those three choices/keybindings will get you to a point where you can genuinely play BAR and feel like the control scheme can actually work and feel good after a bit of adjustment time. From there you can add as much complexity and power as you want.
If you get frustrated or overwhelmed, take a deep breath and remember people have been figuring out how to make RTS games work well with a mouse and keyboard for decades, if it doesn’t click immediately that isn’t because mouse and keyboard is just better end of story.
Great write up, thanks. I recently discovered BAR and I’m impressed how good it is. I shoud give Xonotic a try :)
OpenTTD.
Great, heard good things about OpenTTD! Do you game it directly on Steam Deck Controller or on Desktop with Mouse, Keyboard?
I’ve played it for many years on a desktop computer with a mouse, but now play it directly on the Deck for the pick-up-and-play convenience. Controls took some getting used to, but it looks and plays very nicely.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is available at a flatpak now, and it’s a really great roguelike.
The open source projects I’ve spent the most time playing are OpenMW and Primehack, but they both require you to have copies of the original games.
Great Game, for now i primarily play it on Android Phone. Easy to begin, but easy to die with one wrong click the game can be lost after hours of trying to get to the amulett!
In case you didn’t know, there’s an official community for it here on Lemmy.
The developer of it is active there and everything!
official oh heck yes! subscribed
Veloren runs on the Deck? I thought you’d need a beefier desktop (only since it’s still pre-alpha). TIL
It actually runs quite well!
Wesnoth
Great tactics game
Right! I do wish more people played it.
Cataclysm: DDA
How’s the setup?
The download and install through desktop mode was pretty easy. The controller mapping is what took a while.
This is an exciting thread. I’m gonna check all of these out, thank you!
For me, it’s still MineGame on MineTest Engine. Particularly with LWScratch mod, adding programmable robots.
Dr. Robotnik’s Ring Racers is sick.
I saw it posted recently but the install looked non-trivial, so it’s now sitting in my “to play when I can be bothered to do some tinkering” pile. What did you do to get it running on Deck?
they’ve got a flatpak up now, so i just installed that. then added it to steam with boilr and added the artwork.
Sounds like a game I gotta try.
Widelands and OpenRCT
Mindustry
I liked that so much I bought it on Steam to support them, assuming it’s the same devs.
They are the same people, on the official Mindustry website there’s a link to the steam page :)
I just played some Commander Keen through Commander Genius (although it’s a bit hard to set up).
Hey do you have a sane® controls mapping, i bought all Keens and wanted to finish them in order on deck. But manually mapping each one is going to be tedious
I used the WASD config and reconfigured it in Commander Genius so that B was fire and X was the pogo stick. A was already jump by default.
0 A.D.
0AD I guess
Do you game it directly on Steam Deck Controller or on Desktop with Mouse, Keyboard?
Desktop mode so far. Didn’t try it directly yet.
Thanks, I assumed so! :)
Yea 😁 There are plenty of other FOSS games that are also in the Steam Store as well, like OpenTTD, Battle for Wesnoth or Red Eclipse
Definitely Widelands! It captures the heart of settlers 2 while also extending it in ways that were really needed to make it even more enjoyable. Also with the right controller layout it plays very ergonomically. (Use a trigger to switch to map scrolling via the touchpads)
Has anyone managed to get AM2R working on the Deck? I was thinking of trying it out next.
There’s a flatpak in the discover store called AM2RLauncher. I installed that and right clicked on it to add it to steam. You have to also have the am2r 1.1 zip file.
Once I had it in steam, I used the SteamGridDB plugin to give it some artwork. The in game controls didn’t automatically work with the steam deck gamepad, but if you go to community layouts and hit “show all” there will be at least 3 that change the deck controls to keyboard inputs that do work.
One other note is that the default binding for missiles is control, but for some reason holding control seems to be blocking other inputs preventing you from firing missiles. This could probably be fixed by changing the key, but I instead changed the in game settings to make missiles a toggle ala super Metroid, and that fixed it for me.
