I’ve always been somewhat disappointed with the responsiveness and tactile feel of the steam/menu buttons beneath the track pads. Is anyone out there selling clickier replacements for these?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/359727

I bounced off of it for years on pc with mouse and keyboard. The dark depths were really scary so it was difficult to get into.

This last time I started on the steam deck and it was amazing. I feel like the smaller screen was easier to deal with. The ability to map and up and down to the grips made navigating in the 3d space feel like second nature.

Looking forward to playing Below Zero in the future.

I especially like how the game's narrative and tool selection tries to push the player into avoiding and respecting the leviathan predators instead of encouraging outright killing them.

And the predator/prey ai is pretty great. I really felt like a small fish skitterong around under the nose of these huge apex predators!

Has anyone else ran across this? Every time I close a game and try to go back to the home page, I just get a blank, black screen. It's still on, and I can move the mouse cursor and see it, but everything else is basically frozen. No steam menu or system menu will pop up, only the cursor.

After I finish up Jedi Survivor, and play Starfield on my vacation next month, I plan to sell my gaming laptop and move over to Deck only. I have a 2TB ssd in the Deck for Steam OS, and a 2TB ssd in my jsaux dock, where I'll install an OS for general computing. I had planned to install Windows, since I use a few bits of software that won't run on Linux. But honestly, Windows has been pissing me off more and more lately, and now I see they are going to force their AI assistant bullshit on us soon. So I'm considering giving up the Windows-only stuff, and go Linux.

So basically, what OS do you prefer on the Deck? And if linux over Windows, which distro? Or do you just use the desktop mode in Steam OS?

I used Garuda(the main/KDE version) for a year or so, and really liked it. Probably my favorite of the many distros I've tried over the years. But maybe there are better options for the Deck?

I'm planning to use the Deck in handheld mode with Steam OS for most gaming, and for regular computer usage, dropping the Deck into the dock with an external monitor and peripherals, and booting off the ssd in the dock. Don't really want to use the desktop mode of Steam OS, myself.

Bonus points if the distro has good working hibernation out of the box. Hibernation has been kinda iffy for me on Linux, in the past. Been a while though, so maybe things have improved. Usually, with Windows, I'll hibernate instead of shutting down, before booting into a different OS. Makes switching back and forth fast and convenient. Has always worked well with Windows, not so much with Linux.

Any other assorted tips for using the Deck as a primary PC?

As of posting:

Valveheads     2.1%
Deckies       24.7%
Team steam     2.4%
Deck daddies  22.0%
Decksters      4.8%
Steam queens   7.4%
Deckards      36.6%

Hey Steam Deckers,

Want to gain more control using an extension riser such as KontrolFreeks and still keep capaictive touch for gyro aiming and more?

I got a solution for you! I bought this 3d printed clip-on meant for XBOX Series/One. It's a little loose on the Steam Deck's joystick; however, that leaves room to put into conductive material to activate the capacitive touch.

I used Greg's LiveZone | Superior Thumbstick Upgrade - Clips on from his Etsy store. https://www.etsy.com/listing/1362835549/livezone-superior-thumbstick-upgrade

At first, I tried it out with aluminum foil and that works. But, it tears easy and is quite slippery.

I bought and used a conductive fabric tape from US Amazon: GENNEL 5mm x 20M (0.2in x 65ft) Conductive Cloth Fabric Adhesive Tape, Faraday Tape for EMI Shielding, Interference Signal Blocking, Laptop Mobilephone LCD Repair, Cable Wire Harness Wrapping

https://www.amazon.com/Conductive-Fabric-Adhesive-Laptop-Shielding/dp/B01ALDR0D0

And there you go! More control during aiming and you can still activate gyro.

I hope this helps people!

One of my joysticks started to do this muted "click" when moving it up and down. It's really subtle, like you can very gently touch the end of the range by tapping the joystick shaft on the Deck's chassis, then you can push it a little more and it'll do a little "bump."

I took the back of my Deck off, unplugged the joystick, removed the three screws, and pulled it out. Then, I pulled the cap off and saw that the cap is just a friction fit on the shaft, and the cap is simply loose and wobbling.

To fix it, I cut a 1 cm x 1 cm square of plastic from a ziplock bag and put it on top of the shaft. Then, I squeezed it with my fingers to kinda form it to the shaft so it'd stay put. Finally, I pressed the cap back on.

That's it! The little piece of ziplock bag helps the cap grip the shaft and stay put. You can attach it back to the chassis with the three screws and reconnect the ribbon cable to test it with the back off just in case anything is wrong, then put the case back on when you're confident.

Also, the ribbon cable comes with a couple pinched folds, and is taped to a daughterboard PCB. It's easy to damage. Here's a part that's a near-exact replacement that works great, in case you break yours:

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/molex/0150200097/2817187

Just got done installing the new shell from JSAUX! Had some pains to go through that I want to let you folks know about.

First and foremost, if you have the 512GB steam deck that comes stock with an anti glare screen, DO NOT pry from the side that JSAUX shows in their video. Pry from the other side. They are using the standard screen in that video.

For reference, if you look at the 512GB steam deck screen, and go to part only, and look at the rear-side image, there is a "buffer space" on the left side (opposite the ribbon cable) of the screen for prying under the adhesive (for whatever reason they have the screen upside down in the image). On the 64/256GB steam deck screen, the buffer space is on the right side, with the ribbon cable. If you try prying under the right side of the anti-glare screen, you immediately run into the ribbon cable and are likely to damage it. I just barely had to buy a brand new screen to finish this project because of this.

Second thing. When trying to pry the screen off the adhesive, it is very easy to completely slide your spudger directly in between the shell and the screen. You should reference where the positioning triangles are on your empty shell, and pry at one of those locations. It greatly simplifies removing the screen.

Lastly, when removing the triggers, do as shown in the video carefully. The hall effect sensors (tiny little chip on the board under the trigger magnet) used by each trigger on the board are very exposed. if you force one of the triggers off, you can easily knock that hall effect sensor off. I only noticed the little chip sitting on my desk during reassembly. I managed to hand solder the little guy back on and it ain't a pretty job but it works.

Hopefully this hard-knock wisdom helps some of y'all avoid my mistakes.

A few reports over the past month on Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/14m9a2w/comment/jq251yj/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/15c4ppn/psa_elecgear_hall_effect_sticks_are_a_better/) indicate that ElecGear does not suffer the infamous outer dead zone issue featured in e.g. GuliKit V1 and V2. On the corresponding Amazon page ElecGear also advertise that there is a “correction trim circuit.” I decided to finally try the swap to ElecGear Hall effect stick and see the (inner and outer) dead zone behavior and need for calibration.

Confusingly, the included instructions indicates that ElecGear also have a potentiometer version called “Analog Edition.” Ignore it. You should have ordered and received the “Hall Edition.”

ElecGear does not include the stick cap, and soldering is absolutely needed to retain the touch sensing functionality. The soldering pad is slightly offset from the square and a elongated rectangle, possibly to accommodate the MEDA/MHDA switch on the opposite side (curiously, the PCB does have the square shape drawn, possibly copied from Valve’s). The soldering technique needed is a bit similar to SMD, but with easier tolerances. Because the pad is not pre-wetted, I ended up using a reversed “reflow” technique, i.e. using a wet soldering iron tip to wet the end of the stick cap wire with solder, into a little ball, and then flow that ball onto the pad.

ElecGear also included three hot glue pellets and vaguely described using “iron” to apply them on top of the solder. I found applying them with the soldering iron to be a total mess (it melts only partially and then sticks to the soldering iron). Maybe hot air would be better. But in the end, I decided my solder point was good enough also mechanically (though not as beautiful as the pyramid from Valve’s ODM) and cleaned off the hot glue residue.

After installation, the stick is essentially immediately usable. In the Gaming Mode calibration tool, the outer deadzone is visibly circular. The center position is offset, but well within the 8192 default deadzone, likely just the left-over factory potentiometer calibration.

After thumbstick_cal the inner dead zone is not as low as 2000 as some posts have advertised. Mechanical manufacturing tolerances here limits the stick to return within a tight circle. In my case, the left stick fares comparatively worse, and the tightest possible dead zone is maybe 3600–3800. And I just left it at 4000 to be safe.

I also tested the touch sensing for gyroscopic movement. And it is fully functional.

In conclusion, I can also confirm that there are almost no deal-breaker regarding the ElecGear, should you be able to solder. This is in stark contrast to some better advertised competition like GuliKit, which ended up blaming Valve. Also, the fact that ElecGear’s sticks are fully functional even without calibration casts a bad light on the claim by GuliKit, that somehow Valve made it impossible to supply Hall effect sticks without the outer dead zone problem.

Hello,

Steam Deck had a small update last night and it completely broke the game controls. I am using the Daimyo Valheim v3 layout, which is maps everything to keyboard and mouse keys. Since the update, the on screen keyboard doesnt come up when trying to interact with a sign to change the text, and if you go into the map to try and create a pin with text, it completely breaks. You can’t exit the map most of the time but if you do, your character can’t move and most of the controls stop working.

Anyone have any ideas how to resolve, or if this issue was seen previously?

I’ve been streaming games from my big boy PC to the deck for a few weeks now. Everything so far had streamed pretty well, but streaming Ratchet and Clank, it just runs like ass? It runs perfectly fine on the PC when not streaming. I stream Miles Morales and it plays great, so I’m not sure what it is and looking to see if anyone else has run into the same thing.

Edit: in case anyone sees this in the future. The answer was to disable hard decoding on the deck.

The head of publishing at Larian says that Baldur's Gate 3 "really holds up" on Steam Deck, even if it might not be verified by launch.