You do need a laptop, but Moonlight is the best way to go about it that ive found. Install sunshine on your machine, put Moonlight onto your android device, and link the two.
Emable upnp forwarding, and youre golden! Ive been sitting at my hangout spot playing this and that for the last hour, and even with mosou games, they work well!
Gamehub is the runner up if you dont have access to WiFi. That installs the game locally, but not everything runs well.
I know theres a few of you with emulation handhelds, so wanted to pass this on cause im fucking thrilled!
The steamdeck is a cool toy I’d love to have, is your handheld like that?
If you’re thinking about a steam deck for emulation, it’s a very solid choice and you won’t go wrong with it.
There’s a few things to keep in mind:
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A new steam deck is probably going to be released in the next couple of years. I would anticipate much better efficiency in the next gen release, so for less intensive emulation that would likely mean a really good battery life (pure speculation because battery tech and CPU/GPU tech is advancing rapidly but if we’re talking PS1 era then that might look like 10 or 12 hours, potentially a lot more, on one charge.)
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The Steam Deck is Linux and, as much of an advocate as I am for Linux, emulation on Linux isn’t nearly as developed as on Microslop OS. I’d expect that generally things should be fine but it’s just not as good as on Windows (for now.)
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Steam is going in on x86, as had China. It’s still early days yet but it’s not outside of the realms of possibility that we’ll see an x86 steam deck on the next gen, and that would have big implications for power consumption but time will tell.
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RAM prices are going haywire and it’s affecting other parts of the computing market. This is possibly the reason for Valve pulling their lowest model Steam Deck listing from the store. There are some interesting developments coming out of China, particularly Huawei and their partner manufacturer but especially Moore Threads and CXMT. We are a few years off of them really catching up and spooling up production. If the AI bubble’s pop doesn’t come soon enough (and it cannot come soon enough) then I’d say that in two years or so we should see prices calming down and, while this won’t have a direct effect on handhelds, it’s going to make parts overall cheaper and we should expect to see more reasonable prices in the handheld market by virtue of that fact.
So were does that leave you?
If you can get by for now, do so. That bubble might pop tomorrow (inshallah 🙏)
If you want something to tide you over for the next two or so years as you ride out the absurdity in the market you have a couple of options:
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A cheap android handheld (surprisingly good if you get a good brand especially in terms of value for money, although limited when it comes to PS2 era games.)
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A steam deck (opens up a bigger library, better processing power, mid range in terms of cost.)
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A windows handheld (the most expensive option, has a lot more processing power, can dual boot with Linux Bazzite to get a near-identical SteamOS experience but also allows for more options and a more polished emulation experience, opens the possibility to use as a makeshift portable PC*)
Handhelds can be surprisingly good for travelling and accessibility. There’s a bit of survivorship bias at play because the people who don’t absolutely love their steam deck rarely go online to say “Eh… it’s fine” but tons of fans gush over steam decks online. Honestly, I have a handheld and it’s better and more utilized than I thought it would be.
*As for the portable PC thing - big caveats apply. The battery should be fine-ish but it’s not as convenient as a laptop. You will need multiple accessories, including a travel keyboard and likely a mouse, potentially a larger portable screen because most handhelds have screens that are very small for PC work. If you don’t want to get a portable monitor then a handheld with detachable controls gives you more freedom for changing the screen orientation. This is all going to add on a lot of extra costs so unless you want to run a docked handheld at a desk station and if you intend on a portable gaming system that doubles as a laptop that will get used more than very occasionally for laptop/PC purposes, you’re better off with a decent gaming-capable laptop and buying a controller.
Did you mean Steam is going in on ARM? The Steam Deck is already x86…
Yep. I should proofread more. My bad. I’m barely scraping together replies at the moment and my presently-unmedicated ADHD ass is not up to the task of focusing on anything.
Edit: I meant to say “Valve” in the above comment, not steam smh. Truly not my best work, just the best that I’m capable of at the moment.
Eh, Valve and Steam are practically synonyms, I do the same thing all the time and only correct myself half the time.
I only mentioned the ARM thing because I am super stoked at what a Bazzite/Cachy/etc. equivalent fork of SteamOS ARM could do for the Chinese import handheld scene.
Accuracy is always important and I really value being corrected when I’m wrong because it’s nice to know people have my back when I make mistakes, so thank you.
And yeah, there are some pretty exciting developments in the pipeline.
Nice info dump gonna save this
Curious to know what you mean by emulation not being as good as Windows? Is that mainly for newer stuff like the PS4 emulator? I ask because I don’t really have any issues with stuff like PCSX2, Dolphin, way older stuff, etc on my desktop (which runs Bazzite) and most modern phones are powerful enough to run anywhere from the PSX to the Wii, so I can’t imagine the Steam Deck specs are holding things back.
Yeah, it’s not specs but imo it’s programs that aren’t as polished and missing settings and frontend programs to organize libraries the like.
I have a shared partition on my handheld - one part windows, one part Bazzite, and a large partition shared between them. I dumped ROMs in there and a while back, I was trying to set up the main directory for the files but the emulator browser absolutely would not permit me access outside of the Bazzite home drive to point to the shared partition.
I probably could have found a workaround or done something in the terminal if I was good enough at it but after banging my head against that wall for quite a long time and not finding any terminal commands that I could copy-paste which someone else found fixed the problem, I just gave up.
Of course this isn’t likely to be an issue for the average user but there’s often a noticeable lack of polish and function with Linux options.
Still love the car tho!Still love the distro tho! (/semi-ironic)
2·2 days agoResist the urge to diagnose. Resist the urge to diagnose. Resist the urge…
Is the emulator installed through flatpak and it therefore doesn’t have access to it?
RESIST.
Is the shared partition available at some mount point, or could you mount it through the file manager and then open probably
/run/media/[username]/NO. STOP.
ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.
Flatpak was my thought also and needing to give it access with Flatseal.
Was the same with my network shares, which I also had to enter into fstab so they had a permanent mount point and stopped changing directories on reboot. Otherwise my emulators would ask me where my games are every time. Most people can do this with Gnome Disks on Bazzite without needing to actually modify fstab directly.
Second thought was that Bazzite is straight up disallowing people to use NTFS partitions because so many people complain to them about issues with it when they already say they don’t support it. They’re adding a banner that shows whenever one gets mounted though, so that’d be more obvious.
Seconding using a handheld more than the steam deck. I do like it but my hands are kinda tiny and it’s pretty huge for a handheld, so it gets uncomfortable for me to hold. And this is really nitpicky, but most of the games I emulate are 4:3 and having black bars on the sides bugs me lol. I’m not going to stretch the picture out and widescreen patches can be hit or miss with bugginess. Also the steam deck’s battery can be a little short, though with some know how you can upgrade that.
Fair. And yeah, widescreen patches really only work well half of the time.
I don’t have an SD but I’d assume that if you’re not pushing it to its limits with emulation then you’d get a good 6 hours out of PS1 emulation or lower gen emulation, right?
That’s true yes! PS1 and down you’ll get 6 hours no problem. If you start getting into ps2 era and beyond then it’s not going to be so good depending on the game. I have an OG LED model to be clear, the newer ones are better.
I got a first-gen Legion Go. The only way I’m getting 6 hours out of the battery is by putting it in standby mode.
That’s just more evidence to the point that you can’t go wrong by getting a Steam Deck.
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No its a cheaper one. A Retroid 5. My laptop has a 3080 tho so it runs most anything acceptably
It’s android? Still must be pretty good for emulation right?
Yes, and it is, it runs stuff up to switch really decently (so long as you have the right emulators and settings). But, streaming to the device with Moonlight from my laptop is the best way for me to play my steam stuff on it, which is something ive been trying to do for a while
Nice, I’ll keep this in the back of my mind for portable emulation.
For anyone interested in Gamehub without the tracking and telemetry, there’s a patch that removes it. Some technical knowledge and command line work required. Note that I haven’t tried this personally, it just showed up while I was looking up gamehub.
I had some success with light (2d low requirement) games on Gamehub, but its a lot of tinkering for only a few games that work.
Moonlight comes with a built in steam connection so I can open my account right from the app and install/play anything. I was playing in a busy area earlier on a business network, and it was super smooth on Ultrakill, One Piece Grand Battle 3, and Whisker Squadron.
Granted, you do need wifi, but if you can run the game on your “main”/hub/primary device, it ran great over the internet. Next time ill try some pvp GG Strive if anyone wants to 1v1 me (you’ll win)
I just got a Retroid flip 2 I’ll try the upnp setting but the input lag was enough that I didn’t want to play action games.
I’ve seen people get a lot of older pc games working through winlator or gamehub I need to try that when I get chance. I’d love to get fallout 3 and dark souls 2 running (I’ve seen videos where people get those games playable so we’ll see)
Yeah you shouldnt have much issues with those two. Gamehub looks like they should work pretty well there. Are you talking about input lag on Moonlight?
yeah the input lag on Moonlight. tbf I was playing elden ring so the input lag was pretty noticeable. I figured the issue was more off my wifi than from moonlight or either device since when I have the steam deck wired up to the router the input lag is hardly noticeable.
