CoopBurrito
Published
While the game runs decently well with the built-in DirectX 9 and OpenGL renderers, I find that it runs better with the DirectX 10 Unreal Engine renderer from Kentie. Make sure you install it to the Revision subdirectory and not the regular Deus Ex folder.
I made my own layout but haven't posted it yet.
Changed refresh rate to 40 Hz. Despite the original Deus Ex being an old game, Revision adds a lot of extra lighting and more NPCs, so it's not great for your battery.
Running at the default 800p, the game has very small text, but I bumped the resolution up to 1000p (1600x1000) and enabled UI scaling in the game, which made the text much more readable.
Everything seems to work very well with minimal to no configuration out of the box, and even modding works if you finagle it properly.
Used a tweak from Stewie's Tweaks to enable simultaneous mouse and controller input. Regular controller input works as expected, as well.
Reducing the refresh rate to 40 Hz seemed to net me an extra thirty mintues to an hour of extra playtime and a steady framerate even when heavily modded, though results may vary.
I heard an odd audio glitch every once in a while. Not sure whether it was a mod or the game itself, but disabling my non-essential mods did not do away with the sound.
If you play the game vanilla, this will work straight out of the box for you, but if you want mods, you're going to have to be willing to get your hands dirty with SteamTinkerLaunch.
While modding itself requires some basic knowledge of Linux and a copious amount of patience, once you have all the mods loaded through Vortex or Mod Organizer 2, the actual playing experience is pretty great. Most mods work as inteneded—even Tale of Two Wastelands if you have access to a Windows device and follow the build instructions there before copying the resulting folder over—with only one of my regularly-used mods failing to work properly.
I use a few cosmetic mods, and while the mod manager doesn't seem to properly deploy mods through winetricks/protontricks, copying the files straight over from an existed modded game install on Windows worked just fine.
Switched the refresh rate to 40 Hz and enabled FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR 1.0) in-game.
The default text size is abysmally small on the Steam Deck, but many UI elements and the subtitle size allow adjustment. Some text is still a bit on the small side, but it’s not too terrible.
If using Heroic, make sure to force-sync your cloud saves if you want in-level saves. Everything else is synced with IOI’s servers.
From what I’ve seen, the Steam version is extremely easy to get working on here, but I just wanted to file a report showing that the Epic version is able to install, run, and even be modded with a little extra effort.
Works as you'd expect. I did not try any multiplayer, but single player is nearly flawless.
The game fails to launch in Offline Mode. That could be why the game is marked as Unsupported.
I would not recommend the process of modding, but playing with mods on the Steam Deck ends up being a fun experience.
I would not recommend anyone do this unless you are absolutely sure you don’t want to play without mods, but mods are installable and functional on the Steam Deck.
It took far too many tries to get it working, but using this post and comment on Reddit, I was able to get the P4G Community Enhancement Pack on my Steam Deck.
It was quite the ordeal, and unless you have decent knowledge of how mods and mod loaders work, as well as the differences in directory structure between NTFS and ext4 (and between Windows and Linux in general), this is not something you should attempt.
There are quite occasional crashes while running mods, so beware of that, as you could be floors deep into a dungeon and have the game stop working.
While I have gone on and on about mods for this game, it is completely playable without them, and if you’re playing this game on Steam Deck (or Linux in general), that’s how I’d recommend you play it: completely vanilla.
Sure, there are some nitpicks to be had here and there, but it runs flawlessly without mods, and whether you decide to mod or not, you’ll have a fun time on Steam Deck.
Other than some jagged text at the default resolution, the game runs flawlessly on Deck, just like Persona 4.
Changed refresh rate to 40 Hz.
The text at 1280x800 is rather jagged, and this also seems to affect character portraits and other UI elements with thin lines. Some people seem to have been able to fix the issue by running it at 1280x720 instead, but I found that didn't fix anything. Instead, running it at 1920x1080 at 75% scaling seemed to produce the best results.
There are some minor visual artifacts on the final planet of the game.
For the first few times I booted the game up, it stuttered quite a bit, but now that I have a decently-full shader cache, it seems to work fine.
I have no idea why this game is marked as Unsupported on the Deck, as I have had no major issues. It deserves at least a Playable rating, if only for the slight stuttering before you've built up a decent shader cache.
The game works well when running under Proton 6, but with Proton 7 and beyond, even GE-Proton7, all prerendered cutscenes are glitched.
Changing the refresh rate to 40 Hz seems to be the sweet spot if you want decent battery life while playing this. A 30 FPS cap also works even better for battery life, but I find it unplayable at 30 FPS and hard to play at even 40 FPS, so your mileage may vary.
Besides being a bit of a battery hog, there's nothing bad I can say about the game's performance.
Using Daggerfall Unity transforms this from a clunky DOS game into a clunky but enjoyable Linux game with usable controls.
You may need to tweak the controls to your liking, as there aren't enough buttons on a controller to realistically map every function of the game.
I used ProtonUp-Qt to download Luxtorpeda and ran Daggerfall with Luxtorpeda. It automatically downloads Daggerfall Unity for you, and you're ready to go without any more setup outside of the Daggerfall Unity settings screen.
I heavily modded the game, using SteamTinkerLaunch to download and install Vortex. Vortex isn't the only mod manager available---Mod Organizer 2 is also available---but it’s my preferred one. NorthernUI provides very good controller support. It’s possible, if not very difficult, to run most of the same mods as would be possible on a regular Windows install.
If you’re using a mod manager without auto-sorting, like MO2, use extreme caution with your load order, as any mismanagement of said load order can lead to regular crashes.
As NorthernUI has controller support, I used a modified standard controller layout, with the right trackpad as a mouse. I also enabled the back buttons for easy use of the face buttons when using the trackpad or right stick.
Changed refresh rate to 40 Hz and enabled half-rate shading.
The game doesn’t seem to properly pick up input from external mice, so be careful if you want to play on your couch with a good ol’ mouse and keyboard.
Steam Cloud doesn’t play nicely with overwritten files and simply keeps them on other computers where they existed prior, so be careful that you don't end up with too many save files by overwriting old ones.
While the game is certainly playable without any tinkering, I simply would not recommend it. Digital movement doesn't feel right with a stick, and navigating menus is an absolute slog without proper controller support. If you’re fine with keyboard and mouse controls being mapped one-to-one on your controller, and you really don’t want to go through the trouble of modding it, then go for it, but it might not be the most pleasant experience.
Because the game runs in OpenLara with Luxtorpeda, menu background textures and FMVs are missing.
It takes some configuration to get Luxtorpeda on the Deck, but once it's on there, Tomb Raider can simply be launched with the Luxtorpeda compatibility layer, and it will automatically download OpenLara and run the game through that engine.
Because DOSBox is an emulator itself, and you would be running an emulator under a compatibility layer, I would not recommend running the game without some tinkering, either by using Boxtron or Luxtorpeda.
I did not try the classic version of the game, but the remastered version runs fine. No idea why it's marked Unsupported.
