Kirk
Published
I've played it last December on the Deck, but going back to it now it no longer runs. I've tried all sorts of things, but no luck. I couldn't even find an error message.
If the launcher can be avoided the game starts, but it will crash the Steam Deck once it loads a campaign.
Moved files around using the SteamOS Devkit Client
The built-in launcher prevents the game from starting. Using KSP2_x64.exe directly works (through whatever means, I made it pretend it was the launcher), however the game will crash the entire Steam Deck once a campaign is (nearly) done loading. I can't find anything in the KSP2 logs or the Steam Deck logs, however an assert .dmp (and only an assert .dmp) is created.
Additionally, it appears it (or at least the settings UI) does not understand the 1280x800 resolution. It might still be using it though, as the display seems fine.
Performance so far seems fine at the highest settings... in the menu.
Aside from the troubles to get it to run on the Deck, it's too Early Access to be enjoyable.
eval $( echo "PROTON_USE_WINE3D=1 DXVK_ASYNC=1 __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATION=1 %command%" | sed "s/PDLauncher\/LauncherPatcher.exe'.*/KSP2_x64.exe'/" )
Normally a launcher is started instead of the game, but the launcher does not work on the Deck. The launch options as reported by others can be used to directly start the game instead.
The in-flight UI text is small, even at the "large" setting (or the "large" setting doesn't work).
There is occasional stutter while ostensibly loading something, probably due to the poor performance.
I'm not totally convinced the game is running at 1280x800. At least the in-game settings claim it's running at 1280x720, but the UI textures are too poorly filtered by themselves to really spot any difference.
The game does not appear to support cloud saves. Some settings wouldn't save, but that's not likely to be the Deck's fault. Loading save games is kinda buggy, but again, probably not the Deck's fault.
The menu was fine. The rest was not: 0.5 FPS in the KSC, 0.5 FPS in-flight while the craft was within the atmosphere, 0.5 FPS in-flight while the craft was in space with an engine active, 12 FPS in-flight while the craft was in space with no rocket engine active (unstaged or manually deactivated), 0.25 FPS while trying to access the VAB (it never went in). I did make it to orbit, lol. It took about 2 hours.
The game will crash while loading a campaign on the Deck because there is not enough RAM. Using the report from ShadowApex to create a swapfile helps, but you have to remember you have to re-enable the swap every time the Deck restarts (or add it to fstab). Also, a swapfile will work better on the 256GB and 512GB models (because they have an SSD instead of an eMMC). I have the eMMC model, which may be affecting my report.
fallocate -l 12G ~/swapfile
chmod 600 ~/swapfile
mkswap ~/swapfile
sudo swapon ~/swapfile
The game gets stuck trying to load the VAB. It's still responsive and you can close it from the overlay, but at low FPS. Might be performance related.
I hope it will eventually work!
I did not have the same experience as the other Steam Deck owners. For me the game simply starts up an old version of uPlay every time without any problems, which allows me to log in perfectly fine, after which it just displays a completely functional uPlay window showing my account without any games. After some seconds a small popup appears complaining it cannot connect to the uPlay service. That's it. No crashes, no touch screen error messages, just an empty uPlay and a tiny popup.
You have to replace Uplay with Ubisoft Connect. You can do this by replacing the Uplay installer with the Ubisoft Connect installer. Download it in desktop mode and rename it to replace .../steamapps/common/Watch_Dogs/support/GameLauncher/UplayInstaller.exe.
If you do this before starting the game for the first time, everything will work once you start the game (this applies to any old Uplay game!).
If you do this after already having run the game, you have to run the Ubisoft Connect Installer manually instead of the game (just once) with the following launch option:
eval $( echo "%command%" | sed "s/bin\/watch_dogs.exe'.*/support\/GameLauncher\/UplayInstaller.exe'/" )
Always hangs the entire Deck after about one hour. Maybe a memory leak? It's annoying, but it autosaves after everything so basically you are just forced to restart the Deck every hour.
Ok, final report after the previous two. I promise!
