Want to develop for the Steam Deck / SteamOS and get testing? Now it's a whole lot easier, as Valve has now put up the tools needed under open source licenses.
There's two projects included with the SteamOS Devkit Client and the SteamOS Devkit Service, both of which are available on their GitLab page. Setting it up, at least on Linux, was pretty painless thanks to the clear instructions so even someone like me can give it a try and see what it's like.
With this, developers can easily upload builds from one device to a Steam Deck to easily begin testing. Available to developers anyway but now they don't have to be approved by Valve, as anyone can just grab it. It has a number of other interesting tools to control a Steam Deck remotely too, like forcing it to drop into Desktop Mode or back to Deck UI mode ("Gaming Mode").
Nice to see Valve continue putting more out in the open. This means others can test, report issues and perhaps even contribute code back to improve it further or even hack away at it to use it for other things.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
ObsidianBlk 4 Mar 2022
Ah well... just another reasons to sit and count down the (non-specific) days until mine arrives.
has now put up the tools needed under open source licenses.Music to developer's ears
slaapliedje 4 Mar 2022
gradyvuckovic 5 Mar 2022
Huh... that's kinda neat, and written using Dear ImGUI too. Looking forward to using mine for some gamedev.
My exact same reaction. "I recognise that! That's dear imgui!"
I love it. This allows devs to work on the PC they're comfortable with and push builds to their Decks quickly and easily to test changes. Which is what you need if you want devs to seriously support something.
Edit: Another advantage of this approach, for big studios with a lot of internal tools, they could even pull apart the code of these projects and integrate the code into their own internal dev tools if they want.
See industry? Open sourcing stuff makes sense when you're trying to work with your customers not work against them.
Last edited by gradyvuckovic on 5 Mar 2022 at 12:57 am UTC
See industry? Open sourcing stuff makes sense when you're trying to work with your customers not work against them.
Yeah, kinda-sorta-mostly. On the other end of the spectrum you have something like console dev kits which are still quite expensive, but have first class tooling (especially in terms of profiling and debugging tools). Linux has a ways to go to catch up in that respect. The Steam Deck tools will probably appeal more to the little studios than the big shops which often have their own dedicated internal tooling developers. Linux has advanced leaps and bounds in the last decade as a target for gamedev though. I've quite happy to make it my dev environment.
https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/devkit/steamos-devkit-service/-/blob/main/src/utils.c#L35-36
Windows command-line parsing makes even Unix /bin/sh look well-documented and consistent.
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