RimWorld now includes full Steam Deck support

Ludeon Studios have updated RimWorld, tweaking lots of areas to improve their support of the Steam Deck. Available previously as a Beta that included some of the changes, it's now available to all players.

The original developer who was working on Steam Deck support was sadly caught up in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Ludeon Studios mentioning they are now safe.

There's quite a lot of changes involved to improve the controls for the Steam Deck and just generally make it work a little better. The gist of the update is that it makes "the Deck controls more intuitive, refines the touchscreen interface, improves the UI and keyboard, and adds an easy way to access the Deck's controller config options".

For those who want to see, here's all those that directly affected Steam Deck and Linux:

Ideology Improvements

- Show accept key command hotkey on SteamDeck.
- Set new, better SteamDeck menu icons.
- Larger float menu options on SteamDeck.
- Keyboard on a SteamDeck now shows automatically when a new text field is focused.
- Show a special window at the top of the screen which shows the typed in text, since SteamDeck keyboard can sometimes block the text field view.
- Increase text input font size.
- Don't show tooltips when the SteamDeck keyboard is open.
- Change quests SteamDeck icon.
 

Controls

- Touch screen scrolling improvements on SteamDeck.
- It's now possible to scroll through lists by dragging your finger on SteamDeck.
- Make zooming faster on SteamDeck.
- Holding a special "middle mouse button" button on SteamDeck, now translates left clicks into right clicks. This makes it possible to give goto orders to drafted pawns by using the touch screen.
- Don't pan the camera if the middle mouse button is held and a colonist is selected on SteamDeck.
- Allow more zoom on SteamDeck for better touch screen support and easier navigation.
- Better time controls on SteamDeck, it's now possible to increase/decrease time speed with back buttons.
- Accept key on a SteamDeck now activates the first command.
 

Misc Improvements

- Tutorial now mentions the correct button names on SteamDeck.
- Added triggered modal ConceptDefs which explain SteamDeck controls.
- Added controller configuration button to options on SteamDeck.
 

Technical

- Added SteamDeck configuration file.
- Added SteamInput.
- Suppress SteamDeck ConceptDef warnings.
- Updated Steamworks so that it's possible to show the correct on-screen keyboard on SteamDeck.
- Added "Simulate using Steam Deck" debug setting.
 

Fixes

- Fix: Mouse position never updates on Linux builds.
- Fix: Missing EventUp event in MultiPawnGotoController on SteamDeck
- Fix camera movement on SteamDeck. "Middle mouse button" camera movement on SteamDeck now works as well. This also allows using touch screen to move the camera.
- Fix: Mouse position never updates on a SteamDeck
- Fix: Q and E hotkeys shown on a SteamDeck.

Interestingly, Valve announced previously in early March they would allow developers to add a note to their compatibility rating, and this is the first time I actually saw it in action for RimWorld. This linked to Ludeon Studios' previous blog post about upcoming improvements.

Perhaps now it will see a bump up to Verified status. It will also be interesting to see if they reverify against the Native build, as previously it was rated with Proton.

You can see a previous quick-look I did below:

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