Part of the power of the Steam Deck is that not only is it a great portable for gaming, it's Linux and has a full desktop mode and so you can also create games with it.
There's a ton of game engines out there that support Linux natively including Godot Engine, Unity, Unreal, Defold, GDevelop and the list just goes on and on. Game Maker too, although they only officially support Ubuntu right now and it's in Beta.
YouTuber Taranasus Videos decided to actually attempt to build a game on the Steam Deck and play it on there. Obviously to do this you really would need to hook it up to a monitor, with a mouse and keyboard but the point is that it's absolutely possible to do. Not only that, it gives developers a pretty good baseline for what to optimize against too. The idea has Valve excited too, with designer Lawrence Yang mentioning on Twitter "Hey look, game development on Steam Deck, no other PC required! This is one of the things we were really excited about enabling with Steam Deck, and it’s awesome to see folks already getting their feet wet.".
Really fun to see things like this, how you can just download a game engine onto a Steam Deck and get going.
Direct Link
I wouldn't be surprised if we see plenty more of this. We've all seen how devices like the RaspberryPi opened up a new world to people, seems like the Steam Deck could too.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
gradyvuckovic Jul 13, 2022
There is a good 'should' reason for why you should develop a game on the Steam Deck.
If you're targeting the game running on the Steam Deck, developing it and running it on the Steam Deck is a great way to test the game as you're making it.
Luckily we have Godot :) So I'd encourage anyone looking to develop games on their Steam Deck to pick that up instead! It's a very fun engine to mess around with, and it's free and open source.
Nostalgia is a great thing.
The notebook I gave my kids is... a decade old. It "works" though. A Deck would pretty much quadruple processing power over it though
Quoting: gradyvuckovicLoved his video.
There is a good 'should' reason for why you should develop a game on the Steam Deck.
If you're targeting the game running on the Steam Deck, developing it and running it on the Steam Deck is a great way to test the game as you're making it.
Not really. As a software developer myself, you will have to do A LOT of code builds so, developing a game inside steam deck is not ideal because it will possibly slow you down. It's better to have a real desktop or laptop for coding. Now for testing, it kind of makes sense. But testing is another step in the development process.
Another point is that noboddy will seriously think on doing games specifically for steam deck because it will limit you in terms of sales.
Last edited by eldarion on 13 July 2022 at 4:40 pm UTC
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 13 July 2022 at 5:30 pm UTC
Quoting: eldarionAs a software developer myself, you will have to do A LOT of code builds
Hey, that's what build farms are for :)
With huge amounts of RAM, CPU and storage for debug info and compiler cache!
Last edited by MayeulC on 13 July 2022 at 7:25 pm UTC
Mountain Man Jul 13, 2022
Quoting: gradyvuckovicAnother point is that noboddy will seriously think on doing games specifically for steam deck because it will limit you in terms of sales.Well, sure, if you mde a game that could only run on the Steam Deck, but I'm not sure that sort of exclusivity is even possible.
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