Halo: The Master Chief Collection gets Steam Deck support

Steam Deck defaults to 720p even on external monitors AFAIK.

The last time I checked – sometime at the end of last year – it was impossible to use a higher resolution in game mode (the only option for a different resolution was/is scaling). In desktop there is full control of resolution.

You've been able to force a different resolution for a while now on Steam Deck.

Stay strong bruddah, someday (I just meant my post as a squeaky wheel for game-devs and the bigger world to realize that we Linux peeps are a legit thing and some of us do odd things like sling decks -- after 23 years of Halo and organizing Halo LAN parties I am going to be really tempted to do Deck Halo parties on MCC.)

Edit: On that last note @gamedevs -- I am starting to look to buy multiplayer games where say 4-8 Deck gamers can play a thing together that is really fun in-person. It's sort-of hard to navigate the Steam Store to find this kind of thing.

If only they could add splitscreen to Halo MCC, that would make it much better for LANs.

An awesome feature would be "family sharing" over P2P wifi for Steam decks: throw an impromptu LAN party, only one game copy needed. IIRC PSP (or was it DS? Game Boy?) used to work like that.

That wouldn't really be a huge loss for publishers, more people would likely discover the game and want to play it on their own this way.
And to avoid cheating... restrict it by latency, <4ms should prevent relaying over the Internet (though, is it that much of an issue?).

You've been able to force a different resolution for a while now on Steam Deck.

How? I've just gave it a quick test – nothing has changed. You can change the output resolution in game mode, but not the resolution that is used for rendering. That is fixed and will get scaled to the final output resolution.

You've been able to force a different resolution for a while now on Steam Deck.

How? I've just gave it a quick test – nothing has changed. You can change the output resolution in game mode, but not the resolution that is used for rendering. That is fixed and will get scaled to the final output resolution.

There's the option in the game properties for each game, where you can tell it a forced resolution. Obviously on the Steam Deck directly it will still be limited to the base resolution, but it works for external screens.

Edit: On that last note @gamedevs -- I am starting to look to buy multiplayer games where say 4-8 Deck gamers can play a thing together that is really fun in-person. It's sort-of hard to navigate the Steam Store to find this kind of thing.

Not a dev, and I don't even know if the game that I'm namedropping here has LAN support, but I'd imagine that Bail or Jail (Obakeidoro!) would be a riot when played like this.

An awesome feature would be "family sharing" over P2P wifi for Steam decks: throw an impromptu LAN party, only one game copy needed. IIRC PSP (or was it DS? Game Boy?) used to work like that.

The Nintendo DS did this, as did a few Game Boy Advance games.


Last edited by Pengling on 7 April 2023 at 11:57 am UTC

Stay strong bruddah, someday (I just meant my post as a squeaky wheel for game-devs and the bigger world to realize that we Linux peeps are a legit thing and some of us do odd things like sling decks -- after 23 years of Halo and organizing Halo LAN parties I am going to be really tempted to do Deck Halo parties on MCC.)

Edit: On that last note @gamedevs -- I am starting to look to buy multiplayer games where say 4-8 Deck gamers can play a thing together that is really fun in-person. It's sort-of hard to navigate the Steam Store to find this kind of thing.

If only they could add splitscreen to Halo MCC, that would make it much better for LANs.

Salt in the wound -- I can't remember if it was Halo 4 or 5 but it was painful when they stopped 4 player split-screen. It killed the social element -- suddenly every 1 or 2 players needed their own console, game, and extra TV -- it was no longer as feasible to do 12-16 gamers sitting around 4 TVs on couches having Pizza and doing nanners moves in game.

It's been a few years but I've done some tests -- theoretically if you have a decent size 4K TV 50"+ there's the possibility of Multi-instancing the game and then separating the additional keyboards and mouses in Linux.

There's nothing stopping you from having 2 mouses on the screen -- one for each hand -- each with a different Cursor -- I did this as a test in Arch a while ago and some apps get confused with 2 cursors while others work.

And then there's the possibility of dividing up the 4k into 4 1080p Window Manager Sessions using multi-seat.

Back in the day you could designate different screen geometry and then combine them together using a thing called Xinerama.

There is untapped potential for Steam or someone to create a "Split-Screen Linux Desktop" for large displays. this would be perfect for Warframe, Halo MCC, Halo Infinite, Black-Mesa Multiplayer (is surprisingly awesome) etc...


[quote=MayeulC]

An awesome feature would be "family sharing" over P2P wifi for Steam decks: throw an impromptu LAN party, only one game copy needed. IIRC PSP (or was it DS? Game Boy?) used to work like that.

That wouldn't really be a huge loss for publishers, more people would likely discover the game and want to play it on their own this way.
And to avoid cheating... restrict it by latency, <4ms should prevent relaying over the Internet (though, is it that much of an issue?).

That'd be great -- I wish publishers would optimize long-term profits a little more instead of shooting themselves in the balls trying to squeeze every coin out of gamers -- like maybe there will be a bigger payoff IF my friends get addicted to your game (as in the case of Halo 2000-2010)-- BEFORE purchasing because then they will KNOW what they are buying.

Edit: On that last note @gamedevs -- I am starting to look to buy multiplayer games where say 4-8 Deck gamers can play a thing together that is really fun in-person. It's sort-of hard to navigate the Steam Store to find this kind of thing.

Not a dev, and I don't even know if the game that I'm namedropping here has LAN support, but I'd imagine that Bail or Jail (Obakeidoro!) would be a riot when played like this.

An awesome feature would be "family sharing" over P2P wifi for Steam decks: throw an impromptu LAN party, only one game copy needed. IIRC PSP (or was it DS? Game Boy?) used to work like that.

The Nintendo DS did this, as did a few Game Boy Advance games.

Thanks I added it to my radar, I often use the term LAN ambiguously loosely. However with the world events of the last few years and the Internet not being guaranteed with possible war on the horizon I am skewing away from putting my eggs in just one basket.

So -- "That Offline LAN functionality" has increased in value to me as a consumer -- I bought and downloaded a bunch of games on GOG (and I don't even really like GOG that much) just because they're more future-proof ready to go if the Internet goes out.

Same thing with Source code -- we really aren't prepared if any websites we suddenly loose access -- like how am I going to install a thing from the [ AUR ] if GitHub has issues suddenly, or Email, or Google Docs, or Drive, or whatever really.

How much of the source code of Linux & FOSS would not make it in the event somebody big fucked up -- I knew a few people who lost their Git repos just due to accidents try to reach out to me to see if I had a copy to save their bacon.

TL;DR -- 4x Window Managers -- 1x 4k 50"+ TV. This is da wei.


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 7 April 2023 at 5:55 pm UTC

There's the option in the game properties for each game, where you can tell it a forced resolution. Obviously on the Steam Deck directly it will still be limited to the base resolution, but it works for external screens.

Thanks. I've used the properties so many times, but I never realized that it would work with a higher resolution if an external screen is connected.

I don't know how much time I've spent with the global display settings and looking at the built-in settings menu of several games to investigate if anything did really change. To my defense, this has to be the most convoluted way to implement such a mechanism.

The second thing with external display is that I haven't found a way to clone the output to the internal display (only in desktop mode). My web searches haven't turned up anything as well. Is there a hidden way to get that?

Same thing with Source code -- we really aren't prepared if any websites we suddenly loose access -- like how am I going to install a thing from the [ AUR ] if GitHub has issues suddenly, or Email, or Google Docs, or Drive, or whatever really.

Seeing that Google Code has been a thing and was killed about seven years ago, there's been some precedence, but that did not disappear without warning. The strong dependence on GitHub is scary, but on the plus side every git clone contains the history. That's a huge plus compared to svn so there's a very high chance that code can be restored even if the server is gone. Case in point re3: There were so many local copies of the repository when the the access was blocked the first time.

What I'm not a huge fan of is that it seems that most development decisions seem to be restricted to discord conversations so there's no hope that anything will be preserved.

So, do I understand it correctly that co-op with Linux + Windows still isn't working? (Even when EAC is disabled on all PCs)

I was disapointed by Halo TMCC netcode because I couldn't cross play with my friends (me on Linux, them on Windows).

It was working few seconds (10s) then crash because of a "network problem".

Sad.

By default, yes, and that's certainly what Microsoft says. However, that probably has been more or less sorted for a long time (ymmv because even windows-to-windows MCC coop can be a bit finnicky and unstable...). Just install the latest GE and use it to run MCC. Should do co-op just fine.

Thanks I added it to my radar,

No problem! It doesn't seem to be mentioned on the Steam listing, but Bail or Jail does have local split-screen, so if you're using external monitors it should definitely be alright.

I often use the term LAN ambiguously loosely. However with the world events of the last few years and the Internet not being guaranteed with possible war on the horizon I am skewing away from putting my eggs in just one basket.

So -- "That Offline LAN functionality" has increased in value to me as a consumer -- I bought and downloaded a bunch of games on GOG (and I don't even really like GOG that much) just because they're more future-proof ready to go if the Internet goes out.

Like fellow GOL'er StoneColdSpider, I make my home-base in Emulationville, so outage-proof future-proofing lies with the classics, for me.


Last edited by Pengling on 8 April 2023 at 4:29 am UTC

exciting news

Has anyone been able to get this working on desktop?

I've tried with EAC enabled and disabled. I get different errors. When I check enabled, it tells me that EAC is disabled. When I check disabled, it tells me: "Contacting Server. Connecting to transport service. Please wait." And it will load forever.

Others have been getting this on desktop as well: https://www.protondb.com/app/976730

I'm trying with Proton 8.