What is your favorite Open Source Game on Steam Deck?

Yeah I mean I would totally understand if people in the Xonotic community felt weird about this, you can already download Xonotic off of flathub in 5 seconds on the deck, but regardless in my opinion it would be perfect as a fun open source game that came default on a gaming device like the deck.

Honestly, if that is your jam hell yeah.

The point isn’t the joysticks, it’s the use of a gyroscope aim as a complement to whatever other input method you like. I vastly prefer the joysticks and I can attest to being able to play Xonotic at a fairly competitive level (I am NOT good but I can play Xonotic the way it is meant to be played with strafe jumping, rapid weapon switching, blaster jumps and immense dynamics of aim and movement). I imagine you can get that synergy with gyroscope and trackpads but I just haven’t personally seen it in action so I figured I would let someone else be the champion of that control scheme!

I love playing shooters with joysticks because I grew up playing Halo 1-3 on the Xbox as well as Call Of Duty and all the other controller shooters that came out in that era on Xbox. It wasn’t that I wouldn’t play a shooter with a mouse and keyboard, I just never had the money for a gaming computer and neither did my family. It is how I feel at home in a shooter, but it always frustrated me (like everyone else) that fine aim control is just shit with joysticks even though they are a blast to use (and then you have to layer a big dollop of auto-aim on to make controller shooters work). For me, gyroscope is like magic because it allows my subconscious to “fix” my joystick aim with the gyroscope and I don’t ever have to think about it except to remember how fun it is to do when I pull a flick shot with the vortex (rails) mainly using a gyroscope.

Also please try steering devastator rockets with gyroscope aim, it is like realizing you have been petting cats and dogs with an oven mitt on your whole life and haven’t been getting the real experience.

Yeah I get that vibe, and yes it is definitely a bit intimidating at first but here is the thing.

The biggest shift in gaming right now by far is gyroscope aim input maturing into a serious control scheme in many different contexts (primarily mobile shooters like COD mobile and Farlight 84 that also confusingly have competitive and usable touchscreen claw setups for playing shooters that most pc gaming fans are utterly oblivious about and would confidently dismiss as a joke idea).

People are starting to realize gyroscope is amazing for shooters, but what almost nobody has put two in and two together about yet is that the same fine aim control problems controllers have with shooters, they have with real-time or even turn based strategy games with complex UIs. While gyroscope isn’t as fun to use in this context, it works just as well. A “flick” shot from the center of your screen to the build menu on the side to quickly up cue some flashes, stumpies and samsons, with a quick flick shot back to center screen to give a construction unit instructions is exactly the kind of mouse movement that Gyroscope excels at introducing mouse-like precision to once you get used to it.

I can definitely share a control scheme but BAR is already so brilliantly designed with every single damn command in the game being able to be shift clicked to make it into a series of tasks for a unit or factory… that you don’t honestly need to do much. It is basically just:

What button do you want shift (as well as ctrl and alt and to a lesser extent spacebar) to be bound too? This should be comfortable and easy to press as shift clicking is at the core of BAR and TA. The back buttons L5 L4 R4 R5 are good for these controls

What button do you want gyroscope to be toggled on and off by? You don’t have to use gyro but I really recommend giving it a thorough go, if you hold your device comfortably than it will be still and thus you can just focus on the joysticks or trackpad and let your subconscious brain begin integrating gyro. Personally I always leave gyro on when playing and just use the toggle to turn it off for navigating menus

What buttons do you want zoom in and zoom out to be bound too? I recommend to bind zoom in and zoom out to the bumpers on the deck, the normal WASD and mouse template for the Steam Deck comes with this binding as the default if I remember correctly. Using a radically new control scheme can feel claustrophobic or constricting, having intuitive buttons for zooming in and out is critical to combating that in my experience

Now, you can go so much farther than that obviously. For example I found a great BAR control scheme that looked like someone put a lot of care and time into it called “BAR perfecto” but it didn’t fit my conception of how I wanted things so I just started from the factory default WASD and Mouse template.

I hesitate to build up this crazy complicated control scheme and then recommend it though, because most potential fans I can poke and prod enough to try BAR on the deck probably feel the same as you. So honestly at this point I would rather point out that just starting with the default WASD and Mouse control template and making those three choices/keybindings will get you to a point where you can genuinely play BAR and feel like the control scheme can actually work and feel good after a bit of adjustment time. From there you can add as much complexity and power as you want.

If you get frustrated or overwhelmed, take a deep breath and remember people have been figuring out how to make RTS games work well with a mouse and keyboard for decades, if it doesn’t click immediately that isn’t because mouse and keyboard is just better end of story.

Good bot!