Resonite-On-Steam-Deck

This is a community maintained list of stuff you can do to improve using Resonite on the Steam Deck. This list will change over time as needed, feel free to give suggestions or corrections by opening an issue.

Table of Contents

Getting Started

• Controls
• Native or Proton
• Performance & Battery Life
• Screenshot management with Proton

Info

• Steam Deck & Steam Deck OLED differences
• Wine Experimental Wayland Driver

Advanced

• Headless Sessions
• Mods
• VR

Getting Started

Controls

I've made a layout (creatively named "Raidriar's Layout") you can use that should cover the majority of common controls, I have some buttons left over as I plan on expanding the layout but it should remain mostly similar to how it is now.

There are more layouts the community has made and I recommend checking other's out to see if another one works for you better. This guide for now will be focusing on just the one I'm making.

• A - Jump
• B - Crouch
• X - Secondary
• Y - Mute
• L1 - 3rd Person
• R1 - UI Focus Mode
• L2 - Right Click
• R2 - Left Click/Primary
• L4 - Slow Walk/Slow Fly
• R4 - Delete Held Item
• L5 - Instant Photo
• R5 - Timed Photo
• Pause - Dashboard
• Select - Context Menu
• DPad Up - Scale Up/Zoom In/Scroll Up
• DPad Down - Scale Down/Zoom Out/Scroll Down
• DPad Left - Hold to rotate held item with Right Joystick/Right Trackpad
• DPad Right - Hold to pan in UI Focus Mode with Right Joystick/RightTrackpad
• Right Trackpad - Finer mouse controls
• Left Trackpad - ToolTip Radial Menu

In the event you cannot download the layout through Steam directly, you can download it from this repo by right clicking (left trigger) the following link and clicking Save Link As...

Raidriar's Layout

The file will need to be placed in this directory:

/home/deck/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Steam Controller Configs/[your Steam ID]/config/2519830

Native or Proton

The native build will be deprecated soon, this will update once the change is in effect

Native is currently not recommended, as it has many issues the Windows build doesn't.

If you still want to use the native build, you can set it in Resonite's properties (Properties < Compatibility). From there you can choose Steam-Linux-Runtime or Steam-Play-None

All tested & working Proton versions:

• Proton 8
• Proton GE 8
• Proton 9
• Proton GE 9
• Proton Experimental

To install Proton GE or Steam-Play-None, either download ProtonUp-Qt through discover in desktop mode, or use the Wine Cellar plugin for decky loader.

Performance & Battery Life

This section will give recommended settings for Resonite and for the options in the Steam Deck's Quick Access Menu, You can go even lower then what's recommended here but I'm aiming to preserve visuals while still helping performance, feel free to go lower but keep in mind what you're doing in reducing the settings further.

DISCLAIMER: I modify my own Steam Deck with 3rd party tools and hardware modifications to improve performance, my Steam Deck's performance is not indicative of a stock Steam Deck's performance.

Launch Options (Properties < General < Launch Options)

• LD_PRELOAD="" DXVK_FRAME_RATE=60 taskset -c 0-5 nice -n -10 ionice -n 0 %command% -BackgroundWorkers 6 -PriorityWorkers 5

  • LD_PRELOAD="" is an environment variable used to load separate libraries in place of the libraries the applications would try to run. In this case, this prevents a library from being loaded by Steam which causes a stuttering issue with keyboard/mouse input after prolonged usage.

  • DXVK_FRAME_RATE= is an environment variable which specifies a framerate limit at a lower level than setting it in Steam or Resonite. Here's a couple of recommended values:

    • 60 for smoothness (you will rarely hit 60 under normal usage)

    • 40 for 40/80 hz refresh rate power saving

    • 30 for general power saving

  • taskset with -c 0-5 only allows Resonite to use the first 3 cores of the system, leaving the last core available for the rest of the system. This will reduce Resonite's multithreading performance but will prevent the system from suffocating in heavier sessions, especially on Desktop Mode.

  • nice lets you specify how much a process is likely to share resources with the system, ranging from -20 to 19. -n -10 will make Resonite more likely to hog resources but perform better. By default, you cannot set a niceness value below -10 in userspace and -10 will do enough as is so there's no need to go out of your way to push it to -20

  • ionice, similarly to nice, determines the disk I/O priority of an application with 2 metrics, the class and the priority. -n 0 sets the priority to 0, which is the highest priority. Priority ranges from 0 to 7. This will have a much more significant impact on downloading/loading worlds and objects.

  • %command% is what steam uses to figure out where to put launch args, so you can insert environment variables and launch arguments before and after the actual command to run the game.

  • -BackgroundWorkers 6 reduces the background workers in Resonite to match the CPU affinity set by taskset, Resonite usually automatically allocates background workers based on your CPU thread count.

  • -PriorityWorkers 5 reduces the priority workers in Resonite to match the CPU affinity set by taskset, Resonite usually automatically allocates priority workers based on your CPU thread count minus 1.

Recommended Quick Access Menu Settings

Note: framerate limit and refresh rate settings will vary if you have unified frame limit management enabled

Relevant setting: Steam Menu < Settings < Display < Enable Unified Frame Limit Management

With unified frame limit management:

• Frame limit - n/a
  • This setting is locked when the frame limit is disabled on the current stable branch of SteamOS
• Disable Frame Limit - On

Without unified frame limit management:

• Framerate Limit - Off
• Refresh Rate - 40 hz on LCD/40 hz or 80 hz on OLED

Unaffected by unified frame limit management:

• Allow Tearing - On
• Half Rate Shading - Off
• TDP Limit - 9W
• Manual GPU Clock - Off
• Upscaling - FSR
  • To be able to upscale, you will need to force the game resolution in Resonite by disabling fullscreen and setting a Window Resolution lower than the display's resolution
  • 1280x720 for docks
  • 1024x640 for text readibility
  • 960x600 for battery life

Recommended Resonite Settings

NOTICE: Settings labeled with (Synced) will be cloud synced.

User Interface < Quick Photo Capture

• Encode Format - WebP

User Interface < Cursor Settings

• Base cursor size (Synced) - 0.05
  • Change as needed, value was picked based on trying to make it clearly visible without covering too much of the screen

Profile < Favorites

• Load cloud home on startup - Off

Graphics < Texture Quality

• Relative Texture Size - Quarter Size
• Maximum Texture Size - Tex 1K
• Limit Texture Above Resolution - 512
• Texture Filtering - Anisotropic
• Anisotropic Level - 4

Graphics < Resolution

• Fullscreen - Off
  • Upscaling won't work if this is enabled, but you can use it as an upscaling toggle of sorts

Graphics < Rendering Quality

• Per Pixel Lights (Synced) - 4
• Shadow Cascades (Synced) - None
• Shadow Resolution (Synced) - Low
• Shadow Distance (Synced) - 64
• Skin Weights (Synced) - Two Bones

Graphics < Desktop Render Settings

• Field of view - 70
  • Recommended for uniform visuals, especially while creating content
• VSync - Off
• Limit framerate when in background - Off
  • Only relevant when using Desktop Mode
• Maximum background framerate - 10

Graphics < Post Processing

• Motion Blur Intensity (Synced) - 0%
• Bloom Intensity (Synced) - 50%
  • Keep in mind - you may want to at least keep bloom on as it has little improvement when disabling, it additionally has a practical use in content creation and stuff may be designed around it.
• Ambient Occlusion (AO) Intensity (Synced) - 0%
• Screen Space Reflections (Synced) - Off
• Antialiasing (AA) (Synced)- SMAA

Network < Asset Gathering

• Maximum number of concurrent asset transfers (Synced) - 2
  • This only effects sessions you're hosting
• Maximum number of concurrent downloads (Synced) - 4

Integrations < Steam Integration

• Save Screenshots - Off
  • This prevents saving photos twice, more info later in the guide

3rd Party Tools (use at your own risk)

• Cryo Utilities

  • RAM, VRAM, Swap, and storage optimizations.
  • You'll likely need this to be able to reliable join moderately sized worlds without running out of RAM and crashing.

• Powertools

  • decky loader plugin that exposes more options to tweak performance.
  • For most users I'd only recommend this for the CPU governor options (the powersave option can extend the battery life quite a bit)

Screenshot management with Proton

When using Proton, steam will create a lot of extra folders that mimic the folder structure of Windows to allow for compatibility when games try to reference Windows specific directories. This is important because Resonite has an in game screenshot function which saves to C:\Users\[YourUser]\Pictures\Resonite by default. This causes Resonite to save screenshots to a really annoying location, this can be made easier though. To do so:

• GUI

1. Go to /home/deck/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/2519830/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/pictures/

2. Left trigger (right click) and do Create New > Link to File or Directory...

3. Set the name to "Resonite" and the directory to /home/deck/Pictures/Resonite (or anywhere else you may want to save screenshots to)

• CLI

1. Run the following commands:

   mkdir ~/Pictures/Resonite
   ln -s ~/Pictures/Resonite ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/2519830/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/pictures/

Now whenever Resonite saves a photo, it tries to save to C:\Users\[YourUser]\Pictures\Resonite but instead saves it to /home/deck/Pictures/Resonite or another directory of your choosing.

Info

Steam Deck & Steam Deck OLED differences

The refreshed model of the Steam Deck has a good handful of differences that make the device better overall. Despite this, you shouldn't vastly expect better performance with the refreshed model. Here's what you can expect with the Steam Deck OLED.

• Longer battery life - the more efficient APU as well as the larger battery will allow for longer usage
• Faster RAM - the refreshed model contains RAM speeds of 6400 MT/s, compared to the original model's 5500 MT/s, that's a pretty huge jump, but not world changing. This will allow for faster asset loading in Resonite.
• More stable connection - the new Wi-Fi 6E capabilities of the refreshed model will offer better connection reliability to sessions and faster asset downloading, provided you aren't limited by your internet.

That's it. There's a lot of nice changes with the refreshed model but nothing game changing for Resonite, but it shouldn't perform any worse.

Wine Experimental Wayland Driver

Wine 9.0 released with an experimental Wayland driver, which sounds great on paper, but has a lot of issues for use on the Steam Deck.

How do I get the Wayland driver?

The driver must be included with a flag on compilation and not every distribution of Wine includes the flag, so you may need to compile it yourself, which already adds a pretty high barrier to entry for the purposes of this guide.

Can it even work on the Deck?

In Game Mode, the display output is handled by Gamescope, which uses xwayland to make x11 apps output in Wayland, so it ends up doing nothing when using the Wayland driver.

In Desktop Mode, the desktop session is x11, so once again the driver does nothing for us there. You can install the KDE Wayland session which, while disregarding the other issues that introduces, will allow you to use the driver.

So is there any benefit to the Wayland driver for Resonite on Deck?

Not really. You have to go pretty far out of your way to even get it set up and even then, you are working with tradeoffs by switching Desktop Mode to run in Wayland. There is a slight performance benefit in running it natively but you'll likely get practically equal performance out of just running Resonite in Game Mode.

The wayland driver also causes issues with drag and drop and reading the clipboard, which can make certain workflows more janky.

What about Proton 9.0?

Proton 9.0 does not include the driver nor can you just download and compile it with the driver as the required files for compiling with the driver are not present in the repository. Some custom Wine/Proton builds can support the driver, such as Proton TKG, but these are not readily accessible on SteamOS.

Advanced

Headless Client

Yes, it is possible to run Headless sessions without containers or virtual machines on a Steam Deck. Yes, it performs well, incredibly well actually.

Some really important info to get out of the way first

This is gonna be the most advanced section in this guide so I'd only recommend this if you're comfortable with terminals.

This guide will go over installing and running the headless client completely natively, if you want to run a virtual machine instead (giving you a more traditional headless client experience) then install Gnome Boxes from discover and follow a normal setup guide, I recommend either of the following guides:

• Resonite Wiki

• Bredo's Guide

The Headless client is not provided with Resonite, it is required that you pay for the appropriate Patreon tier in order to gain access to the software. This guide assumes you have access to the client already if you're continuing through this section.

Installation & Setup

• Install the Dotnet Runtime

1. Switch to desktop mode and open Konsole

2. Set up a password with the following command if you haven't already:

   passwd

3. Run the following commands:

   sudo steamos-devmode
   sudo pacman -S dotnet-runtime

4. To make sure dotnet is installed, run:

   dotnet --version

• Install the Headless client

1. Open your steam library and go to Resonite

2. Go into Properties and into the Betas tab

3. Enter the beta code for the Headless client if not done already

4. Change from "None" to "headless - Builds including headless server" and wait for Steam to update Resonite.

   • Note: make sure to disable compatibility tools for resonite to use the native Linux headless build

5. Open Konsole and run the following commands:

   cd ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Resonite/Headless
   dotnet ./Resonite.dll

6. The Headless client should startup, you can shut it down whenever, this is just to make sure it's working and to generate any needed files.

• Configure the Headless client

1. Go to the directory in Dolphin or Konsole: /home/deck/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Resonite/Headless/Config/

2. duplicate DefaultConfig.json and name the new file Config.json

3. Modify Config.json as needed, primarily account credentials, worlds to run, and permissions.

Congradulations, you can now host Headless sessions on your Steam Deck. As stupid as it sounds, if you don't have another PC you can dedicate to a Headless and don't want to/can't pay for a server, this is a legitimately viable option for self hosting Headless sessions.

For a quick double click to launch the headless, you can save the following to a text file and save the file name with .sh at the end (change directory as needed)

#! /bin/bash
cd ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Resonite/Headless
dotnet ./Resonite.dll

Mods

Resonite modding currently isn't big or game changing. The scope of what can be modded is fairly limited and the vast capabilities of Resonite remove a lot of the need for modding, despite this, a modding scene exists. It primarily consists of quality of life fixes or slight feature additions or improvements.

If you prefer an experience slightly above tolerable then this is the way to go. You'll need to go to Desktop Mode for this.

There are a couple of mod loaders but the primary one is currently ResoniteModLoader. I won't give a full guide on setting up mods as RML already has a guide which is applicable to the Steam Deck.

Mod manager

There is an in-development mod manager that can actually be used on the Steam Deck right now.

The mod manager, Resolute, can be downloaded and setup to run in game mode, but for now it requires slight configuration to get working.

• Setting up the mod manager

1. From the releases page, download the .AppImage

2. Open the application

3. enter the install location to Resonite if it's not auto detected correctly. Default install directory for Resonite: /home/deck/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Resonite

Resolute is now setup to run and install the mod loader and mods, but more can be done to increase ease of access. It can also update itself when new releases come out.

• Setting up the mod manager in Steam

1. Move the app to a folder such as /Home/deck/Applications or wherever you'd like to store it

2. rename it, I'd suggest just naming it "resolute.AppImage"

3. Right click (left trigger) the file and click Add to Steam

It will now work in Game Mode. If you need to manually update it, you'll want to revisit the releases page and download the latest AppImage, replace the previous AppImage with the new file, and rename it to "resolute.AppImage" (or whatever it was named before) so nothing needs to be reconfigured in Steam.

Recommended Mods

Available in Resolute:

• CacheGetClapped - Smart cache management, clears old cache files and can keep cache size within specified limit.

  • Highly Recommended, especially for 64/256 GB models. Can cause database size to bloat overtime.

• DynBoneWrangler - Disables dynamic bone chains when under a user specified fps limit and re-enables them when above another user specified fps limit.

  • Prevents shakey dynamic bones at low framerates, can make low framerates more tolerable.

• ResoniteIkCulling - Disables IK that's out of view and/or far away. Includes IK throttling options.

  • Primarily helps thermals and battery life in testing.

• ResoniteModSettings - Adds an in game menu for editing mod configs

  • Practically required.

VR

No.

While it is possible to run VR on a Steam Deck, I and other Resonite users have run Resonite in VR on a Steam Deck, but the experience is pretty awful in anything that's not an incredibly light session, it also puts a lot of strain on the Steam Deck. I cannot recommend trying it for any serious reason.