richardgaywood/vnv_on_steam_deck.md

## vnv_on_steam_deck.md

      
    Raw
  

              vnv_on_steam_deck.md
            
          
    Intro & Disclaimers

I am not an expert, I am just Some Guy who happened to (a) get Viva New Vegas working on Steam Deck and (b) kept notes. These are those notes. I love Fallout and I love the Steam Deck and I want other people to experience those things, but I am also unable to promise to support you through every question you may have.
This is not a guide in the way that Viva New Vegas is a guide. VNV is incredibly well written and has your back every step of the way. These are just scribbles. Please set your expectations! Also, please tell me what doesn't work or is confusing! I would like us to work together to improve this process for others.
Who did this

This doc was written by docg/penllawen. Come say hi on the Viva New Vegas Discord or [this reddit thread]https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/1c8uihm/an_incomplete_guide_to_installing_modded_fallout/).
But it wasn't all my work: I've collated information, tips, suggestions, and feedback from lots of others. Shoutout and thanks to: Anam, Bob of Rust, Buster, Chappy, GamingVader78, fajeczek00, Khalida487 (Zach), Multikoopa, and anyone I've forgotten.
Why would I want to mod it? Vanilla Fallout: New Vegas runs fine on Steam Deck!

Yes, the vanilla game does indeed run fine (better than Windows, I think). The mods discussed here aren’t for Steam Deck performance or compatibility.
They’re for stuff like [deep breath]: a sprint button, a weapon wheel, the ability to loot containers without opening them, the ability to use mouse and joypad at (almost) the same time, thousands of bug fixes, inventory icons and sorting, make Wild Wasteland a setting so it doesn't consume a Trait point, nicer and more varied kinds of weather, better looking rain, faster save/load times, moving the start of the DLC quests so you don’t get flooded with overpowered items at the start of the game, tweak iron sight alignment so it's perfectly correct on all weapons, rebalancing the economy and difficulty to match the original design by Josh Sawyer, easier to read maps and Pip-Boy screens, hot keys to jump to the map and quest list...
Or even the ability to combine Fallout 3 and New Vegas into a single game (not covered in this doc, but you can follow the principles here).
First, choose your path

The Viva New Vegas guide is aimed at Windows and doesn't consider Linux at all. The Steam Deck, of course, runs Linux. So there's three ways we can go about this:


Follow the entire VNV process on the Steam Deck, tweaking it as we go along to take account of various Linux things. I think this is the most complex path so I chose something else, but others have reported success. It definitely works.


Do the entire VNV process on a Windows PC, and copy just the output of Mod Organizer 2 to the Deck. MO2 uses a "virtual filesystem"; all your mods are kinda smashed together into a single blob with the game. Is is possible to copy that blob to your Deck (instructions here). This is a simpler process than the one I document below. However, you won't be able to run MO2 on your Deck later, like if you want to install just one more mod or change a setting. You'll need to go back to your PC each time.


Do the entire VNV process on a Windows PC, exactly as written; then copy the entire MO2 install to the Deck. This gets you a copy of MO2 that works on Deck, for subsequent tweaking. As a nice side effect, you also get a working copy of VNV on your desktop too.


I did the last of these and that is what I am writing up here.

Step by step

Step 0: Install Fallout: New Vegas on the Steam Deck

You're going to need this later, so hit the Install button and set it aside.
Step 1: Get Viva New Vegas running on Windows

Important
What to do
Follow the entire VNV guide, step by step, just as written, except for these changes:

Skip the Performance and Stability Guide
Make sure you tell Mod Organiser 2 to use a "Portable" install
Note that one of the VNV steps involves running a 4GB memory limit patcher. This can be downloaded for Windows or Linux. Because you're running the patcher on Windows, you want the Windows version. Ignore the Linux one (yes, even though the Deck uses Linux.)

You can do the minimal Viva New Vegas or the full VNV Extended version - both have worked for me.

Once you're done, make sure it's fully working on PC; fire it up, do chargen, and walk out of Doc's shack. Make sure the Tweaks menu has appeared in the game settings and the pause menu is listing the version numbers of various installed mods at the bottom left.
Note
Why not do the Performance and Stability guide?
Most (not quite all) of this is concerned with making Fallout use a more modern rendering pipeline on Windows; the DXVK bit and the SpecialK/RivaTuner section. If my understanding is correct, this is already included in your Steam Deck's proton install, so you can skip all that. Plus the Deck is pretty capable of running FNV at its relatively low native resolution without extensive tuning.


Step 2: plug your Steam Deck into a keyboard, mouse, and maybe a screen

This is technically optional but you are going to go insane if you try and do the rest of this process typing on the Deck's on-screen keyboard. Trust me.

Step 3 (a): Work out how to do file transfer between your PC and your Steam Deck

If you search around online, people do this in loads of different ways -- Warpinator, SyncThing, yadda yadda. I used good ol' ssh, which is a bit Linux-y but don't worry it's not that bad. If you have used something like Warpinator or syncthing with your Steam Deck in the past and you're happy with that, you can skip this bit.
I am going to borrow a minimal subset of this guide to show you how to do a one-off config just to transfer the files this one time. You might want to follow the full guide if you'd like more convenient usage on an ongoing basis.
First, we need to enable ssh's server. All of these steps are to be done on your Steam Deck:

Switch to "Desktop Mode" (Steam > Power > Switch to Desktop)
Open a terminal (eg Steam Icon > System > Konsole)
Set a temporary password for the current user, deck, like so:

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ passwd
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: password updated successfully

This doesn't need to be a secure password, we're going to delete it at the end of this process.

Enable and start the sshd.service (use the password above when prompted):

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo systemctl enable sshd.service
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/sshd.service → /usr/lib/systemd/system/sshd.service.
(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo systemctl start sshd.service


On your Steam Deck, determine your Deck's LAN IP:

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ ip addr | grep inet | grep wlan0
    inet 192.168.1.106/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute wlan0

Here, 192.168.1.106 is an example - your numbers will probably be different!

On your PC, verify you can ssh into the Steam Deck using your password:

[andygeorge@home-pc ~]$ ssh -o PreferredAuthentications=password -o PubkeyAuthentication=no deck@LAN_IP_FROM_HERE_GOES_HERE
deck@IP's password:
Last login: Thu Jul 21 12:51:20 2022 from 192.168.1.115
(deck@steamdeck ~)$

Now that works, we can stop using the command line and use a nicer alternative.
Step 3 (b): file transfer via a GUI

It's quite painful to transfer lots of files around using the command line so if you want something easier than you need a GUI instead. Now you have ssh working there's quite a few options here, but the simplest I know of is to use Cyberduck and its support for sftp. It's also free.
Important
What to do
Install Cyberduck  on your PC and follow the instructions. It'll let you create a "connection". You want to feed it these details:

IP address - whatever your Steam Deck IP is
Protocol: sftp
Username: deck
Password: whatever you made in the last step


There's an example screenshot below.
Once that's working you should be able to hit Connect and see a window pop up with your Steam Deck's files in it. You can browse around in here freely, and drag and drop into it from Windows Explorer. You can transfer single files or whole folders.
Step 4: Install a blank Mod Organizer 2 on Steam Deck

We installed FNV in Step 0, but we also need to install a blank MO2 on the Deck so that we can copy stuff over the top of it.
Important
First: configure the game

Put your Steam Deck into Desktop mode, if it isn't already (Steam > Power > Switch to Desktop)
In the Steam config for Fallout New Vegas, switch it to use "Proton Experimental"
Start the game once, clicking through the launcher's hardware detection if you haven't already done so.
Quit it again as soon as it loads. We're just making sure all the config is there.

Now install MO2

Use these instructions to do a fresh install of MO2.
Point it to the Fallout NV install when it asks you.
It's going to pop up scary sounding messages about the "prefix". You can ignore these and click through. It should tell you it's wiping and then re-creating your "prefix".
You can let it use its default directory - ~/Games/mod-organizer-2-newvegas/modorganizer2
With you Steam Deck still in Desktop mode, load Steam and tell it to load New Vegas. You should see the Mod Organizer 2 UI appear. If you tell it to then load New Vegas using the top-right "Run" button, it should start the game.


Note
Why use Proton Experimental?
Fallout New Vegas itself will run fine with Proton 8, which is what Steam picks by default. But it crashes with UIO, which is one of the mods that VNV had you install earlier.
What's all this "prefix" nonsense?
A "prefix" is Proton speak for the Windows "emulation" layer that the Steam Deck runs games in. So when you told Fallout NV to use Proton Experimental -- that creates a prefix with all the right bits and pieces to run that version of Proton. The MO2 installer is editing the prefix so it can insert itself (and all your mods) between Steam and the game.
Note that because this is specific to running Steam games on Linux, it's not mentioned in the VNV guide, and doesn't appear when you install MO2 on Windows.
Wait how do I start MO2 on Linux?
thats_the_neat_part_you_dont.jpg
The MO2 Linux installer puts MO2 inside the prefix that Steam is using to run Fallout NV in. So all you need to do is tell Steam to load the game. This will "boot up" the prefix and run MO2. From MO2, you can then load the game, or even the game's own launcher. Launchers on launchers! What a time to be alive.

Tip
Make the Mod Organizer 2 font readable 

You might notice the default font is tiny and looks terrible. If you don't want to squint, you can get this file from here and put it in your MO2 themes directory. If that's still not enough, you can edit line 36 of that file and change 16px to something bigger; I'm using 22px.

Step 5: Copy your modded game and MO2 from PC to Steam Deck

Important
What to do:

Quit the game and MO2 on the Deck, if they're running.
Using Cyberduck (or whatever else you did in Step 3), copy the complete contents of Steam's Fallout directory from PC to Steam Deck.
Do the same thing for the contents of the MO2 folder, copying them from Windows to the Steam Deck. Overwrite any conflicts on the Steam Deck.
Restart MO2 (remember: by telling Steam to load New Vegas). If this all went well, you should find all your mods and config have now appeared -- but we're not done yet! The game won't work yet.


Note
A possibly more advanced method 

I don't know for sure yet, but I think it's possible to only copy some of the bits of MO2 from Windows to Steam Deck, and doing so will mean you can skip the next step. If you want to try this, let me know how it turns out.
I think you'd only need to copy the mods, webcache, profiles, and overwrite directories. And maybe downloads but I think that's safely skippable too.

Step 6: Fix up the Fallout config

As part of doing this, your Steam Deck config was overwritten by your Windows one. If you try to start the game now, it'll probably error, and tell you "MO2 is already running" (which is a weird error message but here we are.)
Important
What to do: follow these instructions. A brief summary follows, but click through for screenshots 'n' stuff.

Edit the MO2 "executables" config for the Fallout NV Launcher (note: not the game itself)
Add an underscore, _, in front of the name (ie. replace FalloutNVLauncher.exe with _FalloutNVLauncher.exe)
Load the launcher from inside MO2, using the "Run" button at the top right
The Fallout NV launcher should appear and tell you it is autodetecting hardware. Let it.
Quit the launcher.
Now tell MO2 to start the game.


It should work now. You should only need to do this once.
Note
What on earth was all that about? 

When MO2 configured the Proton prefix to insert itself, it did this by replacing the Fallout launcher with a copy of MO2. So the prefix thinks it's loading the launcher, but it gets MO2 instead. The original launcher is preserved but under a different name -- with the _ added.

Step 7: clean up ssh on your Steam Deck

It's a small security hole to leave this running, but I work in infosec for a living and this stresses me out. So please close it down!

On your Steam Deck, disable the sshd server

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo systemctl stop sshd.service
(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo systemctl disable sshd.service

...and delete your deck user's temporary password:
(deck@steamdeck ~)$ sudo passwd -d deck
passwd: password expiry information changed.


Optional steps

Making Steam skip MO2 and load the game right away

Follow these instructions to add a setting to Steam.
Note that I haven't done this because I still want to get into MO2 sometimes. When loading into Fallout in the Steam Deck's game mode, MO2 appears, but you can just press the Run button on the touchscreen to load the game.
Combining keyboard/mouse and joypad support

If (like me) you like to play shooters using the Steam Deck's joysticks, but also be able to use the mouse for inventory stuff -- well, unfortuantely, that idea didn't seem to exist in 2010 because New Vegas locks you into using MKB or joypad, not both at once.
But there's a fix! One of the mods you installed as part of VNV is lStewieAl's Tweaks and Engine Fixes. This should have appeared in your game as a new submenu called "Tweaks" inside Settings menu. Inside there, you'll find hundreds of settings and, well, tweaks for the game. (There's an overview of all of these at that link, BTW. It's worth looking through, there's tons of good stuff.)
Scroll down it or search through it until you find "Switch Controller/Mouse By Clicking/Pressing A". Toggle this to true.
Now, whenever you click left mouse (I bound this to clicking the right trackpad down), the game will switch to mouse controls. You can use this for inventories and stuff. And whenever you press A, it'll change back to joypad controls, so you can walk around and shoot people. It's not as smooth as games that support dual mode controls all the time but it works well enough once you get used to the extra button press.
Reshader / HDR support for Steam Deck OLED

TODO: I plan to explore this soon.

Other mods confirmed working/not working

Pip-Boy tweaks / inventory icons / inventory sorting

I am using this combination of mods on top of VNV Extended and it's working fine:

yUI - User Ynterface
ySI - Sorting Ycons
ySI - Pick Up Prompts
Colorful Inventory Ycons
Pip-Boy UI Tweaks
Clean Pip-Boy


Troubleshooting

If you see "Mod Organizer 2 is already running" error

Try doing Step 6 again.
If starting Fallout in Steam no longer loads up MO2

Go back to Step 4 and re-run the MO2 installer. When it asks you where to install it to, give it the same directory as you used before, and when it warns you the directoy isn't empty, click through. It'll then tell you it's doing an "upgrade". This should reconfigure the Proton environment to load MO2 again and shouldn't lose any of your config, mods, etc.
You'll need to do this if you ever change the Proton version that Fallout NV is set to use in Steam.

  
## zzz_cyberduck1.png

      
    Raw
  

              zzz_cyberduck1.png