Weekly Update: Mar 21, 2025
As discussed last week, I'm continuing to work on changes necessary for Steam Deck Verification.
Overall, almost all of the game is playable on the Deck, but there are still some parts of the UI that cannot be controlled using only standard Deck inputs (i.e., without using the touchscreen). And some of these have been tricky to get a decent implementation.
To give a specific example: Ship color customization.
You've got a collection of palettes to choose the color for each of the layers, plus a slider for smoothness. All of which is easy to use with a mouse, but the color palette is a third-party widget which doesn't really allow for intuitive color selection using a controller.
I could modify the code of the palette widgets, but in general I try not to make modifications of third-party packages as it can cause unexpected problems with any updates. But the way the palette is coded relies on Unity's "drag events". So I eventually settled on making a helper component that responds to right-joystick input when a particular palette is selected and then sends a "fake" drag event to the widget so the player can steer the palette cursor with the right joystick.
And while I can sort of test most Deck-like behavior in the Editor by using an XBox controller and setting the resolution to 1280x800, there are some features that can only be tested on the Deck itself, like invoking and responding to the Deck's onscreen keyboard. This adds an additional layer of friction in development: normally I can make a change in code or the editor and just hit "play" in Unity to see how it works. For the Deck I have to do a build, deploy it to Steam, set it to a branch, wait for the branch to get updated on my Deck and then reload the game.
So last week I said I was about 2/3 done with the Deck compatibility work. Now I've done the next 2/3.
Incidentally, if you are using the Deck, there is an opt-in beta that I'm using specifically for the deck/controller. It can be accessed using the normal opt-in system. See the pinned discussion topic for how to access but use the password "111111111111". (Those are 1's for easier entry on the deck and there are 12 of them because that's the minimum password length for betas. It's not meant to be secure, just to avoid people switching to it by mistake.)
Until next week!
Kevin
Overall, almost all of the game is playable on the Deck, but there are still some parts of the UI that cannot be controlled using only standard Deck inputs (i.e., without using the touchscreen). And some of these have been tricky to get a decent implementation.
To give a specific example: Ship color customization.
You've got a collection of palettes to choose the color for each of the layers, plus a slider for smoothness. All of which is easy to use with a mouse, but the color palette is a third-party widget which doesn't really allow for intuitive color selection using a controller.
I could modify the code of the palette widgets, but in general I try not to make modifications of third-party packages as it can cause unexpected problems with any updates. But the way the palette is coded relies on Unity's "drag events". So I eventually settled on making a helper component that responds to right-joystick input when a particular palette is selected and then sends a "fake" drag event to the widget so the player can steer the palette cursor with the right joystick.
And while I can sort of test most Deck-like behavior in the Editor by using an XBox controller and setting the resolution to 1280x800, there are some features that can only be tested on the Deck itself, like invoking and responding to the Deck's onscreen keyboard. This adds an additional layer of friction in development: normally I can make a change in code or the editor and just hit "play" in Unity to see how it works. For the Deck I have to do a build, deploy it to Steam, set it to a branch, wait for the branch to get updated on my Deck and then reload the game.
So last week I said I was about 2/3 done with the Deck compatibility work. Now I've done the next 2/3.
Incidentally, if you are using the Deck, there is an opt-in beta that I'm using specifically for the deck/controller. It can be accessed using the normal opt-in system. See the pinned discussion topic for how to access but use the password "111111111111". (Those are 1's for easier entry on the deck and there are 12 of them because that's the minimum password length for betas. It's not meant to be secure, just to avoid people switching to it by mistake.)
Until next week!
Kevin