Who cares honestly? Why would I want to launch dolphin through steam in the first place? Just adds bloat. Just install dolphin with your package manager and launch it via your desktop environments built in launcher ("start menu").
But also, Dolphin was also the only emulator which needed a lot of additional tweaking from the EmuDeck defaults. Wii games have a combinatoric explosion of control schemes (wiimote, sideways wiimote, +nunchuk, +classic controller, +pro gyro thingy, balance board, light gun, etc) and there are really no sensible defaults. Dolphin won't remember layouts per-game, you need to do some launcher gymnastics to make that happen.
Oh well, good thing end users need to give a shit to use an emulator. Steam or not you don't just download an emulator and have access to every game at perfect settings.
The need to tinker to get everything working correctly is generally down to the sheer number of hardware/software configurations out there, and you see this on Windows and Linux platforms. In contrast, on more strictly-defined platforms - like, say, macOS or the Steamdeck - you know the general hardware and OS combos up front and can optimize around that.
This thing isn't a computer in the traditional sense, regardless of the OS it runs. It's absolutely a good goal to provide an experience where the non-power-user doesn't need to tinker with shit randomly and go down a rabbit hole of options that they will inevitably shoot themselves in the foot with.
That's the tradeoff for the sweet beautiful freedom of a customizable emulator that people proceed to use as a reason to bash Nintendo for laziness or whatever. If you don't like something running at 30 fps you get to change it. If you don't care about that customization to begin with I question why you buy a steam deck. Becsuse thr steam deck at the end of the say is advertised as 'just being a PC". Up to the ability to ditch Steam OS and throw Windows on as a dual boot or exclusive OS.
Not particularly, no. The hardware in the Steam deck is a known parameter set and it's entirely feasible to optimize around it.
You're not really responding to my points, and instead seem to be opting to recede into user choice or customizability as a feature. I'm not dogging on either of those - I'm just saying that they don't need to be the default for a platform like this, and to imply otherwise is just weird.
Things should "just work" where they can. Expecting people to become Linux wizards is poor form.
I'm saying that we can't agree on what is "most optimal".
- Do you prefer 30 fps, 60fps, or even higher? those are different ways to optimize it.
- Do you want a pure experience or would you prefer highest internal resolution?
- Do you perhaps want to add in post processing, maybe as a way to get around what would otherwise be visual glitches?
- Preference in renderer? I guess we eliminate DX11/12, but OpenGL vs. Vulkan will give different results, even if Vulkan is in theory the better graphics API.
- and ofc there are preferences on various other nitty gritty settings that some people will be opinionated on.
A switch user just takes what they get and either accepts or grits their teeth with these opinions. But since we're ultimately talking about PC users they will be much more opinionated, and fight amongst one another. Because those supposed "linux wizards" exist and are very loud. I'm sorry if you see this as talking past your point, but my point is that we can't agree. Which ironically enough reinforces my point, I guess.
Alternatively you can set that save backup up yourself with use of your favorite cloud application and symlinks.
My package manager doesn't have a nice controller-support UI
My package manager doesn't let me set up controller mappings
I'm very confused why people these days are so happy letting one big company manage their entire library and history. Did we not learn from the 2010's?
I'd rather see as many popular apps as possible stay outside the garden. The bigger the user base that still uses user-controlled installation methods, the bigger the outcry if an OS tries to lock down a previously-free platform.
Some setups can be elaborate with Roms listed in Steam / Big Picture with box art, fan art, and various metadata. Software like Steam Rom Manager assist with this.
Considering console emulation is often played with controllers perhaps infront of TV, Steams launcher is probably more suitable for launching emulation than using a keyboard or mouse for a start menu.
The Steam Deck community already has scripts for installing & adding to Steam emulators for basically everything in one shot, and Steam isn't doing the distribution of any of these.
2. The Steam Deck is a portable game controller with a screen on it. Wouldn't it be nice to play games designed for this form factor, rather than typical PC games designed for keyboard/mouse, or typical PC/Console games designed for a large screen?
3. Games/Apps on the Steam Deck are most convenently launched by Steam
4. Dolphin emulates Wii U games (as well as Wii and GameCube games)
Yet it does emulate GameCube and Wii, completely separate consoles.