ArmCord (Discord Alternative) at the correct resolution on Steam Deck or: How I learned to stop worrying and love touchpad controls

If you want to skip past the life story cookbook bullshit, skip to the part where I post a grainy-ass image of a censored Discord running on a Steam Deck.

Recently, I had just saved up enough to purchase the next set of parts that would get me started on my next Viper Tech upper receiver group build, as well as a bolt carrier group that would have my gun shoot at an acceptably low enough energy for fields around me. I had a list of prices, items and their associated parts already organized and a prediction of shipping costs. Had everything sorted out. 

So I shot a message off to Viper Tech... nothing. I quickly shot off another message, this time through e-mail. Also nothing. This is unfortunately common with Viper Tech. While we are in the same timezone, and I was speaking to them in Chinese, it's a hit or miss trying to contact them. I suspect that if you've done business with them before, then they'd prioritize your messages over others who may just be kicking tires. 

I also around that time had been thinking of buying a Steam Deck. It were much more recent thoughts compared to the upper receiver build. Classes had just started up again, and it was also my birthday. So I bought one.

I apologize for the fingerprints.

 It was a much more reasonable decision than an expensive airsoft build, I reasoned to myself. I can't play airsoft anywhere or all the time. It'd be a portable gaming experience that I could bring along while traveling or just in my daily routine. And while I'm sure eyebrows would be raised if I attempted to use the device to take notes or whatnot, it is essentially a portable PC.

So I got to work setting up the device. Logging in, connecting to Wi-Fi, and installing a couple of games on the measly 64GBs that mine came with. Of the programs I installed, I also installed Librewolf (FireFox alternative), Discord, Door Kickers: Action Squad and L4D2. I'll get to DK:AS and L4D2 later, but LibreWolf and Discord were my main priorities. I felt that I could be watching YouTube videos in bed at a way higher resolution in bed than in my phone using Librewolf, and Discord would be for going on calls when I was away from home. So imagine my surprise when, after installing both programs off of Flatpack and adding them to Steam, I open Discord through SteamOS and was met with:

I HATE LETTERBOXING

The short bit of it: I managed to solve it. Of course, this will be done in Desktop Mode.

1. Go to the settings, then to ArmCord's settings. 
2. Set the ArmCord theme to Native, and then scroll down to the bottom and set Skip Splash Screen to On.
3. Exit ArmCord
4. Using your file browser navigate to $HOME/.var/app/xyz.armcord.ArmCord/config/ArmCord/storage. There, you will find window.json. 
5. Open this file, set the value for "height" to 800. 
6. Save your edits and close the file
7. Right-click on this file (L2) and open the properties. In the permissions of the file, set it as read-only.

At this point, you should not launch the program anymore from Desktop mode, as you risk somehow overwriting the file (I don't know how that works either.) But it works, and I am tired.

no more letterboxing 😁

I spent a good part of my evening trying to figure this out. I initially tried the force resolution feature Steam has as a part of each program's settings, no dice. I tried looking for some kind of launch parameter I could set it under, but that was the wrong thing to look for. I tried to find the config file itself; It was in the wrong place, and I wouldn't have known that because Flatpack in SteamOS Desktop mode is called something completely different and I wasn't looking at the instructions for Flatpack. And when I did find the window.json file,  I got extremely confused that even after I set the values and made it read-only that it launched in SteamOS as the wrong resolution. It was pretty infuriating.

Librewolf had an I think similar problem? I couldn't tell, as it launched at a similar enough resolution. Regardless, I think that if there was a problem, I may have solved it by adding -height 1280 and -width 800 to the launch parameters. Much simpler, but I still had a hard time finding out if those parameters were a real thing in the first place.

Anyway...

Door Kickers: Action Squad is a really fun game. I suspect it was intended for the Nintendo Switch first, but copied their strategy from Door Kickers 1 of releasing on Steam first before porting to their targeted market (for DK1, mobile devices.) I was never raised or had any form of long-term exposure to controllers, but with the 2D layout I managed to get used to it really quick. The smaller screen also made it much more readable than when I played it on a Desktop monitor with an Xbox 360 controller.

I could not say the same for Left 4 Dead 2. I installed this game because I was really hankering for a first-person shooter on the go. My go-to FPS game right now -Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2022- is not supported on the Steam Deck due to its anti-cheat not running right. So, I picked L4D2 as it was a relatively non-competitive game and I felt as if precision wasn't really going to be important. And I believe I don't own any Steam Deck supported multiplayer shooters that have aim-assist for controllers.

While I did find precision wasn't actually that important, it still was annoying trying to aim at targets in particular. It came with a crazy large joystick deadzone at first, and an even crazier high joystick sensitivity as default. I tuned both of these down, but I still found them unsatisfying to use. The lower values would provide way too little macro control, and higher values would send me looking too far or even downwards upon flicking. The gyro controls are something I do not find intuitive either. I hear people talk about using the thumbsticks for macro controls and gyro controls for "fine-tuning", but I'm really not feeling it.

I really want to love using the joysticks here. Granted, it's only been like a day, but it still, like, kinda sucks. It's just awkward to use right now, which is why I'm glad that L4D2 supports the right touchpad for aiming. Unlike controllers I'm extremely used to FPS games on mobile devices. And the skill of aiming also translates for the right touchpad, albeit requiring more swiping because of the smaller surface area. My only gripe is the aformentioned small space and the fact that using this as the default aiming method is not really that ergonomic, as its lower on the device and further from the X/Y/A/B buttons than the joystick. Which circles back to the "I really want to love using the joysticks."

Maybe someday I'll be somewhat competent at using controllers in FPS games, but today isn't my day. I'll be playing DiRT Rally in the mean time. I bought this game a long time ago, but I never actually installed it. Rally racing looks really cool and I feel that it's right up my alley.

 

The dbrand Project Killswitch case + travel cover is like, perfect btw. I know the Steam Deck zippered carrying case exists and I'm a little nostalgic for the PSP too, but the case and cover is like, p slim and fits in my bag at a lower profile. shit's awesome.