Launching Godot Games on Steam Deck from the command line via Remote Shell
For some reason, my Godot game would no longer launch on the Steam Deck. I could hear it running as if it were running in the background, but the screen kept showing the Steam Deck’s UI.
Since it’s all Linux I figured it should be possible to just drop to the command line and launch a game from there. Linux typically uses the DISPLAY environment variable to tell the application where its output should be shown. And it turns out, it worked exactly as expected.
In the Steam Devkit Management Tool, there’s a
Remote Shell
button.
Once the shell is launched, I was curious about the OS:
Last login: Sun Jul 3113:40:302022 from 10.10.1.10(deck@steamdeck ~)$ uname -aLinux steamdeck 5.13.0-valve15-1-neptune-02197-gf6ec7ad3762a #1SMPPREEMPT Thu, 26 May 202219:57:25+0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux
The location where Steam keeps its games is somewhat hidden:
(deck@steamdeck ~)$ls /home/deck/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/ Age2HD RiME'BattleBlock Theater'RimWorldCarrion rocketleagueControl'Sea of Thieves''Deep Rock Galactic'"Sid Meier's Civilization V"'Disco Elysium''Skyrim Special Edition'"Don't Starve Together"'Stardew Valley''Elite Dangerous''Steam Controller Configs''Fable Anniversary'Steam.dllFactorioSteamLinuxRuntime'Fury Unleashed'SteamLinuxRuntime_soldier'Neon Abyss''Steamworks Shared'OutwardStickFightTheGame'Proton 7.0''Super Meat Boy''Proton - Experimental'TerrariaRBSValheim'Red Dead Redemption 2'
But a devkit game won’t be found there. It’s in the “devkit-game” directory instead:
And it’s running. Launching games via the command line works well, and this may be great for debugging slightly more complex issues during launch, especially when attaching a debugger, or even when passing arguments to trigger specific scenarios on an actual device.
We can take this up to another level. How about sharing your PC’s mouse and keyboard with the Steam Deck? Let’s go.
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Launching Godot Games on Steam Deck from the command line via Remote Shell
For some reason, my Godot game would no longer launch on the Steam Deck. I could hear it running as if it were running in the background, but the screen kept showing the Steam Deck’s UI.
Since it’s all Linux I figured it should be possible to just drop to the command line and launch a game from there. Linux typically uses the DISPLAY environment variable to tell the application where its output should be shown. And it turns out, it worked exactly as expected.
In the Steam Devkit Management Tool, there’s a
Remote Shellbutton.Once the shell is launched, I was curious about the OS:
The location where Steam keeps its games is somewhat hidden:
But a devkit game won’t be found there. It’s in the “devkit-game” directory instead:
To run a game, go to the devkit directory where your game is and run it from the command line:
In Linux, output goes to the device specified via the DISPLAY env var. When connecting to the Steam Deck via shell, that is missing, hence the error.
Let’s run it again, with the DISPLAY environment variable set to the first device:
And it’s running. Launching games via the command line works well, and this may be great for debugging slightly more complex issues during launch, especially when attaching a debugger, or even when passing arguments to trigger specific scenarios on an actual device.
We can take this up to another level. How about sharing your PC’s mouse and keyboard with the Steam Deck? Let’s go.
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