The SteamBoy is now fully functional! Took a while, but here we are.
As expected, the display was a bit of a challenge. But it was not nearly as impossible as some led me to believe. I'll make a post about the technical details soon, but for now, enjoy some Clair Obscur gameplay.
It might likely happen, given how Portal 1 & 2 were based on projects by students that GabeN liked so much he got the said students hired to make those games
It doesn't show up well in the video because of compression, but the resolution is actually 1080 by 1200, higher that a normal steam deck! Here's a better quality picture.
You can always turn down the resolution in game and/or cap framerate. I wanted it to be high because:
For low-weight games, you can take full advantage of the high specs.
The options for cheap second-hand screens of this size are roughly (a) 360×240 LCD meant for industry PDAs, or (b) high-resolution OLED meant for VR. There's not much middle ground.
Maybe it doesn't matter to him that Winlator, Gamehub, Gamenative, Fex, DroidDeck or whatever is out and wanted to create and build this. He accomplished it, no matter what. Mad skills. I'm happy for him.
Most of the expensive components are the same and you have to cram it into an even smaller package. Thus part/material cost is only slightly less, but you now have to make a whole new assembly line for the second shell version.
You could go for a smaller CPU/GPU because less resolution, that's cheaper. But then you loose the economy of scale from reusing the same stuff as often as you can.
You'd need to run the numbers, but my guess is the price would be way high for something in the game boy format.
The SteamDeck is hella expensive as it is nowadays.
This looks awesome. I have a couple of questions about it. Does it have a steam button? If not, how do you navigate steamOS? Secondly, have you considered adding bumpers or back buttons? Seems like it would be difficult to play certain games without the shoulder button inputs.
I modded the motherboard firmware so that it would supply the information for the new display to SteamOS, which includes the new resolution and aspect ratio. After that, SteamOS will naturally work with any display, even one in 4:3 (or in my case, 10:9).
Most games will still run in 16:10 or 16:9 if they are not coded to run in 4:3 or an adaptive aspect ratio. I chose to showcase Clair Obscur since it is one of the games that will fully work with any display resolution.
Yes, that's the plan. They are a bit harder than the other buttons since I will need to solder wires to the controller boards, which is why I haven't included them already.
I remember your original post. This turned out really well! It's by far a cut above other junky mods you see people do. I look forward to your technical post about it!
Hey, question for you. Maybe this doesn’t map the same, but I’ve been reshelling steamdecks for a while and I’ve noticed occasionally the trackpads end up far more sensitive with no possible solution. I know the lcd allows for tweaking some springs, but OLED doesn’t really use springs.
You have any recommendations for things I can do to reestablish a firm click on that trackpad? Because it’s very hit or miss when I reshell whether the trackpad becomes so sensitive that it doesn’t take much to click down.
This is so so so sick. I would never in a million years want this, buy this, or do this to my own deck. But it is absolutely an incredible undertaking. Great job
Looks awesome! If you want to add triggers, Macho Nacho Productions on YouTube recently posted a video of a handheld Wii that used Joycon analog sticks as the shoulder buttons. It could definitely be implemented here!
If someday I stumble across a cheap steam deck, in need of mayor repaitments, I would really like to do something like this, it's just so awesome, but the prices now are too much of a luxury
I feel like you could make a Switch lite sized Deck mini using the same methodology you used to make this, This is cool as hell. I’d pay legitimate money for something like that
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u/Whhheat 4d ago
Expect an email from Valve lol. Good work.