BZ on Steam Deck

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wolfgangrumpf
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BZ on Steam Deck

Post by wolfgangrumpf »

I managed to install BZ on my Steam Deck (it's just Linux, after all), but I can't get any of the controller mappings to work. Does anyone have any experience getting BZ to work on a Deck?
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blast
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Re: BZ on Steam Deck

Post by blast »

Here's what I've done to get BZFlag working well on the Steam Deck. Some of this you've likely already done, but I'll include it just in case someone happens upon this thread.

Install BZFlag and add to Steam
  1. Switch to Desktop mode. While in the normal interface, hold the power button for a couple seconds and a menu should appear. Choose "Switch to Desktop"
  2. After a moment, the desktop UI loads. The right trackpad acts as a mouse, or you can use the touchscreen. The Steam button + X brings up the on-screen keyboard. From the menu in the bottom left, either start up a terminal (System > Konsole) and run "flatpak install org.bzflag.BZFlag" or search for BZFlag in the software center (System > Discover)
  3. Click the Steam icon in the bottom right tray and choose Library.
  4. In the bottom left, click Add A Game and choose "Add a Non-Steam Game..."
  5. Put a check next to BZFlag and click "Add selected programs"
  6. Close the Steam window and then run the "Return to Gaming Mode" icon on the desktop.
Set up controller layout
This is the current layout that I'm using. I played with this for a couple hours during a recent event and it worked quite well. I did have to edit the Input Settings in BZFlag to select the joystick and set the correct X and Y axis. The rest of this layout uses the default keyboard bindings of BZFlag. Find BZFlag from the game list and click on that. Click on the game controller icon on the info screen, and then click Edit layout. Below are screenshots of all the mappings. I think the only ones I had to do anything special on were the L4 and R4 back grips. For those, I set a separate Start Press and Release Press options so that I can zoom the radar in/out while simply holding one of the triggers, and releasing them goes back to the middle radar zoom level.

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Layout summary
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Buttons part 1
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Buttons part 2
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Buttons part 3
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Joysticks
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DPad
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Triggers
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Trackpads
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I also have the actual input mapping file, but I don't know if there's a way to import it. You might be able to try saving a custom layout and then replacing that file with this one. The location this was at was ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Steam\ Controller\ Configs/33009735/config/bzflag/ but I think the exact path will differ (probably the number near the end).
FVAA2300D4E6.vdf.txt
(I added .txt so I could upload it here)
(19.86 KiB) Downloaded 94 times
"In addition to knowing the secrets of the Universe, I can assure you that I am also quite potty trained." -Koenma (Yu Yu Hakusho)

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wolfgangrumpf
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Re: BZ on Steam Deck

Post by wolfgangrumpf »

You are awesome - I appreciate the great details on your instructions - I'll try it out later this week!
wolfgangrumpf
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Re: BZ on Steam Deck

Post by wolfgangrumpf »

And it worked fine - turns out that there is a community controller profile uploaded by someone (maybe you?) that works great. Thanks for the assist!
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