cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/starcitizen/p/1533992/getting-star-citizen-running-on-a-steamdeck-complete-guide

Getting Star Citizen working on the SteamDeck was actually a bit easier than I thought it would be. A lot of the heavy lifting has already been accomplished thanks to the Linux Users Group. The game usually runs around 15-20 fps which is somewhat playable. You’ll see better FPS when you’re out away from Cities/Stations. Total RAM used seems to be a little over 21GB (in SC v4.4).

Some pre-setup:

You’ll need to increase the swapfile on the Steam deck to use a small portion of the built-in SSD as some slower RAM. I set it to 16GB and it seems to be working fine, although LUG recommends a 32GB swapfile. So, if the game starts crashing and the game.log points to an issue with RAM, be sure to increase your swapfile.

Switch the SteamDeck to Desktop mode

• Go to “Power” -> Switch to Desktop

Open up a console and enter the following commands, one at a time:

passwd # Create a root password, for example “deck”
sudo steamos-readonly disable # Disable the read only FS
cd /home # There is a “swapfile” located here we’ll reuse it
sudo swapoff -a # Stop swap process
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=swapfile bs=1G count=16 # Increase swap to 16GB, change to 32 if desired.
sudo mkswap swapfile # swap ready file again
sudo swapon swapfile # Activate swap
sudo steamos-readonly enable # re-enable the read only FS

Download Star Citizen

Download the flatpak made available by the Linux Users Group and run the script for installing the Launcher.

Add the repo

flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists RSILauncher https://mactan-sc.github.io/rsilauncher/RSILauncher.flatpakrepo

install the rsi launcher flatpak

flatpak install -y --user --noninteractive RSILauncher io.github.mactan_sc.RSILauncher

run the rsi launcher flatpak

flatpak run io.github.mactan_sc.RSILauncher

Add the Launcher to Steam
While in Desktop mode, open up the desktop version of Steam.
Go to “Games” -> “Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library…” And select the RSI Launcher

Note: The launcher works better in Gaming Mode. Just make sure to maximize the window while in gaming mode by dragging it to the top of the screen. I’ve found that the touchscreen keyboard doesn’t work well when using desktop mode for the launcher.

Add icons for the RSI Launcher in Steam (Optional)

Right click on the RSI Launcher
Go to “Customization”
“Change” the “background”, “Logo”, and “Wide Cover” to the splash screen. Browse to this folder for the icon:
/home/deck/.var/app/io.github.mactan_sc.RSILauncher/data/prefix/drive_c/Program Files/Roberts Space Industries/StarCitizen/LIVE/EasyAntiCheat/
Note: Delete the *.jpg filter at the bottom to reveal the icons and select SplashScreen.png

For the “Cover”, I found a logo from the StarCitizen Subreddit that works very well:
https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/EmKaZzz1TqvrqdV2qbpqbXEHD9hRMrxK13aALdIb3IE.png

Fix Mouse Warping Issues

Sometimes entering interaction mode will make your view warp quickly to another direction which can be annoying when trying to use kiosks/ASOPs/shops. To fix this, go to the following folder location:
/home/deck/.var/app/io.github.mactan_sc.RSILauncher/data/prefix/drive_c/Program Files/Roberts Space Industries/StarCitizen/LIVE/

Then create a file called user.cfg
Edit the file and enter the following:

#use software cursor
pl_pit.forceSoftwareCursor = 1

Disable animations on launcher (optional)

Click the gear icon -> Game Settings -> Accessibility:
Then disable background video, disable non-essential animations, and disable transition effects.

Setup Useful Keybinds

After launching the game, press the “Steam” button, then go to “Controller Settings”.
The default controller keybinds usually have issues with the normal mouse button clicks, but using the L4-L5 or R4-R5 buttons for the mouse works very well.
My configuration:
L4 - Left Mouse Click
L5 - Right mouse Click
R4 - ‘[’ key (for accepting shared missions/invites)
R5 - ‘B’ key (for some reason I haven’t figured out how to switch between NAV/SCM mode yet).

Switch this up however you want, but I found that these 4 keybinds were essential to being able to play the game without any mouse/keyboard hooked up to it.

After starting up Star Citizen, I would recommend changing the Game Renderer to Vulkan (for 4.4 only. With 4.5 you’ll want to use DirectX until a fix/workaround has been found for Vulkan issues).

*Note: If the game starts crashing while loading up, switch the renderer back by modifying the user.cfg file we created/edited before. Add a new line and enter:

r.graphicsRenderer = 0

Enter a 0 value for DirectX or enter 1 for Vulkan.

Graphics Optimizations:

I used the Performance Tuning guide from the LUG wiki for the following settings, which seems to work fine. If anyone finds some better settings

Game Settings
The following game settings can help improve framerates:

Set Quality to High. Lower settings are not recommended as it will tax your CPU more. Set to Very High to offload more work from your CPU to your GPU.
Set Planet Volumetric Clouds to Medium
Set Scattered Object Distance to Low
Set Motion Blur to Off
Set Sharpening to 100
https://wiki.starcitizen-lug.org/Performance-Tuning

Some troubleshooting:
Usually the first time you run the launcher, the window size will be off. Just drag the top of the window up to the top of the screen and it should resize correctly (works in Gaming Mode as well).

This should also solve the issue where the “acknowledge” button is cut off at the bottom.

Occasionally, the launcher will think that it has no internet connection. A temporary workaround is to log out and then log in again to the launcher. A more permanent fix is to clear the launcher’s cache.

Sources:

• https://wiki.starcitizen-lug.org/Alternative-Installations#flatpak-installation
• https://wiki.starcitizen-lug.org/Troubleshooting/mouse-keyboard-issues
• https://old.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/waiujt/how_to_increase_the_swap_on_the_deck/