Due to the weird way that SteamOS is set up, there are some frustrating compatibility issues that I will explain.
In SteamOS, the system partition is locked to read only, rendering pacman, aur, and yay totally unusable. You can run a command to make it read-write, but you run into the following issues
- There is a very small amount of available space to install apps on the system partition
- The system partition is wiped every SteamOS update (and made read-only again)
So while you can potentially make the system partition read-write, install PICO-8 via yay, and then repeat that process every single time SteamOS updates, it essentially isn't practical.
So, the alternative option would be to just download the PICO-8 files, extract them to an arbitrary location (like ~/Games in my case), and set the "pico8" file to have execute permissions. This kinda works, with the notable exception being Splore. Splore relies on wget for its networking functionality. Unfortunately, wget is not pre-installed in SteamOS, and cannot be installed normally due to the above mentioned issues using pacman and such. I tried various methods of taking a local wget executable and trying to locally add it to PATH, though no method succeeded in it being recognized by PICO-8 Splore.
Ultimately, I have found only one method to get a fully functional PICO-8 experience on the Steam Deck: download the Windows version of PICO-8, add it as a non-steam game, and run it via Proton. This does work properly, though it adds significant extra time to start up and shutdown PICO-8 due to the setup and teardown of the Windows compatibility layer.
Below are a list of possible options for making the Linux version of PICO-8 compatible with SteamOS + Steam Deck:
- Offer a flatpak version of PICO-8, flatpaks can contain their dependencies in a special sandbox setup, allowing for wget to be packaged in
- Rework the network code to not require wget
- Add a configuration.txt entry for specifying a custom path for wget, requires the user to manually obtain wget, place it in arbitrary folder, and make it executable
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A recreation of the Videlectrix video game, Secret Collect. from homestarrunner.com, as featured in Strong Bad Email, Video Games (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R22zSrpeSA4).
Play something that probably only looks kinda like Strong Bad. Run all around a futuristic maze collecting things that look nothing like Strong Bad.
This was my first go at creating something for Pico-8, so I figured recreating this simple game would be a good start. I am interested in recreating other Homestar Runner games in the future, as the death of flash has left modern web browsers unable to play them.
