I won’t ever let any effort like that go to waste. Thanks for confirmation. Now that two of you have said I’ve got the all-clear to keep on inundating this space with my articles …well, you have been warned :P

:)

P.S.

I know I’ve been writing and sharing a bunch of little articles here lately. Do let me know if you’re a bit tired of these.

Both my site and my NeoCities experiment are ad free (obviously, with the latter), so there’s no alterior motives when I share my writing here. But I do worry I’m just sharing them too much and becoming a slight annoyance.

Feel free to chime in and let me know if I’m annoying you all. I scrolled down the main page of this community and I see so many of my own posts. I don’t want to become a bother!

For anyone unfamiliar with it, DroidDeck is a relatively new, open-source Android application that lets you run Valve’s actual Steam client, along with PC games from your Steam library, on supported Android phones and handhelds. Rather than just launching individual Windows games through something like Winlator, it brings much of the familiar Steam Deck experience to Android, including Steam’s interface, Proton compatibility, controller integration and more. It does all this without needing to root your device or replace Android with another operating system. It’s still experimental, but the progress has been pretty amazing so far.

So I’ve been chatting with the people behind DroidDeck over the last couple of weeks, and I’ve finally put together what turned into a pretty lengthy feature about the project, its history, and the people making it happen.

I interviewed The412Banner, Max, xXJSONDeruloXx, Kimchi and Astro Sky, digging into everything from their earliest experiences with gaming and development to how their separate experiments with Linux, Gamescope and Steam eventually came together. What started as a way of getting the actual Steam client running on Android has grown into something way more ambitious, and I really wanted to tell the story of how that happened rather than just write another overview of what the software can do.

We also got into the technical challenges, the ridiculous pace of development (it updated and changed a few times while I was writing this!), their approach to AI-assisted coding and automated testing, the importance of open source, and where they hope to take DroidDeck in the future. There are some personal stories in there too, particularly about the early breakthroughs and the excitement of finally seeing things work. It’s a long read, admittedly, but I wanted to give everyone involved the space to tell their side of the story. I’m really grateful to all five for taking the time to answer my many, many questions, and I hope you enjoy getting to know a little more about the people behind a project that’s quickly become one of the more interesting developments in Android handheld gaming!

And just to be transparent, since I know it’s a subject people have strong feelings about, DroidDeck does make use of AI-assisted development.

We discuss that openly in the article, including how the developers use AI tools, automated testing and code reviews as part of their workflow.

I hope you still enjoyed the read, even if it ended up being completely different to what your pre-caffeine brain saw!!!

It has turned from a drip to a flood of these. I’ve seen so many niche-niche communities get inundated with these half-baked ‘ports’ or projects. It is the same thing each and every time. Someone puts in the tiniest amount of ‘work’ (they prompt Claude), show off the title screen or a minute of gameplay, release it and then immediately move on to the next one.

I’d be stunned if a single person on the PSP side specifically has even finished a single of of these ports. I’m just sad. Maybe this is the future, but I loved the admittedly quiet spaces which just had die-hard fans, not this port-slop

It just depresses me. I really enjoyed visiting the PSP sub-reddit, if only to see hardware collections, see the odd interesting story. Now it is filled with slop. The last week or two I just stopped even looking

Being so tightly woven in with the retro handheld scene, I know for a fact that 99% of the devs (apps, emulators, front-ends and the like) all make use of it in some way or another. The difference is that they’re using it as a tool. These port-slop games are just so pointless

It all makes me sad

Some of the ports we’re seeing in the retro handheld community lately have been great, and I love seeing developers push these little devices beyond what they were ever intended to do. But I’ve definitely noticed what feels like a growing amount of ‘port-slop’, with new projects appearing seemingly every few hours, many of them feeling more like quick experiments than anything particularly worthwhile.

I’m not against the experimentation at all, but I do wonder if we’re reaching a point where quantity is starting to overshadow quality. Anyway, I put together a short opinion piece about it, just my own thoughts on something I’ve been noticing lately, especially here with my favorite old system: the PSP.

A few months back I had a grand plan about buying a ton of options, going from entry level to high-end, a refurbished and done up iPod, a Zune, a feature on the PSP’s sound capabilities…but after two or three I got distracted

Reviewing this was a pleasure, and reminded me why something like this little fellow is magic for music. The sound difference between FLAC on this V.S. streaming is enormous!

I’m so glad you liked my artivle/review/impressions! :)

Easy fix:

Buy a fitness/smart watch - an older one is fine, why go excessive

Download GadgetBridge from F-Droid/Droidify and then use that instead of a proprietary app which is just harvesting your data and telemetry at every chance: