Possible to stream VCS to phone?

[MrTrust]

One thing I enjoy doing with the VCS in PC mode is using Steam Link to play games on my phone if there's no available TV in the house, or if I have to be in a rook without one.  Works great; I just connect the modern controller to my phone VIA bluetooth, connect the phone to the VCS/Windows via Wi-Fi, and away go.

 

What sucks is I can't access any of my VCS games this way, obviously.  Pretty sure of there was a built-in way to do this through the native VCS OS, we'd have heard about it by now, but is it possible to find a workaround through Linux in PC mode?  I know it's a breeze to boot the games, and I assume there's a way to configure the controller in Linux, but is there any way to send A/V I/O between, say Debian and the phone?

 

Has anyone tried doing something like this?  It might be a dumb question; I don't know.  I just grabbed one of those USB sticks the other day, and this is my first time trying to learn any common Linux distro.

[PowerDubs]

Rumors say this could still happen-

 

https://atarivcs.medium.com/atari-and-wonder-join-forces-on-cross-platform-gaming-2c0f6867d448

 

https://venturebeat.com/business/atari-acquires-assets-of-wonder-a-hybrid-mobile-gaming-and-entertainment-platform/

 

 

[MrTrust]

12 hours ago, PowerDubs said:

Rumors say this could still happen-

 

https://atarivcs.medium.com/atari-and-wonder-join-forces-on-cross-platform-gaming-2c0f6867d448

 

https://venturebeat.com/business/atari-acquires-assets-of-wonder-a-hybrid-mobile-gaming-and-entertainment-platform/

 

 

 

That would be ideal, but I'm not going to go blue holding my breath for it.  Do it it locally, I would think you'd only need something like a remote desktop session and boot the games through Debian or some other Linux distro.  Then, you would need some way to map the controller since the OS doesn't appear to recognize it, but I have a hard time believing a workaround to do it on your home WiFi would be out of the question, but I'm pretty ignorant about Linux specifically, and networking in general.   

[zzip]

23 hours ago, MrTrust said:

but is it possible to find a workaround through Linux in PC mode? 

Can Steamlink be used in PC Mode?  I've never used it, but can it be exteded to non-Steam games?

[MrTrust]

49 minutes ago, zzip said:

Can Steamlink be used in PC Mode?  I've never used it, but can it be exteded to non-Steam games?

 

Well, like I said, it works just fine in PC mode under Windows.  I haven't tried it in Debian, if that's what you're asking here.

You know, that's one thing I didn't think about, because evidently you can add games to your Steam library so long as they are installed on your computer (presumably, this wouldn't confer a license to re-download them, but maybe they would otherwise run through steam?  Any VCS games that are also compatible with Steam might conceivably work this way.  Interesting.  Worth a shot anyway.

 

I have gotten Steamlink to minimize the GUI and let me get access to my desktop through my phone, and I did get Mame to launch this way.  The problem there is getting input to work, since everything is still done through this Steam overlay, so it doesn't seem to read input devices like normal.  I wasn't able to get anything to play with the controller, anyway, but maybe there is a way to do that.

 

I don't know why I didn't think about just trying that, but it's definitely something I'll have to mess around with.

[zzip]

4 minutes ago, MrTrust said:

 

Well, like I said, it works just fine in PC mode under Windows.  I haven't tried it in Debian, if that's what you're asking here.

You know, that's one thing I didn't think about, because evidently you can add games to your Steam library so long as they are installed on your computer (presumably, this wouldn't confer a license to re-download them, but maybe they would otherwise run through steam?  Any VCS games that are also compatible with Steam might conceivably work this way.  Interesting.  Worth a shot anyway.

 

I have gotten Steamlink to minimize the GUI and let me get access to my desktop through my phone, and I did get Mame to launch this way.  The problem there is getting input to work, since everything is still done through this Steam overlay, so it doesn't seem to read input devices like normal.  I wasn't able to get anything to play with the controller, anyway, but maybe there is a way to do that.

 

I don't know why I didn't think about just trying that, but it's definitely something I'll have to mess around with.

You can easily run the VCS games under Linux,  but be aware that some of the VCS games don't have a clean exit function so you'd have to kill the process.   Not sure if Steamlink provides an easy way to do this.

[MrTrust]

It does work... kinda'.  Here's my VCS version of Biolab Wars running on my phone:

 

So, there it is running like normal and the latency isn't bad or anything, and connecting Steamlink to the Linux machine was easy.  Just had to install the app under Debian and manually add the game to my library as a non-Steam game.  Click the machine from the phone app, enter a PIN on the computer, and you're off and running.

 

Sucky part is A) the game displays on the phone just fine, but for some reason, the Steam UI does not, and B), those touch controls don't do anything.  The game doesn't recognize anything but keyboard input, which is not the end of the world, as you can easily map controller inputs to keyboard keys in Steam, though is a pain in the ass.  So, you can make the games playable this way, but it looks like I have some more troubleshooting to do, mostly WRT getting the controller recognized.

 

Still, the ability to have the VCS library accessible from my pocket anywhere in the house (so long as the machine is on) is pretty neat.