Shader precache & proton takes gigabytes per each game, Valve fix it!

[v00d00m4n]

this whole shader precache is absolutle bad, some games has shader caches that takes more space than games, sometimes its 12gb of cache per game! And besides that games separating proton files and game redist and taking extra gigs, repeating same launchers like rockstar, ubisoft, ea, etc and dx an vc that also with saves takes 1+gb per each game and there is no option to turn off shader precache and no option to delete cache per each game and no option to delete all proton files of each game.

This makes 64gb deck absolutely useless even if you have big sd cards, but even on 512gb it wastes over 100gb of space, and third party clean tools beaks games so much you cant launch them after reinstall.

please rework how this all works, make it all like on windows with single shared windows structure imitation root for all games and and save locations identical to windows inside this folder structure , and also remove whole shader precache to nont waste so much space uneffectively.

[Broseph Joseph]

Thats not how wine works. each games exists inside its own wine prefix, which is like its own dedicated windows emulation environment. You could never guarantee that windows games work the same way on linux every time if they were sharing resources. I agree that the 64gb deck was kinda useless in this regard, and thats probably why valve discontinued it.

You can turn off the shader cache yourself in desktop mode though if you really want to.

[Mahjik]

You can relocate the parts that are on the internal SSD to your SD Card via CryoUtilities:

https://github.com/CryoByte33/steam-deck-utilities

[v00d00m4n]

Originally posted by Broseph Joseph:

Thats not how wine works. each games exists inside its own wine prefix, which is like its own dedicated windows emulation environment. You could never guarantee that windows games work the same way on linux every time if they were sharing resources. I agree that the 64gb deck was kinda useless in this regard, and thats probably why valve discontinued it.

You can turn off the shader cache yourself in desktop mode though if you really want to.

Wine works whatever way you configure it to work.

I don't want to waste over 100 gb of space on installing 100 copies of direct x abs visual c, on 10 copies of Rockstar launcher, Ubisoft launcher, Ea launcher, Gog/Red launcher, and shader caches.

I also want games that aware of save games of other games from same developer (for example every need for speed games I remember was giving you a money bonus if saves of previous NFS games was found, games like mass effect and walking dead allowed to continue story of previous games, dead space 2 was giving you dead space 1 suit if save of ds 1 was found, etc) to work on deck. All of this works only when same environment shared among all games. That's how it should work.
Proton version specific files could be linked only per game while all the resist files, saves and configs and basically anything any game or it's installer has written in disk should be in shared common folder that imitates windows file structure. Also such files written by game should be traced and options to delete such files per game.

And shader cache should not exist at all, all shaders should compile normally in game. And only if user choose to boost it individual shader cache should be downloaded or just preserved from rub. And surely shader cache of simple game such as scarf should not take 12 gb if space, while game is lesser in size than this! I can get a 100-200 mb of shader cache per game, but when steam downloads 12 gb of shader cache, you can tell than whole design if feature is flawed and it needs a redisgn.


One more thing I forgot to mention this chader cache crap prevents game from running until it's downloaded. It may work from home but steam deck whole point to run games outside of home even without Internet, and offline mode is screwed like that until you will run each game at least once to let cache download.

And if 65 gb model exist valve must take care to do space management efficient and make sure that no matter how much games you have on sd card, when you plug it to steam deck it should only download steam cloud save files of installed games and allow them to launch offline.

[MISO4EVER]

That shader cache is like stage 4 cancer it keeps spreading and taking over your storage. Really awful system.

[v00d00m4n]

Originally posted by Broseph Joseph:

Thats not how wine works. each games exists inside its own wine prefix, which is like its own dedicated windows emulation environment. You could never guarantee that windows games work the same way on linux every time if they were sharing resources. I agree that the 64gb deck was kinda useless in this regard, and thats probably why valve discontinued it.

You can turn off the shader cache yourself in desktop mode though if you really want to.

Wait a minute, shader cache option exist in desktop mode but missing in game mode???

Valve really need to add this option to game mode and also options to force enable or disable it for individual games in compatibility settings after proton version.

Also valve need to turn off separate proton folders and migrate all games to shared emulated windows structure with unified redist,launcher and config and saves, but keep old separate way as alternative compatibility option for some rare cases.

P.s
Once I turn shader cache uhhoff in desktop, will it turn off in game mode?

Once turned off, will it delete existing cache of shaders?

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by v00d00m4n:

Wait a minute, shader cache option exist in desktop mode but missing in game mode???

Valve really need to add this option to game mode and also options to force enable or disable it for individual games in compatibility settings after proton version.

Game Mode is really intended to be hands off. For the majority of users that don't need to tinker with anything, With that, they want to keep the menus small, short and simple. If you want to tinker, it's not a big ask to go to Desktop Mode.

[v00d00m4n]

So, I had 16gb left , 12 gb was taken by other files 12 was taken by shaders, and other are system files.

Once I turned off shader cache in desktop mode steam showed that shaders now takes 0 bytes, and I was under impression shaders was deleted. However once I returned to game mode I still see than only 16 gb left, 2gb now taken by shaders and now other files takes now 22 gb. So basically 2 gb of shaders remained intact while other 10 gb of shaders was not deleted, but instead was moved to some sort of backup folder and now considered as other files.


Not sure if but or feature, but I'm sur this is the most awful design of system files management that wastes space with no way to clean it.

And I tried cleaners from cryo tools and decky, after them some games become broken so much even reinstall of game could not help, only full system reset could allow to play some games, so third party cached data solutions are very poor. We need something similar to android cleanup of files related to apps and something similar to telegram android data management with ability to clean up categories.

Just for the record clean new deck has 2.93 gb of other files and 43 gb free and only 46 out of 64 available.

Where does those 30 gb of trash data comes from shortly after installation of games and why it doesn't go away after uninstalling games - is a mystery.

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by v00d00m4n:

So, I had 16gb left , 12 gb was taken by other files 12 was taken by shaders, and other are system files.

There is more game stored data on the internal drive than just the shader files. Use CyroUtilities to have all game data stored in the location of where the game is stored.

You want this option:

* Sync shadercache and compatdata to the same location the game is installed

On Windows, most games install files into at least two locations (same can do more):

1. The target game folder
2. Either the Windows/User folder or the Documents folder

You have a similar behavior on the Steam Deck. Use CyroUtilities to sync the needed folders to the game install location.

[Mahjik]

Also keep in mind that the OS also backs itself up so you have the current version and the previous version taking up space.