Bad performance on Steam Deck

[That ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Mawile (Anga)]

I was hoping I could play this version on my Steam Deck, but I'm experiencing one minor and one major issue.
The minor one is that, on the name change screens, the game doesn't seem to register pressing enter on the on-screen keyboard. In order to continue, I had to bind enter to a button and press it again after closing the keyboard.

The bigger issue, however, is the performance. There's a serious stutter basically every 3 seconds, where the framerate dips to 40 and the game noticeably chugs, making it hard to enjoy. And this happens on Proton 6.3-8, 7.0-2 and the latest experimental build.

Hope this can be fixed, since the game seriously isn't a resource hog and the stutter happens regularly, so maybe there's a weird function call somewhere.

[Aletheia]

Damn, was thinking of playing the game (and finally finish it as i didn't) on the Deck.
I don't want to rely on emudeck if I have the PC version.

[maxuuell]

At least it runs for you. On my SD, it wont load. Any tips?

[That ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Mawile (Anga)]

Originally posted by maxuuell:

At least it runs for you. On my SD, it wont load. Any tips?

Hrmm, not really, it loads on both SD and internal storage for me...
I'm on the beta build of the Steam Deck OS though. Maybe that makes a difference?

[Kaldaien]

Performance is unpredictable on a real PC too, you should just cap the framerate to 30.

Opening and closing the game's menu real quick will cause a stutter and drop a frame, which should temporarily stabilize frame pacing. But I can't say if that'll work reliably running through Proton.

[Arthur.C]

Originally posted by Kaldaieℵ₀:

Performance is unpredictable on a real PC too, you should just cap the framerate to 30.

Opening and closing the game's menu real quick will cause a stutter and drop a frame, which should temporarily stabilize frame pacing. But I can't say if that'll work reliably running through Proton.

It won't do any good for the deck, I have tried 30,60 unlimited FPS, it will drop frames no matter what, from my observation the fps drops on a regular basis, it drops about ever 2 seconds or so whitch leads to a stuttering mess.

[That ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Mawile (Anga)]

What Arthur.C said.
I took a screenshot with the performance overlay enabled. You can clearly see the lag spikes on the graph. They happen everywhere, no matter what you do.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2809491529

[Kaldaien]

I disassembled the game and was looking at the main loop, and I think a call to Sleep (1) at the end of every frame is to blame.

Special K can eliminate those. `MaxDeltaTime=1` in SK's INI file will remove Sleep (1).

Dunno how difficult it is to install Special K onto a SteamDeck or if it's even compatible with OpenGL games on Linux. But it might be worth trying.

[MHzBurglar]

Originally posted by Kaldaieℵ₀:

I disassembled the game and was looking at the main loop, and I think a call to Sleep (1) at the end of every frame is to blame.

Special K can eliminate those. `MaxDeltaTime=1` in SK's INI file will remove Sleep (1).

Dunno how difficult it is to install Special K onto a SteamDeck or if it's even compatible with OpenGL games on Linux. But it might be worth trying.

Any chance you'd be willing to re-compile that disassembly with the "Sleep(1)" removed into a new EXE?

Unfortunately, I can't get Special K to work with this game under Proton at all...

On my Windows desktop, Special K will only work correctly 'out of the box' with Chrono Trigger if I use the 32-bit global injector. If I install the DLL local to the game, it installs as "dxgi.dll" even though the game uses OpenGL. This causes the game to launch without SpecialK active. If I rename the DLL to "opengl32.dll", the local install will work under Windows.

On the Steam Deck under Proton, it's a completely different story I installed Special K into Chrono Trigger's Proton Prefix (along with the required VCRedist packages), but I can't get Special K to actually start with the game. I tried using SKIF, but since it's running inside of Chrono Trigger's Proton prefix, SKIF thinks that Chrono Trigger is already running and won't let me "launch" the game. Manually running the global injector service EXE and the game at the same time doesn't work either, as the service still can't 'see' the game.

I attempted a "local" install, both as dxgi.dll and as opengl32.dll, and neither did anything. I also tried installing SpecialK via Steam Tinker Launch. I could get it to create a DLL and a config file (which only has the "usingWINE" parameter in it), but adding the "MaxDeltaTime=1" parameter to the [Render.DXGI], [Render.OpenGL32], and [Render.FrameRate] sections all did nothing at all and the stutter is as bad as ever.

I know this isn't the place to seek out Special K support, so I'll probably post to the Discord later, but it doesn't look like using SK under Proton is a viable solution, at least for this game.

[That ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Mawile (Anga)]

It's frankly ridiculous that this is necessary. This is not something the end-user should have to do, if it's such a simple fix.

[Peerless Girl]

Anybody had any luck with this yet? There's a lot of spikes especially moving around the map.

[Aletheia]

Originally posted by Peerless Girl:

Anybody had any luck with this yet? There's a lot of spikes especially moving around the map.

There's still nothing to do as of now. Square Enix needs to get their thing straight because this is one lazy butt port.

[Peerless Girl]

I've honestly had a great experience ON PC with it (beyond the dalton bug). But it's a mess and runs like ass on the steam deck though.

[Schissen18]

I haven't done much testing, but Chrono Trigger seems to run much better on the Steam Deck when you drop the frames to 30 and then manually set the TDP to 3.

[Peerless Girl]

I think I had done that, but stuff may've changed, I'll give it another shot. Using any specific version of proton?

[Dignan]

Just coming to say, I've experienced the exact same thing as OP. This port is a rotten mess and I have no idea why it's been reviewed as well as it has. Forgetting just Proton/Steam Deck performance, this game also runs poorly on my actual desktop.

It's a mess. Don't buy it until SE decide to actually fix it.