Matrix Games Forums

As I am on the "post-Q2" list for ordering a Steam Deck, this won't matter to me for months (years?), but I am a bit sad to find out compatibility testing by Valve came up as "Unsupported" for Shadow Empire.

Any possibility this might change in the next few months (years?)?

(BTW, this is only the 2nd Slitherine game in my collection that has been tested thus far. ICBM came up as "Playable.")

There are cases when I would not hold my breath.
SE is beyond even those.

The games "engine" is pretty unique, being apparently a modified Windows Forms Application.

There are a few approaches to game development that are dated and should no longer be used.
Windows Forms is beyond even that. It is a "never should have been used in the first place" thing.
Do not get me wrong, it is stil impressive what Vic got out of this approach. But it also runs into limits like these.

It is what we have now and it will not change. So support for it on the steam deck will come realy, realy late. And more likely then not, never.

The game works in wine with a small hack, so if Vic made small change to the game distributive it would likely be compatible

The remaining error `System.InvalidOperationException: SetPixel is not supported for images with indexed pixel formats.`

was fixed by editing ~/.wine/drive_c/ShadowEmpire/graphics/shadowmodgraphics/defaultcounterbig.png with gimp to convert the indexed colors to rgb. (Menu -> Image > Mode -> RGB) then export as png and overwrite.

However, I do not wish onto anyone to play SE with anything less than beefy single-core desktop, these arrays won't copy themselves