Performance and Settings

Performance & Settings

Ryudeck offers live performance tuning via the Quick-Access blade, plus deeper per-game options in Settings.

Quick-Access Blade

• Trigger: Press L3 + R3 while in-game.
• Functionality: Adjust settings live without restarting the game.
• Scope: Settings are PER-GAME. Changing a setting for one title does not affect others.
• Navigation: The blade — and the launcher — can be steered with the left thumbstick as well as the d-pad.
• Exit Game: Its own standout action at the bottom of the blade rather than buried in an accordion, with a two-press confirmation so a stray tap can't end your session.
• Cheats: A dedicated section lets you browse and toggle individual cheats live, in-game.
• Accordion sections: Section headers show a direction chevron and a count chip ("Show (n)") so it's clear what's expandable before you tap it.
• Frame Rate row: Reflects the live present mode — a baked-in uncap correctly reads "Uncapped" instead of a stale "Native".

Frame Generation (experimental, opt-in)

Frame Generation runs AMD FidelityFX optical-flow frame interpolation inside Ryudeck's own Vulkan present path — no external layers — presenting a generated frame between each pair of real frames on a dedicated present thread.

• Where: Toggle it live in the Quick-Access blade (L3+R3), or per-game in Settings.
• Effect: On GPU-light titles it roughly doubles perceived frame rate — measured on device in the ~21-30 fps rendered → ~42-60 fps presented range. It won't manufacture fps a title's engine can't sustain to begin with, and the usual slow-first-launch caveat (JIT/shader caches still building) applies same as always.
• Self-limiting by design: it suspends below a per-title frame-rate floor, when the GPU has no spare headroom, and when the game is already close to panel rate. A dip veto skips generation for any single spiked frame (e.g. a shader-compile stall) so hitches never get smeared into interpolated frames.
• Status: experimental and off by default; a few titles ship with it pre-enabled as part of a per-game boost profile (below), but it can always be switched off per-game.

Console Mode

Choose Docked or Handheld, globally in Settings or per game. The in-game overlay shows a live mode tag, and a per-game choice always outranks the built-in recommendation for that title.

In-Game Keyboard (rebuilt in v0.1.23)

In-game text entry (player names, Mii names, search) uses Ryudeck's own on-screen keyboard, composited over the running game and fully controller-driven. This replaced the previous approach of summoning the Steam Deck's system on-screen keyboard, which could reset Game Mode when its overlay stacked on top of a running game's surface.

• Shift / Caps: Y, or click the left stick.
• Space: X.
• Backspace: B.
• Move the cursor: shoulder buttons L / R; jump to the start or end with the L2 / R2 triggers.
• OK: + (Plus).
• Symbol / number page: − (Minus).
• Touch: tap a key directly, or tap to place the cursor — the Deck touchscreen works throughout.

A full button legend is shown on-screen as a hint bar while the keyboard is open.

Per-game boost profiles

A growing set of titles ship with tuned settings out of the box:

• Uncapped present rate + experimental Frame Generation: Tomodachi Life, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, and — new in v0.1.23 — The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (uncapped present rate, frame generation, and handheld render), with per-title engagement floors where needed.
• Forced handheld: Pokémon Café Mix (new in v0.1.23) is a handheld-only title that warns when run docked — Ryudeck now runs it undocked automatically, and the Deck touchscreen drives it.

All verified in real gameplay on device — and still overridable per-game if you'd rather turn any of it off.

Resolution Scale

• Default: x1.
• Usage: Increase resolution scale only for GPU-bound games to achieve a sharper image.
• Caveats:
  • This will NOT help CPU-bound games.
  • Pushing the scale too high can cause instability due to the Steam Deck's 4GB GPU budget.

CPU vs. GPU Bound

Many Switch games are CPU/JIT-bound (the emulated workload). In these cases:

• FPS is limited by the CPU, not the GPU.
• Lowering the resolution scale will not improve performance.
• This behavior mirrors the limitations on the original Switch hardware.

A fix to a per-frame Vulkan allocation in the FSR upscaler (Ryudeck's default scaler) removed a render-thread stall that was hitting hundreds of times a second under load. Heavy titles no longer dip as hard when the camera moves — Tears of the Kingdom's open field went from roughly 10 to 15-17 fps in motion in our measurements — and every FSR-scaled title benefits to some degree.

Memory Mode

• Default: HostMapped (bounds-checked, stable).
• Power User Option: HostMappedUnsafe offers a slight speed increase but risks hard crashes on bad dumps or buggy titles.

Performance Overlay

An in-game overlay displays:

• FPS
• Frametime
• GPU FIFO