8 KiB
RetroDECK v0.9.0b - Captain Comeback
Release Date: 2025-XX-XX
Short summary:
Thanks for your patience
Patch Music for 0.9.0b?
New Lighter Manifest
Launch with RetroDECK (RetroENGINE)
Launch with games via CLI
Steam Rom Manager & Steam Sync
PortMaster
Ruffle
New RetroDECK ES-DE Theme
New Website
Updated all components
Thanks for your patience
If you read the announcement we are pushing the Godot Configurator to a later version to implement more feedback we have gotten both internally from team members and from our testers.
We want to thank the community for being patient with waiting for the next update.
Do we get any banger Patch Music for 0.9.0b?
How about a Sea Shanty about Captain Comeback meeting his friends the PortMaster and Train Driver (SRM).
New Lighter Manifest & Framework changes
We have spent several months rewriting how RetroDECK is built from the ground up with over a 1100+ commits since the last release.
In doing so we have:
- Reduced the application size around
600mb(some of that space have been eaten with new features). - Building RetroDECK went from
3.30hours to about1hour. - Went from a monolithic build approach to a modular approach (each component is built separately and stitched together into RetroDECK).
- RetroDECK now is migrated to an organization on GitHub that is hosting the new modular structure.
- Rebuilt the
pre_build_automationscript was reworked with additional features. - Improved logging.
- Implemented changes for the future Godot version of the Configurator.
Launch with RetroDECK (RetroENGINE)
RetroDECK can be used as an headless engine to run your games.
On the Linux Desktop (or desktop mode), we added the option to open and run various files directly with RetroDECK.
Will RetroENGINE detect what system I want to launch?
If you have the game file inside the corresponding roms/ folder RetroDECK will understand what system to launch.
Example:
A .nes file is inside the retrodeck/roms/nes folder.
When you click on it, RetroDECK opens it with the Nintendo Entertainment System emulator, and the game starts.
What if it is not in the correct folder?
When clicked, RetroDECK will prompt a dialog window asking which system the file belongs to and then run it.
Launch with games via CLI
You can also launch games directly via CLI with RetroENGINE.
Example syntax:
flatpak run net.retrodeck.retrodeck retrodeck/roms/<system>/<gamefile> (--help for more information).
This feature have been requested by other developers in the community (or it could be for those Linux Wizard Grognards that only want to use CLI for everything).
Steam Rom Manager & Steam Sync
RetroDECK is now shipping with Steam Rom Manager and the ability to Sync your games to Steam aka Steam Sync built-in.
Note: Flatpak Steam not yet supported
We have not added support yet for the Flatpak version of Steam.
What is Steam Rom Manager?
Steam ROM Manager a bulk game importer and artwork manager for Steam.
It adds separate games to Steam, adds artwork from SteamGridDB and configures the RetroDECK Steam Input layouts.
Read more here:
New Feature - PortMaster
RetroDECK is now shipping with PortMaster.
What is PortMaster?
PortMaster is a simple GUI tool designed to facilitate the downloading and installation of game ports for Linux devices and is self contained.
One of the goals of PortMaster is to not install or upgrade any existing OS libraries for any ports. Any of the ports that need a particular non-standard library are maintained within the ports' folder and made available specifically to that port during execution.
Note:
That not all 800+ ports are available for the X86_64 system, but the list keeps growing all the time.
Read more here:
New Feature - Ruffle
Ruffle is a Flash Player emulator written in Rust.
New RetroDECK ES-DE Theme
We got our the first version of our own RetroDECK ES-DE theme!
The theme is a remixed and inspired by the themes: Mini Banner made for Launchbox and ES-DE-Mini made for ES-DE.
The original themes Mini Banner and ES-DE-Mini are made by: Weestuarty, DerSchlachter, Dan Patrick.
The RetroDECK Theme features:
- Other types of sub-menus and layout.
- Icons for RetroDECK features like PortMaster.
- RetroDECK colors / graphics.
The new theme is made by: Weestuarty
New Website
We soft launched it before, but we are considering it a part of this update! Have you found the hidden games yet?
Emulators / Engines / Systems
All components have been updated to their latest verion (as of the release):
- Emulators
- Engines
- Retroarch & cores
- Systems
What follows is a highlight of changes that are more then just a general update:
ES-DE
Update: To 3.1.1 it comes with a ton of features like language support and much more. Check the changelog for more details (above).
Change: Favorites collection is now enabled by default on ES-DE as it is an requirement for Steam Sync.
Change: The ES-DE settings are under a submenu in the ES-DE interface as our tools where making the menu to crowed.
Added: Support for the Panda3DS - RetroArch core in ES-DE.
Added: Support for the LRPS2 - RetroArch core in ES-DE.
Known Issue: RetroDECK's ES-DE submenu don't work with all translations. We hope to implement all translations in the future.
CEMU
Dolphin
Primehack
MelonDS
Duckstation:
Change: Marked as (Legacy) because of licensing changes.
Update: Updated to the last version before the licensing change.
Ryujinx:
Change: Marked as (Legacy) as the emulator has stopped it's development.
PCSX2
RPCS3
PPSSPP
RetroArch
Update: Updated to 1.20.0, check the changelog for more details (above).
Added: Experimental N3DS core: Panda3DS.
Added: Experimental Playstation 2 core: LRPS2.
RetroDECK Configurator and Framework
Added: Various compression improvements commits by Cohee to the compression tool.