Launching External System

This experiment was initiated by the user TopHatCat and later expanded upon by the RetroDECK Team. TopHatCat's goal was to explore the possibility of launching games against external systems like Emulators from within RetroDECK (limited to the systems ES-DE supports).

However, doing this defeats the entire purpose of RetroDECK

You will not get any of the RetroDECK features for these systems, such as:

Hotkeys
Working Inputs
Configurator
Unified Folders
Backups
and everything else!

Essentially, you are creating an Anti-RetroDECK / Bizzaro-RetroDECK inside of RetroDECK.

! Absolute Heresy!

Your system will be cluttered, and you will be bound by each emulator's defaults, which you will need to change to your liking.

There is no good reason to launch external emulators via RetroDECK

You can simply install ES-DE from their website and install the emulators as normal, running just ES-DE.

The files es_find_rules.xml es_systems.xml you are editing will also be overwritten when RetroDECK updates, so you will need to update them over the updates with your changes.

Disclaimer on Experiments

These experiments are created by the RetroDECK Team and/or Community. The guides are intended for people with technical knowledge and a passion for tinkering. Using these guides might put RetroDECK and your data at risk. The RetroDECK Team can't provide any support for these experiments or fix any issues they might cause on your system or RetroDECK installation.

Prerequisites

Flatpak Spawn Permission

Information:

This experiment requires the flatpak-spawn permission, which breaks the sandbox environment that RetroDECK operates in. Therefore, we do not recommend attempting this unless you are confident in your understanding of the process and its implications.

You can enable it by running this command in the terminal.

flatpak override --user --talk-name=org.freedesktop.Flatpak net.retrodeck.retrodeck

Add RetroDECK to Steam

We also recommend that you add RetroDECK to Steam to utilize Steam Input if you need to rebind the system hotkeys manually.

Folder Structure

Depending how you installed RetroDECK the Flatpak paths are different.

You can either install it as a system or user application.

Note: If you have installed RetroDECK as a system application you will need increased privileges to edit the files.

Type	Folder	Comment
User Application: ES-DE Linux Folder	`~/.local/share/flatpak/app/net.retrodeck.retrodeck/current/active/files/share/es-de/resources/systems/linux/`	`es_find_rules.xml` `es_systems.xml`
System Application: ES-DE Linux Folder	`/var/lib/flatpak/app/net.retrodeck.retrodeck/current/active/files/share/es-de/resources/systems/linux/`	`es_find_rules.xml` `es_systems.xml`

Requirement: Add the FLATPAKSPAWN System

Edit the es_find_rules.xml

Go to the ES-DE Linux Folder via the path above (depending how you installed RetroDECK).
Find and open es_find_rules.xml.
Edit es_find_rules.xml:

At the end of file but before end add a new emulator FLATPAKSPAWN:

Copy & paste:

<emulator name="FLATPAKSPAWN">
    <rule type="systempath">
        <entry>flatpak-spawn</entry>
    </rule>
</emulator>

Save and close the file.

How-to: Add a Flatpak Emulator

Go to the ES-DE Linux Folder via the path above (depending how you installed RetroDECK).
Find and open es_systems.xml.
Search for and find the system entry you want to add and external system to.

Local APP:

<command label="Dolphin (External)">
%EMULATOR_HOST% --host /usr/bin/dolphin-emu -b -e %ROM%
</command>

<command label="Dolphin (External)">
%EMULATOR_HOST% --host /usr/bin/dolphin-emu -b -e %ROM%
</command>

Example of full:

    <system>
        <name>supracan</name>
        <fullname>Funtech Super A'Can</fullname>
        <path>%ROMPATH%/supracan</path>
        <extension>.bin .BIN .7z .7Z .zip .ZIP</extension>
        <command label="MAME - Current">%EMULATOR_RETROARCH% -L %CORE_RETROARCH%/mame_libretro.so "supracan -rompath \"%GAMEDIRRAW%;%ROMPATH%/supracan\" -cart \"%ROMRAW%\""</command>
        <command label="MAME (Standalone)">%EMULATOR_MAME% -inipath /var/config/mame/ini -rompath %GAMEDIR%\;%ROMPATH%/supracan supracan -cart %ROM%</command>
        <platform>supracan</platform>
        <theme>supracan</theme>
    </system>

    <system>
        <name>switch</name>
        <fullname>Nintendo Switch</fullname>
        <path>%ROMPATH%/switch</path>
        <extension>.nca .NCA .nro .NRO .nso .NSO .nsp .NSP .xci .XCI</extension>
        <command label="Ryujinx (Legacy) (Standalone)">%EMULATOR_RYUJINX% %ROM%</command>
        <command label="Yuzu (via Ponzu)">%INJECT%=%BASENAME%.esprefix %EMULATOR_YUZU% -f -g %ROM%</command>
        <command label="Ryubing (External)">%EMULATOR_FLATPAKSPAWN% --host flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=ryujinx-wrapper --file-forwarding io.github.ryubing.Ryujinx %ROM%</command>
        <platform>switch</platform>
        <theme>switch</theme>
    </system>

run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=ryujinx-wrapper --file-forwarding io.github.ryubing.Ryujinx

/var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/org.ryujinx.Ryujinx ~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/bin/org.ryujinx.Ryujinx

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