Launching External Emulators

This experiment was initiated by the user TopHatCat and later expanded upon by the RetroDECK Team. The goal was to explore the possibility of launching external emulator games via RetroDECK for ES-DE supported systems.

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 (unless you really like to tinker).

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

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 emulators 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.

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`

How-to add an Flathub installed Emulator

Step one: 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 (if you have RetroDECK installed as a System Application, you will need more permissions).

Step two: Edit es_find_rules.xml

At the end of file add a new ruleset

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

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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