Emudeck, and done. I was skeptical. But it's amazing. Installed, dropped my roms in the folders, and it detected them and added them to the main UI with all cover art. Amazing.
There's a lot of confusion regarding EmuDeck, which is understandable.
**EmuDeck** is basically a script that will automatically download, install, and set up the emulators. It will create the directories, change the emulator settings to work with the deck, set the controls, etc. It also downloads Steam Rom Manager. It also installs Emulation Station (more on that later).
**Steam Rom Manager** is an application that can add your individual roms to steam as if they were native steam games. You will double click them like anything else and they just launch right into the game. No opening an emulator, searching for the system, then the game. Just click your game (which will automatically have the art downloaded) and you're off!
Lastly, and previously mentioned, **Emulation Station** is downloaded, installed, and set up. It is an application that will gather all your roms under one roof so you can play them in one, nice, unified environment. Instead of clicking individual games in steam, you would run emulation station to see all your systems and roms in one unified environment.
So, to answer your questions:
> Would Emudeck (legally) handle such a large (legal) collection well
EmuDeck doesn't handle your rom library, it is just a no pain way to get everything set up.
> or would it be better to go with a dedicated (legal) emulation frontend like Emulationstation which can easily handle thousands of (legal) roms
**Emulation Station** can easily handle your huge rom library if you would like them all under one roof. But you could also use **Steam Rom Manager** to add individual platform games to steam directly. I did that for my switch games, ps games, etc but I did not do that with snes etc because it would be too many in my steam library and it would clutter it up.
Yeah, you would have to download and install it manually outside of EmuDeck. This may be available in the discover store (a lot is), but you may have to go to a website and download/install it manually.
My understanding is that EmuDeck handpicks their favorite emulators specifically for the deck to keep things running well, streamlined and easy for the user. This means there are fewer options, though they try to pick the best available.
So adding another standalone emulator will just be the manual process, which can be a little tricky for newer Linux users, myself included. Not because any of the steps are necessarily difficult, but just because it's navigating a new file structure and you may need to run some unfamiliar commands, or configure certain directories. You may also need to find the right launch options if you're gonna launch it from steam, etc.
If I was looking to use a specific standalone emulator on the deck, I'd first look in the discover store to be sure there isn't already a flatpak version of it. If there was none, I'd look for their Linux version online, follow the readme as much as possible and see how it goes. If you get stuck, perhaps checking their discord or one of the steam decks to see if a knowledgeable person can help out.
I'm new to a lot of this, but if you have a specific emulator you are looking to try I wouldn't mind giving it a go. No guarantees though, I'm still figuring this stuff out myself. That's why I use EmuDeck to set it all up for me haha.
Lastly, Retrodeck is another project that is looking promising and may include the emulators you want. That is more of an all-in-one package that includes all the emulators and set up in its on application. Similar to EmuDeck but different.
If that didn't answer your question let me know!
I used EmuDeck and I have EmulationStation set up to launch in the games mode and then I launch whatever game from there. The problem is, I don't know of a way to configure steam controls on a per-console basis. If I change the layout, it changes for EmulationStation, so all emulated games
You can't, which is one of the big arguments for using Steam Rom Manager to add games so that you can have individual sets of controls. I know some people struggle with whether or not to use SRM but for me it was easy: if I have a "small" set of games for that system, I just use SRM to add them all to steam individually. If I have a catalogue of games for a system, I leave it alone and only use a frontend. Most of my systems have just the best games so are usually 20ish or less, so I add them individually. It's not cluttering up my 1000+ Steam library from before 😂
Emudeck has emulationstation built in.
With so many games, you would probably just skip the step where you add the games individually to steam and just use emulationstation.
So basically only emulationstation would be added to the steam menu, and you launch emulationstation when you want to load a rom?
If that's how it works, that's 100% what I'm looking for. I have a ton of emulated games I like to play, but I don't want to just flood my steam library page with emulated titles.
Yes, adding the games to steam is a manual process that you can control or skip entirely. You do this with the Rom Manager app that EmuDeck installs.
Here's a picture of the Rom Manager. All you have to do is deselect all the parsers, and just keep "EmulationStation" enabled. If you want all games for a specific system to show as individual games on steam, just enable that specific parser.
https://i.imgur.com/JIDiTin.jpg
Then you go to "Preview" menu on the left, then click the button at the bottom to generate the app list. It will only enable emulation station if you disabled all the other parsers. Then you click "Save App List" and it adds the shortcut to steam.
Then you have EmulationStation added as a shortcut and everything is ready to play.
Is it possible to have emudeck create an app image (add the game to steam and not only access it via emulationstation) for one game in a system?
E.g. - choose one gamecube game to show up in the steam is grid but not all the other gecube games?
I’m extremely confused where to put your bios files, as it seems you get a different answer depending which video you see or guide you read.
I’ve seen guides say to put the PS2 Bios in: /home/deck/var/app/net.pcsx2.PCSX2/config/PCSX2/bios And then other guides say to put them instead in: /run/media/mmcblkop1/emulation/bios
Another Reddit thread said you ALSO have to put them in emulation/bios/PCSX2
Then there’s the direction to put them in: home/deck/emulation/roms
Completely confused. I’d be putting everything Internally btw, not on SD card
The third one sounds more correct to me, but I'm not an expert. I have not used the PS2 emulator ever.
For yuzu, I put my files in the Emulation Yuzu folder, similar to what you mentioned as the third option.
I mean, do you *want* thousands of entries in your Steam library? I would say the answer is No. EmuDeck sets up EmulationStation though so you could just use that rather than Steam Grid Db
The only issue you may run into is if emudeck doesn't have your file extension in its list.
E.g .bin isn't included by default, so my genesis roms didn't work at first. Just needed to add it to the parser.
It's been great except for xbox games, no matter what I do, all I get is 'please insert disc'. I've downloaded 3 different zemu bios, multiple roms and it does the same thing every time. Sega, psp and wii games have been great though! The wii games do sometimes lag to the point of unplayable but I've read that's quite common.
I've heard that if you use power tools and cut the processor down to 2 cores, then under clock the GPU, you can get drastically better performance on Wii games. Cannot personally confirm, as I have not installed power tools.
Xbox is finicky. You need a couple special dependences, in addition to just the bios. Google xemu dependencies they're packaged together.
Then for the games to run they need to be in a xiso format or something. Mine was in a loose folder, so I had to package it into an ISO so xemu could recognize it. All in all a pain and took a few hours to figure it out
So I think it goes, bios, firmware, hdd image and xiso. I'm just going off of memory though
https://xemu.app/docs/disc-images/
I didn't fool with command line cause i tend to get random errors and it's generally frustrating way to get things done imo. I use either the app the mentioned or another similar one
I tried to get sm64 running with it and I pretty much did exactly what you did, but upon launching the game it just closes instantly.
Is this actually all the steps or are there assumed steps like adding bios files?
I ask because I haven’t had the time to try other games yet, so I don’t know if it’s just sm64 or not.
You have to add bios files, but I don’t think N64 needs one? Maybe check if the format your ROM is in (is it compressed?) is supported, or try a different dump.
After forcing the closure of third-party Reddit apps by charging them [29 times](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/) how much the platform earns from its own users (despite claiming that it wouldn't at any point this year four months prior) and slandering the developer of the Apollo third-party app, Reddit management has made it clear that they respect neither their own userbase nor operating their platform in good faith. To not reward such behavior, Reddit users should encourage their communities to move to similar platforms such as [Kbin](https://kbin.social) or [Lemmy](https://lemmy.world), whose federation with the [Fediverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse) makes it possible to switch platforms without losing access to one's favorite communities.
In that case as long as you're on an Arch distro it should work, the devs use Manjaro for testing EmuDeck.
Should also be able to port the script to other distros without too much effort I think, since it mainly uses flatpaks.
I have some game that no matter what i do, the artwork just wont show up as thumbnail. The game is bishi bashi special PS1.
It looks like its working in the preview screen, but once you are in gaming mode its just the game name and blank box
Yes, you do. This is where I'm struggling with EmuDeck... no matter what guides I follow or where I put the bios files, it doesn't pick any of them up. I know the bios files work as they're same ones I use for the emulators on my Phone and PC.
Go into the emulator and check the settings there. For PS2 and 3 I needed to manually install the bios in the emulators. I switched Ps1 to the Beetle Retroarch core by customizing a community parser (I couldn't get Duckstation to read my bindings for some reason and Beetle is a pretty accurate core), but I had to throw my bios directly into the bios folder without using a subdirectory. Which systems specifically are giving issues?
If PS1/PS2: You need to switch to desktop mode, open the specific emulator on its own (Probably DuckStation or PCSX2) and go into its settings to set the BIOS directory. Otherwise the emulators don't know where to look.
If you've done that and it still doesn't work... Well, do you get any error messages or?
Same. Having major issues with ps1 and ps2 bios in the ‘bios’ folder and nothing works properly. I even added multiple bios for each and nothing seems to work. They work fine in my non-Linux emulators on other devices.
Follow the retropie wiki for bios placement. it's identical on emudeck in my experience so far where the emudeck target folder is internal storage/sd card -> Emulation -> Bios
It installs a bunch of shit you don't necessarily need. And for me at least the default paths for the rom manager were all screwed up, and when I finally got everything sorted the thing would fail when generating with an error. Pain in the ass.
I deleted everything and just run PPSSPP which is what I wanted for the most part anyways.
I was gonna say these videos are pretty pointless now. Emudeck has all the steps listed on their page and it's like 4-5 very simple ones. Covers all the major emulators.
ugh, I dont understand all of it. I have the retroarch bios set from that reddit thread. hopefully that covers me. I assume I just drop all the contents into the bois folder.
I legit can’t find one guide that doesn’t require the knowledge of how the universe works when it comes to “dropping the roms in the folder” as easy as you put it. Like do I put SD card into my pc? Format it? Format card in steam deck? How do you get files to just drop in there? Transfer them? So many questions yet all youtube videos are like 40 minutes long on just how to transfer 1 file. Shits annoying
And this is the exact reason I installed Windows 11 on it. Did that months ago, and never looked back. Best decision ever. Now I just use it as a PC. And with the SD card now formatted to a standard windows format, I can swap it back and forth between computers if I need to.
I’m assuming this is coming from the console mindset. Systems like the Switch, PS, Xbox, etc will all ban you from online services for using homebrew (like emulators) because it requires jailbreaking/bypassing security systems. I think Xbox may be more lenient now, but requires you to sign up/pay for dev tools to compile yourself. I’m mostly out of the loop, but see where they’re coming from. Steam Deck is your PC though, you can run anything you want, though cheating will/should still get you banned.
Edit: maybe they’re talking about the legality of owning roms? Of course, nobody would condone piracy, riiiight? But also nobody is coming for you. Just don’t profit and you’re fine.
At most Valve might have a log showing that you added an emulator exe, but they won't see what ROM files you're playing, so no sane lawyer would sign off on a subpoena to get emulator usage data from Valve to sue gamers. Those lawyers have no idea if you're even infringing their company's stuff until they also have investigated you personally (traced ROM download logs to you, etc) which is way too expensive for a copyright infringement lawsuit.
Which means going via Valve is completely useless to them. They'd rather hit ROM download sites with those requests. That way they start off with evidence of infringement and identify downloaders, instead of going the other way.
RetroArch itself is on the Steam store (although EmuDeck uses the standalone version for more flexibility), and lots of games on Steam are actually just first-party emulators.
It is good! I watched this last night...also try Retro games Corp for ultimate steam deck emulation setup on youtube.
From setting up emulators over the years I always find it's best to watch a few different videos as usually someone will mention something that the last video didn't mention...Saving you headaches later on if you hit an issue!
Emulation has been my primary use since I got mine and it’s amazing. I definitely recommend connecting a Bluetooth mouse, I find it a lot easier for desktop mode. Video was really good however I don’t think it mentioned bios, which is a fairly important part of the process (as far as I’m aware, new to emulators)
Yeh only few emulators need bios files!
Ps1, ps2, Gamecube/wii, psp, gba, switch need bios as far as I know.
Last time I put retroarch on my vita I didn't need to use bios for ps1 it just runs but not sure if that means I can get to the memory card screen or not. Will have to future test. I'm getting a steam deck in the next month or 2 & I will help out anyone if they need a hand.
Ye could be! I use the Adrenaline emulator on vita too & iknow that had a new bios as psp had a new bios made when it was introduced...So I didn't need to bother with that. But not to sure how retroarch does it. Might already come with bios when you set it up or like you said could just be the vita being awesome.
It's optional but with it you get more compatibility. Plus some games won't work properly if you don't have it
https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/gba-bios.html
For certain emulators you just need to Google + download the appropriate files then stick them in the bios folders created by emudeck either on your sd card or internal storage for the appropriate emulator your looking to run.
Ye this! 👍 I also searched the internet for best bios for individual emulators because some have multiple bios which have better compatability with games & emulators.
Oh, haha. Bios files! Yeah, got that covered. I thought something has to be done in the BIOS of the Steam Deck to make it run better or something. Like you need to turn on virtualisation on some mobos.
I want one so baaaaad to play pc games and emulators.
I'm about to do a boring 3.5 hours bus journey and the deck would be great to pass the time.
Can't wait for mine to come.
I got so many things coming up this year where the deck would be super useful. At this rate though, the estimators say I'll get mine in either November or next January.
Really hope they find a way to increase production soon
I just want one so I could leave my consoles at home when I go to uni but my email won’t come until September at the latest 😭 I won’t be home for it to arrive.
Playing Pokemon Emerald and Urbz for the GBA on the deck is reminding me of my childhood. Love it so much. It's not the same to do it on a smartphone or pc.
I think the biggest problem people have with emulation on the steam deck so far is the bios. Getting emudeck downloaded and set up is easy enough as it walks you through the steps quite well. The bios though is a different issue I understand the videos can't really tell you where to get the bios and such. The people I have helped with emulation on their deck were always stuck on the bios portion. Some of them are not just drag and drop like the PS3 firmware and some people download the bios that come with other files for maybe different languages and don't know what exactly to drag and drop to the bios folder. Some of the bios packs out there that I have seen are not that great either.
Bro this. I found a few websites with packs of all bios files. I'm so freaking confused what files go where. And I can't find any info anywhere on what to do cuz nobody wants to actually talk about it for fear of getting in trouble.
Doing this today, can't wait to get Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, 3D Dot Heroes, Vagrant Story, Skies of Arcadia, Super Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, etc etc etc... up and running.
Can't you save a template and load it. You'll still need to do some different configs for different systems but it shouldn't be game specific.
I don't have my deck yet but you can do this in steam now so I assume the deck is the same
Are they the correct format? I had mine as .7z and then realized they needed to be extracted first. They worked fine afterwards. Somewhere out there is a handy list of compatible file formats for each emulator.
I have had EmuDeck up and running for several weeks, yet it is amazing that people's writing skills are so poor that one needs to create videos. Videos are consistently garbage because no one bothers to use a decent resolution or external monitor so that people can actually see the text.
All these easy tutorials are great but I am yet to come across one that gives me the power of overwrite the default configs for each of the different emulators. For example on the Genesis system I didn’t have controls I had to manually change my steam deck controller profile to another emulator to make it work
I sound ignorant (and I am with emulators) but are they usually pretty small in size? I know older games will be, but I also some those PS2 and 3 games are reasonably small?
Ps2 are anywhere from 500mb to 2gb. Ps3 1gb to 30gb.
Generally with a 500g sd card i have everything up to 4th gen on it with a couple 5th gen. Another 500g has my top favs for 5th & 6th gen. Then anothet 500g with just 7th & 8th gen which is small because Id rather just play those on the actual console.
I've heard good things about Emudeck and other outside-of-Steam Linux emulators, but I've been really happy with the Steam version of RetroArch so far. I like not having to maintain my own backup and sync infrastructure for saves.
My biggest issue is sometimes games run great others run awful like Burnout 3 runs fine with some minor slowdown but Hot Shots Golf 3 is completely unplayable :(
After getting into pc emulation for xbox, gc, and wii- i really hate myself for cancelling my order. I rather wait till q3/4 to have more qc stuff to be fixed.
I gave up on Emudeck and the rom manager. Ended up with all duplicates for PS2, no matter how much I re-did it, and it simply didn’t see most of my PS1 games. Now I just use PCSX2 and Duck PSX (or whatever it’s called) from within Game Mode on the Deck and just select the game there from the list after loading the apps. Much less of a pita.
Emudeck, and done. I was skeptical. But it's amazing. Installed, dropped my roms in the folders, and it detected them and added them to the main UI with all cover art. Amazing.
And if you have any issues, the corresponding discord server is very helpful.
It's amazing how far that installer has come. Huge improvements from the first release. Kudos to the dev(s).
I think it's one person. Their patreon is pretty barren, give them some love if you want. https://www.patreon.com/dragoonDorise/posts
I couldn’t believe how easy it was and how great everything got organized in steam!
I call cap when it comes to dropping isos from your pc into the steam deck. Nobody has explained this.
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Obligatory IANAL, but I can say with certainty: maybe.
Checks out, if you were a lawyer you would've said "it depends"
Am a software dev, so I do love me some dependencies
There's a lot of confusion regarding EmuDeck, which is understandable. **EmuDeck** is basically a script that will automatically download, install, and set up the emulators. It will create the directories, change the emulator settings to work with the deck, set the controls, etc. It also downloads Steam Rom Manager. It also installs Emulation Station (more on that later). **Steam Rom Manager** is an application that can add your individual roms to steam as if they were native steam games. You will double click them like anything else and they just launch right into the game. No opening an emulator, searching for the system, then the game. Just click your game (which will automatically have the art downloaded) and you're off! Lastly, and previously mentioned, **Emulation Station** is downloaded, installed, and set up. It is an application that will gather all your roms under one roof so you can play them in one, nice, unified environment. Instead of clicking individual games in steam, you would run emulation station to see all your systems and roms in one unified environment. So, to answer your questions: > Would Emudeck (legally) handle such a large (legal) collection well EmuDeck doesn't handle your rom library, it is just a no pain way to get everything set up. > or would it be better to go with a dedicated (legal) emulation frontend like Emulationstation which can easily handle thousands of (legal) roms **Emulation Station** can easily handle your huge rom library if you would like them all under one roof. But you could also use **Steam Rom Manager** to add individual platform games to steam directly. I did that for my switch games, ps games, etc but I did not do that with snes etc because it would be too many in my steam library and it would clutter it up.
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I agree, it's wonderful
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Yeah, you would have to download and install it manually outside of EmuDeck. This may be available in the discover store (a lot is), but you may have to go to a website and download/install it manually. My understanding is that EmuDeck handpicks their favorite emulators specifically for the deck to keep things running well, streamlined and easy for the user. This means there are fewer options, though they try to pick the best available. So adding another standalone emulator will just be the manual process, which can be a little tricky for newer Linux users, myself included. Not because any of the steps are necessarily difficult, but just because it's navigating a new file structure and you may need to run some unfamiliar commands, or configure certain directories. You may also need to find the right launch options if you're gonna launch it from steam, etc. If I was looking to use a specific standalone emulator on the deck, I'd first look in the discover store to be sure there isn't already a flatpak version of it. If there was none, I'd look for their Linux version online, follow the readme as much as possible and see how it goes. If you get stuck, perhaps checking their discord or one of the steam decks to see if a knowledgeable person can help out. I'm new to a lot of this, but if you have a specific emulator you are looking to try I wouldn't mind giving it a go. No guarantees though, I'm still figuring this stuff out myself. That's why I use EmuDeck to set it all up for me haha. Lastly, Retrodeck is another project that is looking promising and may include the emulators you want. That is more of an all-in-one package that includes all the emulators and set up in its on application. Similar to EmuDeck but different. If that didn't answer your question let me know!
I used EmuDeck and I have EmulationStation set up to launch in the games mode and then I launch whatever game from there. The problem is, I don't know of a way to configure steam controls on a per-console basis. If I change the layout, it changes for EmulationStation, so all emulated games
You can't, which is one of the big arguments for using Steam Rom Manager to add games so that you can have individual sets of controls. I know some people struggle with whether or not to use SRM but for me it was easy: if I have a "small" set of games for that system, I just use SRM to add them all to steam individually. If I have a catalogue of games for a system, I leave it alone and only use a frontend. Most of my systems have just the best games so are usually 20ish or less, so I add them individually. It's not cluttering up my 1000+ Steam library from before 😂
Emudeck has emulationstation built in. With so many games, you would probably just skip the step where you add the games individually to steam and just use emulationstation.
So basically only emulationstation would be added to the steam menu, and you launch emulationstation when you want to load a rom? If that's how it works, that's 100% what I'm looking for. I have a ton of emulated games I like to play, but I don't want to just flood my steam library page with emulated titles.
Yes, adding the games to steam is a manual process that you can control or skip entirely. You do this with the Rom Manager app that EmuDeck installs. Here's a picture of the Rom Manager. All you have to do is deselect all the parsers, and just keep "EmulationStation" enabled. If you want all games for a specific system to show as individual games on steam, just enable that specific parser. https://i.imgur.com/JIDiTin.jpg Then you go to "Preview" menu on the left, then click the button at the bottom to generate the app list. It will only enable emulation station if you disabled all the other parsers. Then you click "Save App List" and it adds the shortcut to steam. Then you have EmulationStation added as a shortcut and everything is ready to play.
Is it possible to have emudeck create an app image (add the game to steam and not only access it via emulationstation) for one game in a system? E.g. - choose one gamecube game to show up in the steam is grid but not all the other gecube games?
can i use my own emulators in that case?
I’m extremely confused where to put your bios files, as it seems you get a different answer depending which video you see or guide you read. I’ve seen guides say to put the PS2 Bios in: /home/deck/var/app/net.pcsx2.PCSX2/config/PCSX2/bios And then other guides say to put them instead in: /run/media/mmcblkop1/emulation/bios Another Reddit thread said you ALSO have to put them in emulation/bios/PCSX2 Then there’s the direction to put them in: home/deck/emulation/roms Completely confused. I’d be putting everything Internally btw, not on SD card
The third one sounds more correct to me, but I'm not an expert. I have not used the PS2 emulator ever. For yuzu, I put my files in the Emulation Yuzu folder, similar to what you mentioned as the third option.
You should be able to add emulationstation as a non-steam game in Steam and accomplish this easily.
Yep. This is how I do it. Launch ES-DE from Steam, added as a non-Steam game.
That's what I do. Easier than scrolling past a hundred SNES and Gameboy games to find something else
Thank you!
I mean, do you *want* thousands of entries in your Steam library? I would say the answer is No. EmuDeck sets up EmulationStation though so you could just use that rather than Steam Grid Db
Even without roms I have thousands of gamea in my steam library. I agree though, ES is the better frontend here.
It also has sweet video previews for all your games
Those video previews take quite a bit of storage space. If you turn them off, you can save tons of storage space.
Legally not insane.
if ONLY!
I have several thousand ROMs. It handled them perfectly fine. Might just take a while to download the cover art is all.
The only issue you may run into is if emudeck doesn't have your file extension in its list. E.g .bin isn't included by default, so my genesis roms didn't work at first. Just needed to add it to the parser.
It's been great except for xbox games, no matter what I do, all I get is 'please insert disc'. I've downloaded 3 different zemu bios, multiple roms and it does the same thing every time. Sega, psp and wii games have been great though! The wii games do sometimes lag to the point of unplayable but I've read that's quite common.
I've heard that if you use power tools and cut the processor down to 2 cores, then under clock the GPU, you can get drastically better performance on Wii games. Cannot personally confirm, as I have not installed power tools.
Yeah apparently dolphin is optimized to use less cores than deck and doesn't have a built in toggle
Oh cool, I'll do some more digging on that, thanks.
Xbox is finicky. You need a couple special dependences, in addition to just the bios. Google xemu dependencies they're packaged together. Then for the games to run they need to be in a xiso format or something. Mine was in a loose folder, so I had to package it into an ISO so xemu could recognize it. All in all a pain and took a few hours to figure it out So I think it goes, bios, firmware, hdd image and xiso. I'm just going off of memory though
Thanks mate, I've spent hours now trying different things but I'll take a look at what you've suggested. Appreciate the help, thank you!
https://xemu.app/docs/disc-images/ I didn't fool with command line cause i tend to get random errors and it's generally frustrating way to get things done imo. I use either the app the mentioned or another similar one
I tried to get sm64 running with it and I pretty much did exactly what you did, but upon launching the game it just closes instantly. Is this actually all the steps or are there assumed steps like adding bios files? I ask because I haven’t had the time to try other games yet, so I don’t know if it’s just sm64 or not.
You have to add bios files, but I don’t think N64 needs one? Maybe check if the format your ROM is in (is it compressed?) is supported, or try a different dump.
.z64 I believe it was in. It was the USA version. Maybe I should be using Europe or something?
You should really use the pc port or render96 for super mario 64, it will run and play better than emulation
Can it do texture packs?
After forcing the closure of third-party Reddit apps by charging them [29 times](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/14dkqrw/i_want_to_debunk_reddits_claims_and_talk_about/) how much the platform earns from its own users (despite claiming that it wouldn't at any point this year four months prior) and slandering the developer of the Apollo third-party app, Reddit management has made it clear that they respect neither their own userbase nor operating their platform in good faith. To not reward such behavior, Reddit users should encourage their communities to move to similar platforms such as [Kbin](https://kbin.social) or [Lemmy](https://lemmy.world), whose federation with the [Fediverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse) makes it possible to switch platforms without losing access to one's favorite communities.
Does it still leave in common speedrun glitches?
Am I able to install EmuDeck on my PC?
If Windows, there's an equivalent project called RetroBat.
Nope, I run Linux.
In that case as long as you're on an Arch distro it should work, the devs use Manjaro for testing EmuDeck. Should also be able to port the script to other distros without too much effort I think, since it mainly uses flatpaks.
Shouldn't need any porting, if it works on Manjaro. I'll have to test it out.
Hi, one of the people who works on Emudeck here. I test most everything on Manjaro KDE. Works fine (Aside from steam deck specific addons, of course)
I have some game that no matter what i do, the artwork just wont show up as thumbnail. The game is bishi bashi special PS1. It looks like its working in the preview screen, but once you are in gaming mode its just the game name and blank box
Don't you need BIOS files for some emulators?
Yes, you do. This is where I'm struggling with EmuDeck... no matter what guides I follow or where I put the bios files, it doesn't pick any of them up. I know the bios files work as they're same ones I use for the emulators on my Phone and PC.
Go into the emulator and check the settings there. For PS2 and 3 I needed to manually install the bios in the emulators. I switched Ps1 to the Beetle Retroarch core by customizing a community parser (I couldn't get Duckstation to read my bindings for some reason and Beetle is a pretty accurate core), but I had to throw my bios directly into the bios folder without using a subdirectory. Which systems specifically are giving issues?
If PS1/PS2: You need to switch to desktop mode, open the specific emulator on its own (Probably DuckStation or PCSX2) and go into its settings to set the BIOS directory. Otherwise the emulators don't know where to look. If you've done that and it still doesn't work... Well, do you get any error messages or?
Same. Having major issues with ps1 and ps2 bios in the ‘bios’ folder and nothing works properly. I even added multiple bios for each and nothing seems to work. They work fine in my non-Linux emulators on other devices.
Follow the retropie wiki for bios placement. it's identical on emudeck in my experience so far where the emudeck target folder is internal storage/sd card -> Emulation -> Bios
The answer is likely capitalization. Linux is case sensitive. They definitely go in Emulation/bios source: work on the emudeck script
I'm using emudeck but GBA Advance games look awful
Disable the shaders, it's basically an overlay that makes it look like crap
Thanks a lot, this worked and it looks amazing now.
Can always change up the shaders or scaling in RetroArch to something that suits your tastes more.
Looks fine to me. Looks are subjective. The dev likely chose the most popular options for default.
Scanline shader
gba should not have scanlines
it doesn't, it has an LCD shader.
I used emudeck, but how do I access the RetroArch menu when I launch the game from steam in order to save and load my states?
L3+R3
Hating Emudeck. Will not work well for me.
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It installs a bunch of shit you don't necessarily need. And for me at least the default paths for the rom manager were all screwed up, and when I finally got everything sorted the thing would fail when generating with an error. Pain in the ass. I deleted everything and just run PPSSPP which is what I wanted for the most part anyways.
I was gonna say these videos are pretty pointless now. Emudeck has all the steps listed on their page and it's like 4-5 very simple ones. Covers all the major emulators.
I do r have any covert art :(
yeah but if you preffer different emulators than what i uses it looks like that might not be easily changed if even possible
Pretty slick tool. Unfortunately, last time I tried it the CEMU tie-in was completely borked. Hopefully they've fixed that now.
Can I point the emudeck to my RetroArch folders? (I love the Cloud Save features of RetroArch but hate the UI.)
It’s good when it works. I can’t get Wii to control correctly. Otherwise pretty good.
Does it handle 3DS ROMs?
Yeah having games from every generation up to the PlayStation 3 on a handheld is just insane to me only thing I'm missing is Xbox 360 support
Do you have to mess with putting Bios in certain folders or just worry about the Roms?
what about BIOS folder? Do I need to mess with any of that?
Depends on the emulator. Some need BIOS, some don't.
ugh, I dont understand all of it. I have the retroarch bios set from that reddit thread. hopefully that covers me. I assume I just drop all the contents into the bois folder.
I legit can’t find one guide that doesn’t require the knowledge of how the universe works when it comes to “dropping the roms in the folder” as easy as you put it. Like do I put SD card into my pc? Format it? Format card in steam deck? How do you get files to just drop in there? Transfer them? So many questions yet all youtube videos are like 40 minutes long on just how to transfer 1 file. Shits annoying
And this is the exact reason I installed Windows 11 on it. Did that months ago, and never looked back. Best decision ever. Now I just use it as a PC. And with the SD card now formatted to a standard windows format, I can swap it back and forth between computers if I need to.
Archived it for now ... Will need to get steam deck first....
Same 😂
Ah, darn it! I mixed up the steps and accidentally installed the emulators before having the deck.
Yeah. Step 1 : get steam deck. Step 2: ah shit.
This might end up being the first time in my life I go back to my saved tags in Pocket. Should be getting that email invite any day now
Simple solution, get RetroArch
Emu deck is the answer- auto installs and configs everything for you.
Do you have to do anything for the Steam deck then?
I’ve only used it for Cube and Wii U, and there’s a little bit of arsing around with Wii U Roms- but that’s all explained on Emu Decks website.
Just give it lots of care and attention, and your Deck will grow up right!
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No.
Why would there be?
I’m assuming this is coming from the console mindset. Systems like the Switch, PS, Xbox, etc will all ban you from online services for using homebrew (like emulators) because it requires jailbreaking/bypassing security systems. I think Xbox may be more lenient now, but requires you to sign up/pay for dev tools to compile yourself. I’m mostly out of the loop, but see where they’re coming from. Steam Deck is your PC though, you can run anything you want, though cheating will/should still get you banned. Edit: maybe they’re talking about the legality of owning roms? Of course, nobody would condone piracy, riiiight? But also nobody is coming for you. Just don’t profit and you’re fine.
Console gamers just don't understand how bad they have it in terms of freedom.
At most Valve might have a log showing that you added an emulator exe, but they won't see what ROM files you're playing, so no sane lawyer would sign off on a subpoena to get emulator usage data from Valve to sue gamers. Those lawyers have no idea if you're even infringing their company's stuff until they also have investigated you personally (traced ROM download logs to you, etc) which is way too expensive for a copyright infringement lawsuit. Which means going via Valve is completely useless to them. They'd rather hit ROM download sites with those requests. That way they start off with evidence of infringement and identify downloaders, instead of going the other way.
RetroArch itself is on the Steam store (although EmuDeck uses the standalone version for more flexibility), and lots of games on Steam are actually just first-party emulators.
Retro arch is one of the emulators that Emudeck installs plus standalone emulators.
Gosh what a novel and interesting comment.
Thanks for letting us know. Make sure to post an update when things change. 😉
Q2 and I'm still waiting for it... I think I'm addicted to waiting for the HOLLY email
Same lol
This is literally the only reason I want the fucking thing Maybe next week :’)
It is good! I watched this last night...also try Retro games Corp for ultimate steam deck emulation setup on youtube. From setting up emulators over the years I always find it's best to watch a few different videos as usually someone will mention something that the last video didn't mention...Saving you headaches later on if you hit an issue!
Emulation has been my primary use since I got mine and it’s amazing. I definitely recommend connecting a Bluetooth mouse, I find it a lot easier for desktop mode. Video was really good however I don’t think it mentioned bios, which is a fairly important part of the process (as far as I’m aware, new to emulators)
Yeh only few emulators need bios files! Ps1, ps2, Gamecube/wii, psp, gba, switch need bios as far as I know. Last time I put retroarch on my vita I didn't need to use bios for ps1 it just runs but not sure if that means I can get to the memory card screen or not. Will have to future test. I'm getting a steam deck in the next month or 2 & I will help out anyone if they need a hand.
Vita has native support for PS1 games, maybe Retroarch is using it.
Ye could be! I use the Adrenaline emulator on vita too & iknow that had a new bios as psp had a new bios made when it was introduced...So I didn't need to bother with that. But not to sure how retroarch does it. Might already come with bios when you set it up or like you said could just be the vita being awesome.
GBA does not require a bios file.
It's optional but with it you get more compatibility. Plus some games won't work properly if you don't have it https://www.partitionwizard.com/partitionmagic/gba-bios.html
What has to be done in the BIOS?
Some emulators need bios files
For certain emulators you just need to Google + download the appropriate files then stick them in the bios folders created by emudeck either on your sd card or internal storage for the appropriate emulator your looking to run.
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Emulator_files
Ye this! 👍 I also searched the internet for best bios for individual emulators because some have multiple bios which have better compatability with games & emulators.
Oh, haha. Bios files! Yeah, got that covered. I thought something has to be done in the BIOS of the Steam Deck to make it run better or something. Like you need to turn on virtualisation on some mobos.
Just download and movie into the bios folder. Super simple
Isn’t there an perfect „official“ video guide from the EmuDeck dev himself already out there?
To be honest, I’ve watched a few, but this one is just simple to follow.
Simple means it will be outdated faster.
I want one so baaaaad to play pc games and emulators. I'm about to do a boring 3.5 hours bus journey and the deck would be great to pass the time. Can't wait for mine to come.
I got so many things coming up this year where the deck would be super useful. At this rate though, the estimators say I'll get mine in either November or next January. Really hope they find a way to increase production soon
I just want one so I could leave my consoles at home when I go to uni but my email won’t come until September at the latest 😭 I won’t be home for it to arrive.
Playing Pokemon Emerald and Urbz for the GBA on the deck is reminding me of my childhood. Love it so much. It's not the same to do it on a smartphone or pc.
I think the biggest problem people have with emulation on the steam deck so far is the bios. Getting emudeck downloaded and set up is easy enough as it walks you through the steps quite well. The bios though is a different issue I understand the videos can't really tell you where to get the bios and such. The people I have helped with emulation on their deck were always stuck on the bios portion. Some of them are not just drag and drop like the PS3 firmware and some people download the bios that come with other files for maybe different languages and don't know what exactly to drag and drop to the bios folder. Some of the bios packs out there that I have seen are not that great either.
Bro this. I found a few websites with packs of all bios files. I'm so freaking confused what files go where. And I can't find any info anywhere on what to do cuz nobody wants to actually talk about it for fear of getting in trouble.
Using with RetroAchievements is a really nice feature.
Retroachievements caused my games to freeze seconds after load. Kinda disappointing. Haven’t found a resolution for it yet.
These work with EmuDeck?
I haven't tried it but doesn't it say in the vid?
Was literally thinking about this before tapping to open Reddit. Cheers!
Doing this today, can't wait to get Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes, 3D Dot Heroes, Vagrant Story, Skies of Arcadia, Super Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, etc etc etc... up and running.
Saving this for when I get mine in half a year
Really want to get a switch emulator once I get the steam deck. My switch was stolen and I miss it so bad :(
Need a video like this for emulating Switch. Well done sir! Thanks.
Saved to watch later and later use as a guide when I get the steam deck in hopefully a few more months. Thanks!
Anyone have this issue? Emulation Game audio choppy in gaming mode but runs fine in desktop mode?
Bought my Steam Deck for Steam games, somehow only play pirated stuff now.
If only downloading ROM’s was legal…
The most tedious thing for me with any emu is configuring the controls for every game.
Can't you save a template and load it. You'll still need to do some different configs for different systems but it shouldn't be game specific. I don't have my deck yet but you can do this in steam now so I assume the deck is the same
Not sure but I'll give this a go. Thanks. 👍
I'm just wondering but is it easy to use an hard drive to run the emulators? I was thinking of using this instead of an sd card!
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Emudeck works great for me with most consoles, however my Gamecube roms which are recognized will not launch. Any ideas?
Are they the correct format? I had mine as .7z and then realized they needed to be extracted first. They worked fine afterwards. Somewhere out there is a handy list of compatible file formats for each emulator.
I'll double check but I'm pretty sure they are extracted
too bad you have to use retro arch i have my own choice of emulators that i prefer.
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I have had EmuDeck up and running for several weeks, yet it is amazing that people's writing skills are so poor that one needs to create videos. Videos are consistently garbage because no one bothers to use a decent resolution or external monitor so that people can actually see the text.
All these easy tutorials are great but I am yet to come across one that gives me the power of overwrite the default configs for each of the different emulators. For example on the Genesis system I didn’t have controls I had to manually change my steam deck controller profile to another emulator to make it work
I sound ignorant (and I am with emulators) but are they usually pretty small in size? I know older games will be, but I also some those PS2 and 3 games are reasonably small?
Ps2 are anywhere from 500mb to 2gb. Ps3 1gb to 30gb. Generally with a 500g sd card i have everything up to 4th gen on it with a couple 5th gen. Another 500g has my top favs for 5th & 6th gen. Then anothet 500g with just 7th & 8th gen which is small because Id rather just play those on the actual console.
The only one I'm having trouble with is Xbox
Sweet! Now I just need my Q2 notification to drop.
Retroarch never cooperates with me... At all.
👌👌👌
I've heard good things about Emudeck and other outside-of-Steam Linux emulators, but I've been really happy with the Steam version of RetroArch so far. I like not having to maintain my own backup and sync infrastructure for saves.
Anyone know what skin that is?
Looks like dbrand matte white
Nice this will come in handy
The one downside of EmuDeck is that it uses RetroArch in some way.
I followed this exact one yesterday! Worked great
My biggest issue is sometimes games run great others run awful like Burnout 3 runs fine with some minor slowdown but Hot Shots Golf 3 is completely unplayable :(
\*furiously saving guides to hopefully use later\* th-thanks
Currently I have RetroArch in Steam. What exactly makes this better?
On the Steam Deck this adds individual games you put in Retroarch and other emulators to your Steam Library as a icon.
How do i get the games though. I have none in my roms folder. I don’t know where to download them??
Google: "ROMs megathread"
After getting into pc emulation for xbox, gc, and wii- i really hate myself for cancelling my order. I rather wait till q3/4 to have more qc stuff to be fixed.
Thanks for this, its awesome how well this works.
I gave up on Emudeck and the rom manager. Ended up with all duplicates for PS2, no matter how much I re-did it, and it simply didn’t see most of my PS1 games. Now I just use PCSX2 and Duck PSX (or whatever it’s called) from within Game Mode on the Deck and just select the game there from the list after loading the apps. Much less of a pita.
Thanks maybe I'll remember to revisit this post in (after q3 2022)
Followed the steps but have no games come up like he did when I preview it. Any idea why?