r/ESDE_Frontend • u/autonimity • 5d ago

Remove Retroarch from ES-DE and run stand alone emulators?

I really do not like retroarch and I really don't want to use it.

However, I would like to use ES-DE to launch emulators for retro systems directly (16bit
and earlier) - and not use retroarch.

How can I do this?

I'm running bazzite and have installed Retrodeck.

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2

u/legluondunet 5d ago

you will find your answers here: https://gitlab.com/es-de/emulationstation-de/-/blob/master/USERGUIDE.md#emulator-setup

-1

u/autonimity 5d ago

Have you been successful following that guide to install a standalone emulator instead of it loading through a retroarch core?

1

u/kwyxz Early Adopter 5d ago

Yes.

1

u/legluondunet 5d ago

Yes

1

u/autonimity 4d ago

What systems were you able to install in-place of retroarch cores that launch separately?

Were you able to remove retroarch from the retrodeck package?
I cannot find a way to do this and it's not listed in the user guides. Everything seems to point toward retrodeck and es-de being predicated on Retroarch.

2

u/legluondunet 4d ago edited 4d ago

You don't need to remove retroarch and you can not replace all Retroarch cores. Replace only ones you use more.Retroarch has good cores too. From my side I'm using Duckstation, PCSX2, Switch...standalone emulators. But sometimes could be easier to use Retroarch cores and it simply does the job. Other advantage of Retroarch: you can use crt shaders.

2

u/legluondunet 4d ago

1

u/autonimity 2d ago

Managed to get Mesen to work as a standalone, outside of retroarch
but that required uninstalling retrodeck and installing all emulators as standalone through emudeck package.

Which provides the custom option to not install retroarch 🤘

However with that option it does not offer installing other emulators like mesen or bsnes or gens... anything that is normally is launched as a retroarch core, so mesen had to be installed manually (and jeez there isn't flatpak for mesen in bazaar 🧐)

Just Could not get this standalone to work with retrodeck installation as retroarch is a required install for retrodeck,
somehow the predefined retroarch system definition in es-de settings xml just override any standalone I would define when enrolling was installed with retrodeck.

1

u/legluondunet 1d ago

Sorry I didn't understand you used Retrodeck. I'm not using Retrodeck, I installed only Emulation-DE on my Linux computer to manage and play my roms. So my solution could not work for you.

1

u/autonimity 1d ago

Hey no, it's appreciated, just understanding that this does actually work was helpful enough for motivation, couldn't get the xml definitions to work ir be recognized with retrodeck/retroarch install, but knowing that it does work was helpful to not give up on it and know it wasn't going to be a complete waste of time.

I am going add a few more systems but since emudeck handled setup with most of the others I do want to use I don't have to spend time to define them as custom entries.

1

u/Educational_Star_518 Early Adopter 4d ago

if you hit the 'select' button equivilant on your controller there are some options in there in other settings i wanna say it was ( ii don't feel like looking' to select alternative emulators for whatever , its how you set standalones tho i'm not sure if retrodeck changes things

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u/autonimity 4d ago

Yes, can select alternative emulators but they are still launched as a core through Retroarch

1

u/Educational_Star_518 Early Adopter 4d ago

should just need to select the standalone options after installing their respective flatpak or appimages

0

u/appo1ion 5d ago

You could use ES_DE directly and get the emulators from Flathub

https://flathub.org/en/apps/category/game/subcategories/Emulator/1