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EmulationStation is a free and open source, multi-platform frontend for browsing and launching games from your retro game library.

It supports Windows, Linux and MacOS and comes preconfigured with RetroArch amongst a selection of other standalone emulators. EmulationStation is fully customizable and can be expanded to include games, emulators and other programs not included in the base ES package.

Version 2.1.0 of the desktop edition of ES brings a dark color scheme for the menu system, scraping and viewing of PDF game manuals, aspect ratio settings for the miximage generator, improved system sorting support and more.

Version 2.1.0
Release date: 2023-07-13

Release overview

The 2.1 release brings a new look to ES-DE by changing the default menu color scheme from light to dark. There is however a setting to revert to the light color scheme if that's preferred. Scraping and viewing of PDF game manuals has also been added, with the PDF viewer being reachable from the gamelist media viewer.
Miximages will now be generated with a proper image fit if the screenshot aspect ratio doesn't match the miximage frame. This will for instance occur for widescreen systems and vertically oriented arcade shooters. There are multiple new options to control this behavior in the miximage settings menu. System sorting has also been improved, making it possible to use a separate es_systems_sorting.xml file in the custom_systems directory, meaning it's no longer required to add systemsortname tags to the es_systems.xml file.
For the Linux AppImage releases a built-in application updater has been added so that future versions can be installed automatically. Apart from all these changes many smaller improvements have been made and a couple of new systems have been added.

Detailed list of changes

• Added support for changing between dark and light color schemes for the menu system (with dark being the new default)
• Added a PDF game manual viewer, accessible from the media viewer
• Added support for scraping game manuals using ScreenScraper
• Added an application updater which downloads and installs ES-DE updates (currently only the AppImage releases are supported)
• Added options to the miximage generator for how to fit screenshots that do not match the aspect ratio of the miximage frame
• Added support for a dedicated es_systems_sorting.xml file to change systems sorting without having to modify es_systems.xml
• Bundled four complete es_systems_sorting.xml files with the application (they can be found in the resources/sorting/ directory)
• Placing an es_find_rules.xml file in custom_systems will now complement rather than override the bundled file
• Added help prompts to the media viewer
• Changed the media viewer to using linear interpolation scaling for the box cover, box back cover and fan art images
• Added trigger button support to the media viewer for jumping to the first and last entries
• Added trigger button support to the theme downloader screenshot viewer for jumping to the first and last entries
• Added a game manual badge to indicate whether a game has a downloaded PDF manual
• Enabled textlist fast-scrolling for the system view
• The textlist navigation sound will now always start playing immediately when scrolling a single entry
• Added options to the video and slideshow screensavers to only include favorite games
• Added a per-system game count to the multi-scraper
• Changed the scraper auto-retry functionality to never run on non-recoverable errors such as insufficient file permissions
• Added support for the Emulators (emulators) game system
• Added support for the Hartung Game Master (gmaster) game system
• Added support for the LowRes NX Fantasy Console (lowresnx) game system
• Added support for the Epoch Super Cassette Vision (scv) game system
• (Windows) Added support for the Future Pinball (fpinball) game system
• (Windows) Added support for the Visual Pinball (vpinball) game system
• Added the SameBoy RetroArch core as an alternative emulator for the sgb system
• Added an sgb (Nintendo Super Game Boy) platform to improve scraping when using ScreenScraper
• Added MAME standalone as an alternative emulator for the amstradcpc, cdimono1 and x68000 systems
• Added ares standalone as an alternative emulator for the n64dd system
• Added ares [Benesse Pocket Challenge V2] standalone as an alternative emulator for the wonderswan system
• Added the .sh file extension to the ags system on Unix and macOS and set the %STARTDIR% variable to the game directory
• (Linux) Changed a lot of find rules so that emulator AppImages are always searched before Flatpaks
• (Linux) Removed the AppImage systempath find rule entry for RetroArch
• (Linux) Added "AppImage (Suspend ES-DE)" and "AppImage (Keep ES-DE running)" as alternative emulators for the desktop and windows system
• (Linux) Added "AppImage" as an alternative emulator for the ports system
• (Linux) Added the .AppImage file extension to the desktop, ports and windows systems
• (Linux) Added support for the official Citra AppImage release
• (Linux) Changed the PCSX2 AppImage find rule to pcsx2*.AppImage to cover for the constantly changing filenames for this package
• (Windows) Replaced many unnecessary find rules with the ability to relocate the Emulators directory one level higher in the hierarchy
• (Windows) Added pcsx2-qt.exe as the primary executable name for the PCSX2 emulator
• (Windows) Added find rule entries for the xenia canary release
• Added support for scraping the arduboy and ps4 systems using ScreenScraper
• Improved resilience to buggy controller drivers which could previously crash the application (mostly relevant for macOS)
• Removed the experimental status for the theme downloader
• Simplified ApplicationUpdater by only using the release number when checking for updates
• Added more error checking to ApplicationUpdater by checking for blank name, filename, url and md5 keys in latest_release.json
• Removed the custom SDL patch for the AppImage builds that prevented the device's virtual keyboard from being automatically displayed
• If the SDL library release is 2.28.0 or higher then the automatic popup of the device's virtual keyboard is now disabled
• The SDL library version is now printed to es_log.txt on application startup
• Added a separate es-pdf-convert binary to render PDF pages using Poppler (needed due to the restrictive GPL license for this library)
• (Windows) A check is now performed on startup that OpenGL is actually supported by the GPU driver, to avoid crashes if it isn't
• Added a setRawImage function to ImageComponent to load raw pixel data into textures (needed by PDFViewer)
• Added the Poppler PDF rendering library as a dependency
• Removed the unused graphics files resources/graphics/cartridge.svg and resources/graphics/folder.svg
• Modified the resources/graphics/help/dpad_all.svg file to actually show all directions as available
• Updated FFmpeg to 6.0, FreeType to 2.13.0, libgit2 to 1.6.4 and pugixml to 1.13 on Windows and macOS
• Updated SDL to 2.28.1 on Windows, macOS and the Linux AppImage builds
• (Windows) Updated curl to 8.1.2
• (Windows) Changed all dependencies to not include version numbers in their directory names to simplify future library updates
• Updated LunaSVG to commit f924651b85cac47dbe15f51a4aa320461fc1d07b to fix a GCC 13 build error
• Updated the MAME index files to include ROMs up to MAME version 0.256
• Bundled the May 2023 release of the Mozilla TLS/SSL certificates
• Changed the default OpenGL version from 4.6 to 3.3 when building for RetroDECK

Bug fixes

• (Windows) The log output time stamp was missing in es_log.txt when built using MinGW
• The scraper auto-retry functionality was triggered when scraping manually
• There was a small memory leak in GuiScraperMenu related to the retry sliders
• TextureResource::initFromPixels() was not setting the texture source size correctly
• The fallback to argv[0] in FileSystemUtil::setExePath() was not working correctly

Source

 

[K3Nv2]

Why are so many games not "steam deck" compatible? It's a windows PC, yeah? Using basically laptop components like an APU. So what's stopping certain games from being "compatible" with it?

It's proton holding it up imagine how hard it must be to decode every game out their for Linux with a custom distro.

 

[spectral]

Why are so many games not "steam deck" compatible? It's a windows PC, yeah? Using basically laptop components like an APU. So what's stopping certain games from being "compatible" with it?

It's not a windows PC it's a Linux PC. You can wipe steamOS and install windows if you want to but that introduces various other problems.

 

[Jayro]

It's not a windows PC it's a Linux PC. You can wipe steamOS and install windows if you want to but that introduces various other problems.

I've only seen windows screenshots, so I just assumed.

 

[K3Nv2]

I've only seen windows screenshots, so I just assumed.

You can dual boot easily and honestly I recommend it more if you're just going for x64 installers. SteamOS just stabilizes and is more UI friendly for portable gaming only really increases performance by like 10%

 

[spectral]

You can dual boot easily and honestly I recommend it more if you're just going for x64 installers. SteamOS just stabilizes and is more UI friendly for portable gaming only really increases performance by like 10%

Has it got to the point where it is properly reliable in windows now? I seem to remember people running into various bugs and driver issues,etc. But that was back closer to launch.

 

[K3Nv2]

Has it got to the point where it is properly reliable in windows now? I seem to remember people running into various bugs and driver issues,etc. But that was back closer to launch.

When I installed 11 it was pretty simple, already had the wifi driver enabled so that was nice. I got use to the on screen keyboard that can be enabled pretty easily. Theirs also SWICD for SteamDeck (iirc) that handles controls easily. I just recommend disabling it if you want to do anything on desktop because for some reason it double clicks. You still need to go into steam and install all the correct drivers but other than that it's been cake. I don't mind dual booting at all either holding minus and power to switch OS is pretty nice. No issue with audio driver anymore.

 

[gaga941021]

Why are so many games not "steam deck" compatible? It's a windows PC, yeah? Using basically laptop components like an APU. So what's stopping certain games from being "compatible" with it?

Damn. Use Google before posting stupid stuff.

 

[chrisrlink]

Love it on my Steam Deck.

really could never find it on mine after installing emudeck though it said it installed

Post automatically merged: Jul 16, 2023

Why are so many games not "steam deck" compatible? It's a windows PC, yeah? Using basically laptop components like an APU. So what's stopping certain games from being "compatible" with it?

because they need to test settings on proton before greenlighting it? some games are incompatable according to valve but if you look up proton db on the web and search your game you might be supprised to find it working (Protondb is user maintained so no need waiting on valve thhe only things that limit it are 1 specs and 2 third party anti cheat EAC as an example, though lutris can get around it most of the time then theirs EA which actively prevents their games from runninng on steam deck/steam os

 

[lordelan]

really could never find it on mine after installing emudeck though it said it installed

Huh? It's the main thing that is being installed. It's the piece of software from which you access all your games after installing emuDeck.

 

[ldeveraux]

Loving it on my Raspberry Pi

I hope you don't have ESDE installed on a Pi, that would be a complete waste.

 

[Mayo1990]

I hope you don't have ESDE installed on a Pi, that would be a complete waste.

Hm? Not really, I run Retropie. Been thinking to switch to Batocera or another frontend though.

 

[ldeveraux]

Hm? Not really, I run Retropie. Been thinking to switch to Batocera or another frontend though.

This is the Desktop Edition though, made for running on an installed OS. If you run Retropie then you have the Emulationstation front end, not the desktop edition.

 

[tabzer]

This is the Desktop Edition though, made for running on an installed OS. If you run Retropie then you have the Emulationstation front end, not the desktop edition.

What's the primary differences between the two.

 

[regnad]

Retroarch is a frontend but only for its own cores. As a front end for configuring a bunch of your emulation easily its great but for actually playing/selecting/finding games its kind of clunky and ugly and lacks a lot of the customisation. That is all more down to personal taste though, if all you want a few lists of games it does the job. The other and perhaps more important thing is that frontends such as emulation station can also include emulators other than RA cores. For example the dolphin RA core is inferior to the standalone emulator, same is true for PPSSPP, PCSX2,etc.

So if I have RetroArch and Dolphin installed already on my PC, will this point to it, or do the emulators need to be reinstalled?

 

[tabzer]

So if I have RetroArch and Dolphin installed already on my PC, will this point to it, or do the emulators need to be reinstalled?

It'll point to a predetermined directory structure, but allows you to change it. It's a glorified launcher, entirely cosmetic.

 

[DKAngel]

they really do not like making things easy to setup do they :/ no easy way of setting custom rom directories without editing dicktonnes of settings :/

 

[ldeveraux]

What's the primary differences between the two.

Desktop Edition can be installed on an existing OS. Emulationstation is the frontend, mostly for RetroPie and is typically flashed as an image. I'm not trying to sell anyone on Desktop Edition mind you, I've used it and it's not great!

 

[tabzer]

they really do not like making things easy to setup do they :/ no easy way of setting custom rom directories without editing dicktonnes of settings :/

Yesh. I'm trying it out with because of this article, but between the obscure "it didn't work" with Retroarch or the lack of error message when something doesn't work in Emulation Station, it was difficult to pinpoint the issues.

I assume most of the trouble is with Retroarch, but at the suggestion of this article, it's not what I thought it was going to be.

comes preconfigured with RetroArch amongst a selection of other standalone emulators

My experience was not this.

 

[tabzer]

Does anyone know why Emulationstation would lead to retroarch hanging in a blackscreen whenever I try to use it as intended?

It may have been preconfigured for some version of retroarch but it definitely wasn't preconfigured with retroarch.

It's a little disappointing that such a pretty looking thing can be so useless.

Post automatically merged: Jul 21, 2023

"This behavior has been observed for some specific AMD GPUs in the past. In some instances there is only a black screen on startup and in some instances the application starts and runs correctly but launching a game only shows a black screen. The issue is seemingly caused by GPU driver bugs and it only affects Windows as Linux works fine with the same hardware. The workaround is to make ES-DE run in windowed mode. You accomplish this by using the --resolution flag and setting the width to one pixel wider than your screen resolution. So if for instance running at a 1280x800 display resolution, run ES-DE such as this: EmulationStation.exe --resolution 1281 800"

 

[0Futurisma0]

guys hi.after a lot of effort i have managed to install my emulation station with emudeck and fix all my data like pictures videos etc of my favorite systems. i also added some favorite games. now though i want buy an oled version. how can i save the whole system so i dont have to do all these from scratch ?