I remember awhile back when steam deck and emudeck were in their early early stages and complaints about how it was hard to fully remove emudeck as the files were still located in several different directories. Don’t know how much that pain point has changed personally, but I think retrodeck made it simpler to install/uninstall.
Personally I use emudeck, and haven’t had the need to uninstall, so can’t attest to the accuracy of that claim. But can assume for those folks that are worried about it, retrodeck fills that.
heartsofwar@lemmy.world 10 months ago
lazorne@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
All of this is true. RetroDECK also have existed since the before EmuDeck as it was born from some of the AmberELEC team members.
You can read a lot more on our wiki: github.com/XargonWan/RetroDECK/wiki
In short:
RetroDECK is an full application (still in beta) and not just an emulation bundle install script where all of the moving parts of is inside of the sandboxed flatpak.
As we are building several emulators from source it allows us to add features, hot fixes and uniformity to the emulators themself for a more cohesive experience in what we call the RetroDECK Framework.
Some examples in development and stable are:
Mindset:
This is biased but but I think the team is also approaching problems differently from others.
One example:
Mod and texture pack support for various emulators:
It has been a pain for users to get them up and running. We looked at the problem and said how can we make this easier and more accessible for all?
HD Packs for Mesen, Mupen64Plus texture packs and mods etc…
Now all you need to do is put them into the corresponding mod / texture pack folder and follow the guides on the wiki and you will be up and running in no time.
When doing this we also engaged with the texture and mod community
Another example is:
How the framework is handling configurations is quite unique and allows us to add and remove specific things when emulators does changes and try to keep as much of the users settings when possible.
This allows us to multi change settings inside the application across many different emulators: You want borders in Genesis but not in Super Nintendo? - You can
For us it is about making emulation accessible for more user but at the same time provide new tools for hardcore tweakers in the long term with our RetroDECK Framework.
But:
That said this complexity adds time between patches and the users can not add their own emulators into RetroDECK, have to wait for us to do the updates and add features.
That said we are always developing and if you want to help out check our wiki and join our discord. We need devs, artists, ambassadors and good community members :)