Emudeck and Retroarch

[katineko88]

Hello,

I'm working on setting up Emudeck using the guide by Retro Corps., and am a bit confused about whether Emudeck essentially uses the Retroarch cores of each system, or uses standalone emulators. For example, I'm focusing on Sega Saturn, and have found setup guides for the Beetle Saturn emulator. Is Beetle a standalone emulator, or is it just a Retroarch core? What does Emudeck use?

I've seen others have multiple retro setups on one Steam Deck. Like, Emudeck, Emulationstation, Duckstation, and so on. What would be the point of having more than one?

Also, an off topic question, does it matter what size of flashdrive or external HDD I use to transfer roms and other things from my PC to my Steam Deck's SD card/internal storage?

Any help and advice is always appreciated!

[nicoper]

İlk olarak katineko88 tarafından gönderildi:

Also, an off topic question, does it matter what size of flashdrive or external HDD I use to transfer roms and other things from my PC to my Steam Deck's SD card/internal storage?

Size doesn't matter as long as it's big enough for the things you want to transfer, and formatted properly so the Deck can read it.

[Makakken Boitjen]

Beetle is a retroarch core, personally i don't use it myself, i still prefer my standalone emulators and the lowest i emulate is PS1/N64

Emudeck is just a piece of software that *should tweak the available emulator settings and controls for maximum steam deck compatibility.

Emulation station is a front end to launch your emulated games from a central location, but you don't need to use it, you can just aswell make seperate collections in steam using steam rom manager.

And Duckstation is a standalone PS1 emulator.

[katineko88]

İlk olarak Makakken Boitjen tarafından gönderildi:

Beetle is a retroarch core, personally i don't use it myself, i still prefer my standalone emulators and the lowest i emulate is PS1/N64

Emudeck is just a piece of software that *should tweak the available emulator settings and controls for maximum steam deck compatibility.

Emulation station is a front end to launch your emulated games from a central location, but you don't need to use it, you can just aswell make seperate collections in steam using steam rom manager.

And Duckstation is a standalone PS1 emulator.

I see. How do I use standalone emulators instead of Emudeck?
Is one way better than the other?

[katineko88]

İlk olarak nicoper tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak katineko88 tarafından gönderildi:

Also, an off topic question, does it matter what size of flashdrive or external HDD I use to transfer roms and other things from my PC to my Steam Deck's SD card/internal storage?

Size doesn't matter as long as it's big enough for the things you want to transfer, and formatted properly so the Deck can read it.

Thanks for the help. So my external HDD's format should be exFAT or FAT32? Would formatting it to transfer files from my Steam Deck to PC mess it up to where I will only be able to use it for the Steam Deck? Will I still be able to use it for extra PC storage?

[nicoper]

İlk olarak katineko88 tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak nicoper tarafından gönderildi:

Size doesn't matter as long as it's big enough for the things you want to transfer, and formatted properly so the Deck can read it.

Thanks for the help. So my external HDD's format should be exFAT or FAT32? Would formatting it to transfer files from my Steam Deck to PC mess it up to where I will only be able to use it for the Steam Deck? Will I still be able to use it for extra PC storage?

exFAT is superior to FAT32 since the latter only supports files up to 4GB in size.
However, it seems I've been living under a rock for a few years and apparently the Linux kernel has built-in support for NTFS now so you might not have to reformat it at all.
Just try plugging it in and see what happens.

[Makakken Boitjen]

İlk olarak katineko88 tarafından gönderildi:

İlk olarak Makakken Boitjen tarafından gönderildi:

Beetle is a retroarch core, personally i don't use it myself, i still prefer my standalone emulators and the lowest i emulate is PS1/N64

Emudeck is just a piece of software that *should tweak the available emulator settings and controls for maximum steam deck compatibility.

Emulation station is a front end to launch your emulated games from a central location, but you don't need to use it, you can just aswell make seperate collections in steam using steam rom manager.

And Duckstation is a standalone PS1 emulator.

I see. How do I use standalone emulators instead of Emudeck?
Is one way better than the other?

If you want to use everything standalone just download the emulators directly from their website/github/flathub.

The result is the same, emudeck just saves you time from manually configuring some settings, if you want to it manually that's up to you.