May 2025: Mad Community Scientists
Experiments, mad science and heresy in the community.
Highlights
- MORE! RetroDECK Experiments ⚗️ on the Wiki
- Experiment: Autoboot into RetroDECK and not Game Mode
- Experiment: RetroDECK ES-DE Background Music
- Experiment: Launching Games & Apps with RetroDECK (Flatpak, Steam, Minecraft, Lutris, Heroic)
- Experiment: Launching External Emulators
- Experiment: Run RetroDECK in WSL on Windows 11
- RetroDECK Team Q&A over at Lemmy
- Any status on 0.10.0b?
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MORE! RetroDECK Experiments ⚗️ on the Wiki
Back in March, we added an "RetroDECK Experiments" section to the wiki to collect and organize community tinker projects in one spot.
The collective "scientific works" of the community tinkerers since then will be shown today on Labor Day.
The RetroDECK Team is excited to showcase their creativity.
For us it was important to centralize this on the wiki, as these types of guides are often scattered across various platforms like:
- Forums
- Social media
- Reddit / Lemmy
- Discord / Revolt
- Other
The goal was to make them easily accessible from a single source.
Disclaimer on Experiments
These experiments are created by the RetroDECK Team and/or Community. The guides are intended for people with technical knowledge and a passion for tinkering. Using these guides might put RetroDECK and your data at risk. The RetroDECK Team can't provide any support for these experiments or fix any issues they might cause on your system or RetroDECK installation.
Now, let's present the experiments so far!
Experiment: Autoboot into RetroDECK and not Game Mode
This experiment was initiated by the user Daeymon and later expanded upon by the RetroDECK Team. Daeymon goal was to explore the possibility of autobooting into RetroDECK when the Steam Deck's Game Mode is launched directly and not into the Steam Game Mode UI.
Read more here: Autoboot into RetroDECK and not Game Mode
Experiment: RetroDECK ES-DE Background Music
This experiment was initiated by the users Partack and TopHatCat, then later expanded upon by the RetroDECK Team. The goal was to explore the possibility of doing custom scripts to enable very basic music playback in ES-DE.
Read more here: RetroDECK ES-DE Background Music
Experiment: Launching Games & Apps with RetroDECK
This experiment was initiated by the users murkl and Daeymon.
We already featured in back in March blog in a limited way but more guides have been added and expanded upon since then.
Flatpak Games & Apps
This guide shows you how-to add standalone Flatpak games into RetroDECK.
Read more here: Launching Flatpak Games & Apps with RetroDECK
Minecraft Instances
This guide shows you how-to add Prism Launcher Minecraft instances into into RetroDECK (as seperate games).
Read more here: Launching Minecraft Instances with RetroDECK
Heroic Games & Apps
This guide shows you how-to add games installed by Heroic into RetroDECK.
Read more here: Launching Heroic Games & Apps with RetroDECK
Steam Games & Apps
This guide shows you how-to add games installed by Steam into RetroDECK.
Read more here: Launching Steam Games & Apps with RetroDECK
Lutris Games & Apps
This guide shows you how-to add games installed by Lutris into RetroDECK.
Read more here: Launching Lutris Games & Apps with RetroDECK
Experiment: Launching External Emulators
This experiment was initiated by the user TopHatCat and later expanded upon by the RetroDECK Team. TopHatCats goal was to explore the possibility of launching games against external Emulators from within RetroDECK (limited to the systems ES-DE supports).
However, doing this defeats the entire purpose of RetroDECK!
Essentially, you are creating an Anti-RetroDECK / Bizzaro-RetroDECK / Absolute Heresy inside of RetroDECK.
Read more here: Launching External Emulator
Experiment: Run RetroDECK in WSL on Windows 11
This experiment was initiated by a spontaneous idea from the RetroDECK Team (someone on the team was on a mandatory lunch break at work and decided to do something to pass the time after quickly gobbling up their sandwich).
Note: RetroDECK was never intended to be used in this manner and the performance is horrible and it is very stupid (don't do this).
Read more here: Launching External Emulator
Any status on 0.10.0b?
We’ve kicked off work on version 0.10.0b, and our vision is huge!
We’ll share more details once we know what’s possible. It’s a big challenge, but who doesn’t love a good challenge?!
Hopefully we got more to share in June, there is some information in the interview above.
🥸
🕵️♀️ Project Neo 🕵️That is all for now
There are more things we are working on, but you will see them in future blog updates!
And as always if you want to help with development join the 💙-i-want-to-help channel on Discord.
Thanks everyone!
//The RetroDECK Team