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Launching Heroic (Epic, GOG, Amazon) Games with RetroDECK

This experiment was initiated by the users murkl and Daeymon. Then later expanded upon by the RetroDECK Team. The goal was to explore the possibility of launching external desktop games and apps within RetroDECK.

Note: RetroDECK was never intended to be used in this manner, so things like inputs may work as expected.

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.

Prerequisites

Flatpak Spawn Permission

Information:

This experiment requires the flatpak-spawn permission, which breaks the sandbox environment that RetroDECK operates in. Therefore, we do not recommend attempting this unless you are confident in your understanding of the process and its implications.

You can enable it by running this command in the terminal.

flatpak override --user --talk-name=org.freedesktop.Flatpak net.retrodeck.retrodeck

Add RetroDECK to Steam

We also recommend that you add RetroDECK to Steam to utilize Steam Input as there is a higher chance of inputs working from the external source.

Also some RetroDECK built-in hotkeys in the radials like Alt+F4 might help you close windows.

Folder structure

Type Folder Comment
Windows Roms Folder retrodeck/roms/windows/

How-to: Make .desktop files

Make an empty file with the <gamename>.desktop.

Example:

Ultima I.desktop and put it into the retrodeck/roms/windows/ folder.

How-to: Launch Heroic Games

Step 1: Create and move .desktop file from Heroic

  1. Open Heroic.
  2. Install the game .
  3. Go to the Library -> Your Game -> Press the Three Dotted Menu.
  4. Press Add Shortcut.
  5. A shortcut will now be created on the Desktop.
  6. Move or copy that to retrodeck/roms/windows/.

Step 2: Edit the .desktop file

Open the .desktop file and edit it.

  • Exec= Add the flatpak-spawn --host flatpak run com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl --no-gui --no-sandbox instead of xdg-open.

Example: Heroic Flatpak - Flight of the Amazon Queen.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Flight of the Amazon Queen
Exec=flatpak-spawn --host flatpak run com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl --no-gui --no-sandbox heroic://launch?appName=1207659723
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=/home/deck/Games/Heroic/Flight of the Amazon Queen/goggame-1207659723.ico
Categories=Game;

The Last Step: Launch the Games via RetroDECK & Scrape

After the .desktop files have been created and everything is working as expected, RetroDECK will recognize the .desktop file the next time you start it.

The games will appear under the Windows tab in ES-DE. If you have named the games correctly, there is a good chance that the scraper will identify them.