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ES-DE is a front-end application to manage all of your ROMs.

Introduction

EmuDeck installs ES-DE, which allows you to manage your ROMs through a single front-end application. It can either be used as an alternative or in tandem with Steam Rom Manager (an application that adds ROMs as game shortcuts to your Steam Library).

Website: https://es-de.org/

ES-DE Important Links

ES-DE currently scrapes art from https://thegamesdb.net/ and https://www.screenscraper.fr/.

Read the Steam ROM Manager page to learn more about Steam Rom Manager and how it can be used in tandem with ES-DE!

ES-DE Table of Contents

  1. Getting started with ES-DE

  2. ES-DE Tips and Tricks

  3. Emulator Configurations

Getting started with ES-DE

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ES-DE Configuration

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  • Type of Tool: AppImage
  • Executable Location: /home/deck/Applications/ES-DE.AppImage
  • Scraped Media Location: Emulation/tools/downloaded_media
  • Config Location: /home/deck/ES-DE

ES-DE Folder Locations

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These file locations apply regardless of where you chose to install EmuDeck (to your internal SSD, to your SD Card, or elsewhere). Some emulator configuration files will be located on the internal SSD as listed below.

$HOME refers to your home folder. If you are on a Steam Deck, this folder will be named /home/deck (you will likely not see deck in the file path when navigating using the file manager).

Paths beginning with Emulation/.. correspond to your EmuDeck install location. If you installed on an SD Card, your path may be /run/media/mmcblk0p1/Emulation/roms/... If you installed on your internal SSD, your path may be /home/deck/Emulation/roms/..

Do note that some of these paths have been adjusted from ES-DE's defaults. If you are reading ES-DE's User Guide, make sure to also use the below file locations as a reference.

$HOME/ES-DE

ES-DE
├── collections
├── custom_systems
│   └── es_systems.xml
├── es_log.txt
├── es_settings.xml
├── gamelists
│   ├── atarilynx
│   │   └── gamelist.xml
│   ├── gc
│   │   └── gamelist.xml
│   ├── n3ds
│   │   └── gamelist.xml
│   ├── nds
│   │   └── gamelist.xml
│   ├── ps2
│   │   └── gamelist.xml
│   ├── psp
│   │   └── gamelist.xml
│   ├── psx
│   │   └── gamelist.xml
│   ├── saturn
│   │   └── gamelist.xml
│   ├── scummvm
│   │   └── gamelist.xml
│   └── wii
│       └── gamelist.xml
└── themes
    └── epic-noir-revisited-es-de

Emulation/tools/downloaded_media

This folder will also have your scraped media in folders corresponding to the system name.

downloaded_media/
└── CLEANUP

How to Update ES-DE

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  • Through the Update your Emulators & Tools section on the Manage Emulators page in the EmuDeck application
  • Manual file replacement of ES-DE.AppImage
  • Through the application's automatic updater
    • When you open ES-DE, you may be prompted for an update, accept the prompt to update the application
      • The automatic updater is only available on ES-DE versions 2.1.0 and up

How to Launch ES-DE in Desktop Mode

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  • Launch the AppImage in /home/deck/Applications/ES-DE.AppImage
  • Launch ES-DE from Steam after adding it via the ES-DE parser in Steam Rom Manager
  • Launch ES-DE from the Applications Launcher (Steam Deck icon in the bottom left of the taskbar)

How to Add ES-DE to your Steam Library

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In Desktop Mode, you can open ES-DE by opening the executable here: Emulation/tools/EmulationStation-DE-x64_SteamDeck.AppImage. However, it's recommended you add ES-DE to Steam through Steam ROM Manager so you can use it in Game Mode as a front-end for your ROMs.

Here's How

  1. In Desktop Mode, open Steam Rom Manager
  2. Turn all the parsers off except for ES-DE
    • It's recommended to turn on the Emulators parser as well so you can configure your Emulators directly in Game Mode
  3. Click Preview in the top left of the application
  4. Click Generate app list, wait a moment
  5. Click Save app list, wait for a message to pop up: Done adding/removing entries
  6. ES-DE will now be added to your Steam Library.

Watch the following GIF for a visual:

ES-DE Hotkeys

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See Emulator Frontends Button Combinations Profile and Emulator Frontends Radial Menu Profile for more information.

ES-DE Tips and Tricks

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Tips for Navigating ES-DE

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Quick-Jumping Through Menus

  • If you use the shoulder and trigger buttons, you can quick-jump through all menus, including the gamelist view menus.

How to Select a Different Emulator for a System

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  1. In ES-DE, press the Start button
  2. Scroll down and select Other Settings
  3. Select Alternative Emulators
  4. Scroll down to the system you would like to configure, press B, and select your preferred emulator.

Watch the following GIF for a visual:

How to Select a Different Emulator on a Per-Game Basis

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ES-DE allows you to pick alternative emulators on a per-game basis. This may come in handy when different emulators have different levels of compatibility. You can use this option to switch between Yuzu and Ryujinx on a per-game basis for the Nintendo Switch.

On a game in a console list, press the select button, scroll down and select EDIT THIS GAME'S METADATA, scroll down and select ALTERNATIVE EMULATOR, pick which emulator you would like to use for that game.

Note: This feature is also required to get PrimeHack to work through ES-DE. For Primehack, place your Metroid Prime Trilogy ROM in the wii folder. Follow the above steps, and choose PrimeHack [Standalone] for Metroid Prime Trilogy.

Watch the following GIF for a visual:

How to Manage Multiple Discs

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Before selecting one of the methods below, it is highly recommended you use the EmuDeck compressor to compress your ROMs to a single compressed file (the file format varies depending on which system you are emulating).

Do note that if you are using multi-disc games, the EmuDeck Compressor will instead create a compressed file per disc (combining the BIN and CUE files of each disc). You will still need to read through this section to learn how to "convert" these multi-disc games into a single entry.

Regardless of whether or not you choose to compress your games, the two methods below will cover how to tidy your files in ES-DE and ensure that you only have one entry per game.

  1. Create an M3U File
  2. Place all of your disc files with the M3U file in a folder
  3. Rename the folder to match the M3U file exactly including the file extension .m3u
    • Example:

Note:

Method 2: Create an M3U file and hide each of the disc entries in ES-DE

  1. Create an M3U File
  2. In ES-DE, press Start, Other Settings, toggle Show Hidden Games off
  3. For each disc entry, press select, press Edit This Game's Metadata, scroll down, toggle on Hidden, press Save, Apply
  4. Repeat for each disc entry

How to Manage Multiple BIN and CUE files

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This section is intended only for single disc games. If your game contains multiple discs, see How to Manage Multiple Discs.

Before selecting one of the methods below, it is highly recommended you use the EmuDeck compressor to compress your ROMs to a single compressed file (the file format varies depending on which system you are emulating).

If you choose to compress your games, the section below is not necessary.

See https://gitlab.com/es-de/emulationstation-de/-/blob/master/USERGUIDE.md#directories-interpreted-as-files to learn how.

Do note that this method is not compatible with Steam ROM Manager. You may instead use Method 2: Hide each of the BIN entries in ES-DE.

Method 2: Hide each of the BIN entries in ES-DE

If you are using BIN and CUE files, you will need to hide the BIN files and only keep the CUE entry. The CUE contains the information required to run each BIN file.

  1. In ES-DE, press Start, Other Settings, toggle Show Hidden Games off
  2. For each BIN entry, press select, press Edit This Game's Metadata, scroll down, toggle on Hidden, press Save, Apply
  3. Repeat for each BIN entry

How to Download Themes

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Themes List: https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/themes-list

Prerequisites

  • ES-DE 2.0.1 or above
  • Update through the Update your Emulators & Tools section on the Manage Emulators page in the EmuDeck application

How to Download Themes

Method 1: Theme Downloader
  1. Open ES-DE
  2. Press Start
  3. Scroll down to UI Settings
  4. Select Theme Downloader [Experimental]
  5. Select the theme(s) you would like to download
  6. When you are finished, back out of this menu
  7. On the UI Settings menu, press Theme Set and select your preferred theme
Method 2: Manual

MiSTer Menu will be used as an example in the below guide.

  1. From the themes list: https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/themes-list, select a theme under EmulationStation Desktop Edition (ES-DE) - Themes
  2. Open the link for the respective theme, it will take you the respective theme section on the ES-DE themes page
  3. Open the Github link, it will take you to a Github repository
  4. On the Github repository, press the green Code button in the top right
  5. Click Download Zip, download to a folder of your choice
  6. Open the folder with the zipped theme, right click the theme, click Extract, Extract archive here
  7. Move the unzipped theme folder to /home/deck/.emulationstation/themes
    • ~/.emulationstation is an invisible folder by default. In Dolphin (file manager), click the hamburger button, ☰, in the top right, click Show hidden files
  8. To use the theme: Open ES-DE in Game Mode, press the Start button, UI Settings, Theme Set, and select the theme you downloaded

Emulator Configurations

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