
1.2.6 / 05-08-2022
EmulationStation-DE
Accuracy
Performance
Features

EmulationStation Desktop Edition is an open source frontend application for browsing and launching games from your multi-platform game collection. It comes preconfigured for use with RetroArch and a number of other emulators. It's also fully customizable so you can expand it to launch other emulators or applications. It has several features such as minimal setup, full controller support, very customizable, Built-in scraper for downloading game info and game media, fully themeable and much more...
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Most Recent Changes
--1.2.6--
This release enables a lot of systems by adding new platforms altogether and by including emulator configuration for previous placeholder entries. A number of additional standalone emulators have been added as well. The newly released PCSX2 Qt standalone emulator has replaced the old PCSX2 release which has been designated a legacy emulator. Connection timeout support has also been added to the scraper which among other things makes it possible to continue scraping after resuming a computer that went to sleep when the scraper was running.
Detailed list of changes
Added experimental support for Vita3K for the psvita system on Unix and Windows
Added support for the Fujitsu FM Towns (fmtowns) game system on Unix and Windows
Added support for the Adobe Flash (flash) game system
Added support for the EasyRPG game engine (easyrpg) game system
Added support for the Nintendo Super Game Boy (sgb) game system
Added support for the Creatronic Mega Duck (megaduck) game system
Added support for the Watara Supervision (supervision) game system
Added support for the M.U.G.E.N Game Engine (mugen) game system on Windows
Added emulator configuration for the apple2 system
Added emulator configuration for the apple2gs system
Added emulator configuration for the macintosh system
Added emulator configuration for the trs-80 system
Added emulator configuration for the coco system
Added emulator configuration for the dragon32 system
Added emulator configuration for the tanodragon system
Added emulator configuration for the gx4000 system
Added emulator configuration for the solarus system
Added emulator configuration for the tic80 system
Added emulator configuration for the ags system
Renamed the Nintendo 64DD system from 64dd to n64dd and removed the Mupen64Plus standalone emulator
Replaced the invalid SimCoupé RetroArch core with SimCoupé standalone for the samcoupe system
Added a find rule for the Flatpak release of MAME
Added Mednafen standalone as an alternative emulator for many systems
Changed the emulator PCSX2 standalone to PCSX2 Legacy standalone
Changed the emulator PCSX2 Qt standalone to PCSX2 standalone
(Windows) Removed the emulator PCSX2 wxWidgets standalone
Renamed the ROM directory for the ColecoVision system from coleco to colecovision
Added ScummVM standalone as an alternative emulator for the scummvm system
Added Cxbx-Reloaded standalone as an alternative emulator for the xbox system on Windows
Added Atari800 standalone as an alternative emulator for the a5200 system
Added the Kronos RetroArch core as an alternative emulator for the arcade and mame systems
Added KEmulator standalone as an alternative emulator for the j2me system on Windows
Added Model 2 Emulator [Suspend ES-DE] as an alternative emulator for the arcade, mame and model2 systems on Windows
Added "Shortcut or script" as an alternative emulator for the doom system
Added the Boom 3 and Boom 3 xp RetroArch cores as alternative emulators for the doom system on Unix and Windows
Added support for the repository-installed PPSSPP standalone (SDL and Qt) on Unix
Added the .chd and .rp9 file extensions to the amiga, amiga1200, amiga600, amigacd32 and cdtv systems
Added the .fds file extension to the famicom and nes systems
Added the .32x file extension to the genesis and megadrive systems
Added the .json file extension to the gc and wii systems
Added the .ndd file extension to the n64 and n64dd systems
Added find rule entries for Valve Steam to simplify the setup of the RetroArch Steam release
Added scraper support for the dragon32 platform
Added a %GAMEENTRYDIR% variable to be used with the %STARTDIR% variable (required by EasyRPG Player standalone)
Added a %FILENAME% variable to extract the filename including the extension when used in es_systems.xml
Added connection and transfer timeout settings to the scraper (not configurable via the GUI)
Added an es_log.txt entry when the "Only show ROMs from gamelist.xml files" setting is enabled
Passing the --ignore-gamelist command line option now immediately disables the ParseGamelistOnly setting
(Windows) Added code signing to both the application binary and installer
(macOS) Improved Apple compliance for the Info.plist file
(rbsimple-DE) Added console graphics for the psvita system
Bug fixes
The IgnoreGamelist setting was saved to es_settings.xml although it shouldn't
(modern-DE) The trs-80 system had graphics and logo for the wrong computer
--1.2.5--
This is a maintenance release. Shortcut support has been added on Unix and macOS which greatly simplifies setup of applications as well as games for platforms like ports, steam, lutris and ps3. A couple of new systems have been added, most notably PICO-8, and RetroPie EmulationStation theme compatibility has been improved. As well the default keyboard quit shortcut has been changed from F4 to the operating system defaults (Alt + F4 on Unix and Windows and Command + Q on macOS). Some bugs were also fixed and some missing graphic assets were added to the default rbsimple-DE theme set.
Detailed list of changes
Added an %ENABLESHORTCUTS% variable to support launching of .desktop files on Unix and apps and aliases on macOS
Added support for launching .desktop files to the desktop, epic, kodi, lutris, ports and steam systems on Unix
Added support for launching .app directories and alias files to the desktop, epic, kodi, ports and steam systems on macOS
Setup two emulator entries for the desktop system, "Suspend ES-DE" and "Keep ES-DE running" to control the launch behavior
Changed the ps3 system to use shortcuts by default and created an alternative emulator entry for the old directory approach
Added the .lnk file extension to the epic system on Windows
Added support for the PICO-8 (pico8) game system
Added support for the Capcom Play System (cps) game system
Added support for the Sega Model 2 and 3 (model2 and model3) game systems on Windows
Added configuration for the Tangerine Computer Systems Oric (oric) system on Unix and Windows
Added configuration for the Texas Instruments TI-99 (ti99) system on Unix and Windows
Added configuration for the Google Android (android) system on Windows
(Windows) Changed the emulator directory for Model 2 Emulator from Model2 to m2emulator
(Windows) Changed the emulator find rule name for the Model 2 Emulator from MODEL2 to M2EMULATOR
Added support for asterisks/wildcards for emulator name matching, usable in both es_find_rules.xml and es_systems.xml
(Linux) Changed to find rule wildcard matching for the AppImages for Dolphin, mGBA, Play!, RPCS3, Xemu and Yuzu
(Windows) Changed to find rule wildcard matching for the PCSX2-QT and PCSX2-WXWIDGETS entries to support the AVX2 releases of PCSX2
Added a ScreenScraper option to fall back to additional regions to allow scraping of country-specific games and unofficial releases
Changed the sorting in the Alternative emulators interface to use short system names instead of full system names
Added scraper support for the ti99 platform
Added TheGamesDB scraper support for the oric platform
Added the pcwindows platform to the lutris system on Unix to improve scraping
Renamed the "Exit button combo" menu option to "Keyboard quit shortcut"
Changed the default quit shortcut from F4 to Alt + F4 on Windows and Unix
Changed the default quit shortcut from F4 to Command + Q on macOS
Added Ctrl + Q as a user-selectable quit shortcut
Added support for placing a noload.txt file in the root of a system/ROM directory to keep it from getting loaded
(Windows) Added support for creating a portable installation in the root of a device, such as E: or F:
Increased the window width slightly for the Alternative emulators interface when displaying long system names
Added size restrictions to the "size" and "maxSize" theme properties for the image and video elements
Changed to a new API key for TheGamesDB
(Linux) Changed the manually downloaded Redream emulator location from ~/Applications/redream to ~/Applications/redream/redream
(rbsimple-DE) Added console and controller graphics for the wiiu system
(rbsimple-DE) Added controller graphics for the saturn, saturnjp and xbox systems
(modern-DE) Replaced the carousel image for the desktop system
Bug fixes
When running ES-DE in the background, quitting a game or application using Alt + F4 sometimes made ES-DE quit as well
Thumbnails were not included in theme sets that used them for the Detailed view style (affected RetroPie ES compatibility)
Game images were not included in theme sets that used them for the Video view style (affected RetroPie ES compatibility)
Themes with large pixelated fonts sometimes displayed too many textlist rows (affected RetroPie ES compatibility)
When entering the text edit field for the virtual keyboard, a navigation key repeat would sometimes continue to run
The menu scroll indicators and title sometimes overlapped (e.g. seen in the Alternative emulators interface)
There was a small rounding error that caused a minimal distortion when rendering menu titles
(macOS) The platform tag was missing for the NEC TurboGrafx-CD (tg-cd) system, leading to inaccurate scraping
--1.2.4--
This is a maintenance release. Support has been added for multiple systems such as Daphne (arcade LaserDisc) and OpenBOR. A number of default emulators have been changed, some standalone emulators have been added and numerous bugs have been fixed. Some low-level functionality has also been implemented to enable more advanced emulator launch options and quite a number of missing theme assets have been created for the default rbsimple-DE theme.
Detailed list of changes
Added configuration for the Daphne arcade LaserDisc system using the Hypseus Singe emulator
Added configuration for the OpenBOR game engine on Linux and Windows
Added emulator configuration for the astrocde (Bally Astrocade) and cdtv systems
Changed the default emulator for the famicom, fds and nes systems from Nestopia UE to Mesen
Changed the default emulator for the gb and gbc systems from SameBoy to Gambatte
Changed the default emulator for the gamegear and sg-1000 systems from Gearsystem to Genesis Plus GX
Changed the default emulator for the dos and pc systems from DOSBox-Core to DOSBox-Pure
Changed the default emulator for the mame system from MAME 2003-Plus to MAME - Current
Removed the --escape-exit command line option for the PPSSPP standalone emulator as it caused issues for some users
Added experimental support for PCSX2 Qt and PCSX2 wxWidgets for the ps2 system on Windows
Added AetherSX2 standalone as an alternative emulator for the ps2 system on macOS
Added DOSBox-X standalone as an alternative emulator for the dos and pc systems
Added bsnes standalone as an alternative emulator for the satellaview, sfc, snes, snesna and sufami systems
Added Snes9x standalone as an alternative emulator for the satellaview and sufami systems
Added Atari800 standalone as an alternative emulator for the atarixe system
Added the Flycast RetroArch core and Flycast standalone as alternative emulators for the arcade and mame systems
Added the Gearcoleco RetroArch core as an alternative emulator for the colecovision system
Added Nestopia UE standalone as an alternative emulator for the famicom, fds and nes systems on Unix
Added DeSmuME standalone as an alternative emulator for the nds system on Unix
Added Model 2 Emulator standalone as an alternative emulator for the arcade and mame systems on Windows
Added Supermodel standalone as an alternative emulator for the arcade and mame systems on Windows
Added the file extensions .ciso, .dump, .gz, .m3u, .mdf, .img and .nrg to the ps2 system
Removed the .chd file extension from the naomi, naomigd and atomiswave systems
Removed the .bin file extension from the pcengine, pcenginecd, tg16 and tg-cd systems
Added the "citra" binary for Citra standalone on Linux (making it possible to use the repository or AUR release)
Removed the -full-screen command line option for the xemu emulator
Set %STARTDIR%=%EMUDIR% for the xenia (Xbox 360) emulator
Added scraper support for the astrocde platform
Added scraper support for the arcadia (Emerson Arcadia 2001) and crvision (VTech CreatiVision) platforms
Changed the platform to arcade for the atomiswave, naomi and naomigd systems to improve scraping
Added TheGamesDB scraper support for the atomiswave and naomi platforms
Added a new pcwindows platform for scraping PC (Windows) games
Changed the steam platform internally to use the ScreenScraper "PC Windows" platform ID
Changed the platform to pcwindows for the epic system
Enabled screensaver controls when running in Kid UI mode
Added custom event script triggers on application startup, screensaver start and screensaver end
Added a --create-system-dirs command line option to generate the game system directories
Added an %INJECT% variable for injecting launch arguments from game config files (required by Hypseus Singe)
Added a %GAMEDIR% variable that expands to the game directory (required by Hypseus Singe)
Made the %GAMEDIR% variable usable with the %STARTDIR% variable (required by OpenBOR)
(Windows) Set %RUNINBACKGROUND% when launching MAME standalone as this emulator may otherwise hang on exit
(Windows) Added an %ESCAPESPECIALS% variable that escapes the special characters &()^=;,
(Windows) Added %ESCAPESPECIALS% to the desktop, epic, kodi, ports and steam systems
(rbsimple-DE) Added console and controller graphics for the ps2 and ps3 systems
(rbsimple-DE) Added console graphics for the n3ds, saturn, saturnjp, switch and xbox360 systems
Added an Xbox Kinect controller badge icon
Swapped the colors of the Joy-Con controller badge icons
(macOS) Categorized the application as a game so it shows up in the Launchpad games section
Replaced the explicit shell commands in es_systems.xml with %EMULATOR_OS-SHELL% find rules
Updated the StringUtil::replace function as the old function was dangerous and could run into an endless loop
Added experimental support for folder flattening
Bug fixes
All games were included in the video and slideshow screeensavers when in Kid UI mode
Under very rare circumstances, games and folders could get mixed up during gamelist.xml parsing
The %BASENAME% variable didn't work correctly with the "Directories interpreted as files" functionality
The scroll indicators would sometimes not work correctly in the Alternative Emulators screen
Fixed a minor rounding issue which sometimes led to the menu scroll indicators not being positioned correctly
The game-end event was triggered immediately on game launch if running ES-DE in the background
The "quit" custom event script trigger was not executed when quitting the application using the quit key combo
Chinese characters would sometimes not render correctly
The "Jump to.." quick selector didn't work correctly with multi-byte Unicode characters
(Windows) Fixed an issue where symlinking game media directories would crash the application
(Windows) Scripts and links executed using cmd.exe could not contain the special characters &()^=;,
(Windows) ROM directories could not be created in the root of a device such as D:\ or E:\
(Linux) Flatpak directories were missing for user installations of the standalone emulators BlastEm, Play! and Snes9x
(rbsimple-DE) The systeminfo text for the saturn and saturnjp systems had mixed up megabytes with megabits
--1.2.3--
Added Snes9x standalone as an alternative emulator for the sfc, snes and snesna systems
* Added Atari800 standalone as an alternative emulator for the atari800 system
* Added BlastEm standalone as an alternative emulator for the megadrive and genesis systems on Unix
* Added MAME standalone as an alternative emulator for the arcade and mame systems on macOS
* Added the SAME CDi and CDi 2015 RetroArch cores for the cdimono1 system
* Added the PUAE 2021 RetroArch core to the amiga, amiga600, amiga1200 and amigacd32 systems
* Replaced the RetroArch core 4DO with Opera for the 3do system
## Known issues
* On Windows when using high DPI displays, if not running ES-DE on the primary monitor and the display where it runs does not have the same scaling percentage as the primary monitor, then the ES-DE resolution will not be properly set. The application will still work and if running in fullscreen mode it may not even be noticeable. This issue is probably caused by a bug in SDL where the primary display scaling is always used for calculating the display bounds. If using the same scaling percentage across all monitors, or if not using high DPI monitors at all, then this issue is not relevant.
* On Windows installing DS4Windows will break controller input in ES-DE for unknown reasons. Uninstalling this software should resolve the issue. On Windows 11 both DualShock 4 (PS4) and DualSense (PS5) controllers have been tested wired and via Bluetooth and both work fine in both ES-DE and RetroArch without any special drivers or configuration.
* On Windows ampersands (&) can't be used in filenames executed by cmd.exe (applicable for the desktop, epic, kodi, ports and steam systems).
* There could be problems with Chinese characters under some circumstances which may cause them to not get rendered properly in the gamelist view. This will hopefully be resolved with the 2.0 release.
* On macOS, the RetroArch setting "Start in Fullscreen mode" must be enabled or ES-DE will not be able to switch to the emulator window when a game is launched. Possibly it's the same issue with other emulators as well.
* On Raspberry Pi OS 10, Sony DualShock 4 controllers have problems with some button presses that don't register correctly. The issue appears resolved in Raspberry Pi OS 11.
To be imported soon...