Gameflow Deck

A Cross-Platform open source Retro gaming frontend designed for handheld and controllers. Focused on building a simple user experience and intuitive UI as a curated community driven experience.

Warning

This app is actively in development, it is constantly changing and improving. It will have an opinionated design and will be used as an experiment in discovering a good UX.

Community

Join us on Discord, where you can ask questions, submit ideas and get help.

Features

Integrations

• ROMM - download, sync and update roms and platforms.
  • Show Achievements and sync playtime.
  • Experimental save syncing
• Emulator JS - play your games with emulator js right within the app. Uses RetroArch cores.
• RClone - sync saves between devices or cloud. Some Emulators and store games support it.
• UMU - UMU Launcher for playing windows games on linux without needing steam. (Only used for store games for now)

Store

• Emulators - (WIP) Download and install emulators and automatically configure them from a list of supported in the store. Some even come with advanced features like cloud saves.
• Free Curated Games - Download free curated games and homebrew roms without ever leaving the app

Others

• Cross Platform - Can run on multiple platforms. Built with web technologies and bun backend.
• Steam Deck Support - Extensively tested with the steam deck. It can use flatpak installed browsers.
• Lightweight - It uses the window's webview as a frontend, reducing build size and ram usage.
  • On Windows it first uses webview2 then your browser
  • On linux it does ship with NW.js to work on most distros. A big one is the steam deck missing WebKitGTK.
  • Not tested on Mac yet
• Great for Controllers - The UI is inspired by the switch and works great with joysticks and dpads.
• Automatic Downloads - Downloads roms from ROMM automatically
• Automatic Emulator Discovery - Using the configs of the excellent ES-DE to discover installed emulators and launch roms. You can bring your existing configurations.
  • Easy fallback configuration with built in file browser.
• Responsive Layout - Optimized mainly for the steam deck with responsive layout support and dynamic switching of inputs.
• Cloud/Device Save Sync - For supported games and emulators.
• Dark and Light - Dark and light themes for your preference.

Screenshots

Goals

• I want to build an open and free platform where you can play and discover new hidden gems from the past.
• I plan to add a free store where you can download all your needed emulators, the goal is to not have to leave the UI for anything.
• I really want to add matrix chat support in the app for engaging with your favorite community. Having access to so many nodejs libraries would make it quite straight forward.
• I'm sick of closed source and private store fronts, and want a way to share community curated free experiences. I'm also sick of the profit driven nature of games and promotions.
• Being self contained, I want to avoid writing as little as possible to system and contain and manage settings in a custom changeable directory. This was mainly a side-effect of having the low storage steam deck and always running out of space on my internal hard drive.

Usage

There are currently 2 ways of getting games. One is logging in through romm and importing your games from there. The other is the store (it's a bit limited right now). I might add local import of roms since IGDB login is already implemented.

The app created a default folder in your home folder. You can move it. It stores everything there. From downloaded roms, emulators and configs.

Existing Setups

The game should work pretty well with existing emulators one has installed. It uses the ES-DE config to find installed emulators. Only downside is more advanced integrations won't work, as they are mainly used for store emulators where the app has more control over, plus I don't want to mess up existing setups. But given it's an existing setup, say from emudeck it won't matter much as it's already configured say for the steam deck.

Development

1. Install dependencies:

   bun install

2. Run in development mode:

   # Use 'bun run dev:hmr' for hot reload
   bun run dev

3. Build for production:

   bun run build:prod

   Builds will go in /builds/<platform>.

4. Additional Commands:

   • bun run mappings:generate converts the es-de configs into local sqlite configs with mappings to rom systems
   • bun run drizzle:generate generates sqlite migrations based on the app schema
   • bun run openapi-ts generated the openapi client calls from romm's API
   • bun run package:windows builds an package to be distributed on windows
   • bun run package:linux builds an AppImage to be distributed on linux
   • bun run test run tests
   • bun run download:chromium downloads degoogled chromium to use as the frontend
   • bun run download:nwjs downloads NW.js to use as a frontend.

Plugins

To create a plugin create a new npm project and install: bun i --peer @simeonradivoev/gameflow-sdk

Then publish the package to npmjs with a tag gameflow-plugin to appear in the UI. For more info check the SDK README

Tech Stack

• Bun for the backend
• React for the frontend
• tailwindcss for styling
• daisyUI for base theme
• Vite for building the frontend
• Tanstack router and query for navigation and data
• elysia for the APIs
• webview for launching existing system webviews instead of full browser if possible.
• emulatorjs for playing lots of roms inside the app without having to deal with external emulators

Credits

• UI Sounds
  • CC BY 4.0 - Credit: JC Sounds
  • Sounds by: Chhoff
  • UI Sound Effects by lolurio