Been spending the weekend tinkering with emulators on my Steam Deck, PC and Retroid Pocket 3.
So far, so good. I’ve got all the 2D Nintendo consoles going, complete with save syncing between the PC and the Retroid Pocket 3. Likewise for Mega Drive and Mega CD games and their saves syncing between PC and Steam Deck.
Before going to bed I managed to get PS1 setup on my PC and got the memory card folder for Duckstation syncing (via Syncthing) between my PC and my Deck. This evening I will the PS1 stuff sorted on my Deck too.
Another cool thing about my syncing folders is my home media server is also part of the Syncthing share, so even if one of my devices is sleeping or switched off, the latest version of the save will be updated on the server and propagate to those devices as soon as they wake.
Syncthing was actually quite tricky to get working on Deck, as a lot of the EmuDeck emulators use Flatpaks, which Syncthing can’t access the files for by default until you give it permission using Flatseal.
But I got there in the end and I’m pleased with how it turned out. My aim is to have a completely seamless cross-device setup where I need minimal use of a keyboard and mouse (due to me being on a HTPC and Steam Deck).
About the only thing I need a keyboard for at this point is changing discs in Duckstation, which is a minor thing all things considered.
Once I’m done up to PS1 I’ll move on to PSP, PS2, Dreamcast, Xbox, N64 and GameCube to round off the less complicated ones.
From there I need to work out solutions for the unique form factors or inputs of systems going forward.