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Here is some useful information about how Games works:

Contents

Installing Games 1. Installing Games

1. Flatpak (recommended)
2. Distributions
2. Your games collection
Flatpak (recommended)
1. Supported platforms
2. Adding games
Games is available via Flatpak. The stable Flatpak version is the recommended 3. Covers
way of getting Games. Also, your system needs to have at least Tracker 2.0
3. Running games
installed for Games to work.
1. Retro games
1. Packaged Libretro cores
Get Games 3.30.2
2. Firmware configuration
3. LÖVE
4. Gamepad handling
Get Unstable Nightly
1. Supported gamepads
5. Testing
Software should open the .flatpakref file, if this does not work, you can just run
6. Logo
one of the following commands to install Games:

Stable version:

flatpak install https://flathub.org/repo/appstream/org.gnome.Games.flatpakref

Nightly version:

flatpak install https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-apps-nightly/raw/master/gnome-

games.flatpakref

Distributions

Alternatively, your software distribution may offer you packages for Games. Here is a list of known supporting distros:

Arch Linux: the stable version is available from the [community] repository.

Debian unstable: install the gnome-games-app package

openSUSE Tumbleweed: install the gnome-games package

Ubuntu 17.04: install the gnome-games-app package

Note that the packaged versions fuctions differently regarding to non-native games support; see the Packaged Libretro cores
section below for more info.

Your games collection

Games tries to present all your games regardless of their platform of origin:

games you can already find in your applications list, i.e your native desktop games (installed from a flatpak file or your
distro's package manager)
installed Steam games
games for several game engines
and games for many retro video game systems

Supported platforms

Here are the supported platforms as of version 3.30:

Common File Playable in 3.30 Playable in Unstable

Platform Automatically Listed
Extensions Flatpak Nightly Flatpak
Amiga *.adf ✓ No plugin provided No plugin provided

Atari 2600 *.a26 ✓ Stella Stella

Atari 7800 *.a78 ✓ ProSystem ProSystem

Atari Lynx *.lnx ✓ Handy 1 Handy

Desktop *.desktop Partial support ✓ ✓

Dreamcast *.dc ✓ No plugin provided No plugin provided
Nestopia (Firmware Nestopia (Firmware
Famicom Disk System *.fds ✓
required) required)
GameCube *.gc ✓ No plugin provided No plugin provided
Game Boy Advance *.gba ✓ mGBA mGBA
Game Boy Color *.gbc ✓ Gambatte Gambatte

Game Boy *.gb ✓ Gambatte Gambatte

Game Gear *.gg ✓ Gearsystem Gearsystem
id Tech *.wad ✓ No plugin provided PrBoom
Libretro *.libretro + *.so ✓ ✓ ✓
LÖVE *.love ✓ ✓ ✓

MAME *.zip 2 ✓ No plugin provided MAME

Can't discriminate
MS-DOS *.exe No plugin provided DOSBox
games
Neo Geo Pocket Color *.ngc ✓ Beetle NeoPop Beetle NeoPop
Neo Geo Pocket *.ngp ✓ Beetle NeoPop Beetle NeoPop
Nintendo 64 *.n64 ✓ No plugin provided No plugin provided
Nintendo DS *.nds ✓ DeSmuME 2015 DeSmuME 2015

Nintendo
*.nes ✓ Nestopia Nestopia
Entertainment System
PlayStation *.cue + *.bin ✓ PCSX ReARMed PCSX ReARMed

Sega 32X *.32x ✓ No plugin provided No free-software plugin

Sega CD *.cue + *.bin ✓ No plugin provided No free-software plugin
Sega Genesis/Mega
*.gen 3 ✓ No plugin provided BlastEm
Drive
Sega Master System *.sms ✓ Gearsystem Gearsystem
Sega Pico *.gen ✓ No plugin provided No free-software plugin
Sega Saturn *.cue + *.bin ✓ No plugin provided Beetle Saturn
SG-1000 *.sg ✓ No plugin provided No free-software plugin

Steam *.acf ✓ ✓ ✓
Super Nintendo
*.sfc ✓ bsnes-mercury bsnes-mercury
Entertainment System
TurboGrafx-16 *.pce ✓ Beetle PCE FAST Beetle PCE FAST
Beetle PCE FAST Beetle PCE FAST
TurboGrafx-CD *.cue + *.bin ✓
(Firmware required) (Firmware required)
Virtual Boy *.vb ✓ Beetle VB Beetle VB

WiiWare *.wad ✓ No plugin provided No plugin provided

Wii *.wii ✓ No plugin provided No plugin provided

WonderSwan Color *.wsc ✓ Beetle Cygne Beetle Cygne

WonderSwan *.ws ✓ Beetle Cygne Beetle Cygne

"Automatically listed" means that Games will try to automatically detect the games on your system. For games which are
not automatically listed or if the detection didn't work, see the Adding games section below.
"Playable in 3.30 Flatpak" means that the games can be played as-is with our stable Flatpak of Games.
"Playable in Unstable Nightly Flatpak" means that the games can be played as-is with our Unstable Nightly Flatpak version
of Games.
"No plugin provided" means that we do not provide yet in our Flatpak version the required plugin to play games of that
platform (see the Roadmap for more info).
"No free-software plugin" means that we don't know free-software plugins supporting this platform.

Adding games

In order for Games to discover your games, they have to be located in a searchable place. If your games don't show up, follow
these steps:

open the GNOME Settings app and click on "Search"

click on the "gear" button in the bottom right of the Control Center window
setup the places where Games is allowed to search for your games (for example, in a "Games" directory located in your
home directory)

If your games or not automatically detected or if the auto-detection didn't work, you can use the "Add game files…" button to
select game files to add manually.

Please note that — except if stated otherwise — ROM files need to be unzipped for Games to list them.

If your PlayStation games are splitted into multiple * . b i n files without a cue sheet, you can generate one on this website.

Covers

Games fetchs your games' cover art from TheGamesDB, an open video game database that anyone can freely contribute to. If
you find a missing cover, contributing to TheGamesDB should make it appear in Games.

If your game is represented by a file, you can use the image of your choice as the game's cover by putting it alongside the game's
file and by giving it a similar filename, as demonstrated in the screenshots below:

Alternatively, you could name the file cover.* or folder.*.

Running games

Retro games
Games is relying on Libretro cores to make retro games work.

Currently, the Flatpak releases of Games come bundled with functional Libretro cores, hand-picked for their good accuracy,
their reasonable system requirements, their free license and their independence from proprietary (and forbidden to share)
firmware files. The bundled cores are listed in the "Supported platforms" table above. More technical info can be found on our
design page.

Packaged Libretro cores

If you don't use the Flatpak version and depending on your software distribution you may need to install Libretro cores
separately. Check your distribution for more information.

Games supports only Libretro cores shipping a Libretro Core Descriptor file. The cores and their descriptors are looked for in
$ ( l i b d i r ) / l i b r e t r o directory and in paths defined in the LIBRETRO_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable. If you're
encoutering issues with missing core descriptor files, please see this Ubuntu bug report for more info.

Some cores that cannot be bundled with the official Flatpak releases of Games (such as non-free cores) are available as Flatpak
extensions; those are listed on our design page.

Firmware configuration

In most of the situations, no external firmware (BIOS) file should be required to play retro games. Some Libretro cores can or
must use an external firmware, they describe them in their Libretro Core Descriptor file.

Your firmware files for a specific platform will be looked for in a specific directory depending of the version of Games you're
using:

Flatpak version: ~/.var/app/org.gnome.Games/config/gnome-games/platforms/[PLATFORM]/system ,

where [PLATFORM] is the corresponding platform as defined here (i.e. "TurboGrafxCD").

Other versions: ~/.config/gnome-games/platforms/PLATFORM/system

The files must match the ones described by the core's descriptor. Check the cores listed in the supported platforms list and
read the corresponding libretro docs page to know which firmware files are needed and how to name them.

LÖVE

Games using the LÖVE framework require LÖVE to be installed on your machine. As usual, check if your distribution supports
LÖVE (the official LÖVE website provides PPAs for Ubuntu).

Gamepad handling

Controllers are automatically assigned to players following this scheme:

when a gamepad is plugged in, it is assigned to the first player with no gamepad;
when a gamepad is plugged out, the player which had it have no gamepad instead and any other player keep its
controller;
the keyboard is assigned to the first player with no controller after reassigning the gamepads.

Supported gamepads

The following gamepads have been tested with Games and should work out-of-the-box (for wireless support, make sure
Bluetooh is supported by your system):

Xbox 360 Controller for Windows (Wired only)

DUALSHOCK 3
DUALSHOCK 4
8Bitdo SF30 Pro (in XInput mode)

Mouse peripherals such as the Super NES Mouse (required by games such as Mario Paint) are currently not supported.

Gamepad layouts are provided by the SDL_GameControllerDB project.

Testing

To help ensuring that the Libretro cores we ship in the Flatpak version are of good quality, Games run reference tests powered
by the r e t r o - g t k based r e t r o - r e f t e s t program. If you want to write such tests to improve Games or to run automated
tests on your Libretro core, please read the Retro Reference Test Case Specification.

Logo

Visit the logo page to get the logos.

Deserialization crashes Games. (1)

Please note that MAME ROMs must not be unzipped. (2)

Some Mega Drive roms come with the *.md extension instead; you can safely rename them to * . g e n . (3)

Apps/Games/Documentation (last edited 2019-01-19 15:01:16 by AlexanderMikhaylenko)

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