- A portrait tile or poster with wide art (a PS3 disc's ICON0, 320x176) shows it
whole over a blurred, darkened copy of itself instead of cropping its sides
('Tomb Raider' read 'B RAI'); box art still fills the tile.
- A game's title drops the dump's tags - (USA), (En,Fr,Es,Pt), (v1.01), [!] -
which stay in the file name and in the cover lookup.
The libretro PS3 collection holds 67 covers (Tomb Raider found none). A PS3 disc
image carries PS3_GAME/ICON0.PNG, unencrypted even on protected discs; it is read
out of the ISO 9660 image, the way an installed game's icon already is. The PS2
serial lookup uses the same reader.
CoverArt looks a game up by its file name in RetroArch's libretro-thumbnails
collection for the system (exactly, then loosely: tags dropped, same region
preferred, against the collection's cached list of names), then by the disc's
own ID - PS2 serials from SYSTEM.CNF against xlenore/ps2-covers, GameCube/Wii IDs
against GameTDB. Covers are downloaded once into files/covers after the list is
shown, and the list is refreshed when some arrive; a game with none is retried
after three days; nothing is fetched offline. PS3 disc dumps use their own
PS3_GAME/ICON0.PNG.
- Back / B on an emulator page went back to Android (the app closed); it now
returns to Desktop, a game page to its emulator, a Steam game to Steam - the
same as each page's '‹' link.
- Games are looked for up to three folders inside the system folder
(ROMs/ps2/games/<game>/<game>.iso showed ARMSX2 with 0 games), and the loose-file
pass over the ROMs root no longer walks into other systems' folders.
- From the rail ARMSX2 starts the game in its full-screen, controller-driven UI
and exits with it (-batch -bigpicture -fullscreen).
- bannerlator-pad-defaults: a PCSX2 player's settings and memory cards are
copied into ARMSX2 once; a new player starts on ARMSX2's first-time setup with
the BIOS folder in the ROMs folder (ps2/bios, created, or ps2/firmware), the
ps2 folder as the game list and the controller on Player 1; the guide button
opens the pause menu (how a rail game is left) instead of toggling analog.
Users bring their own BIOS and games.
- The catalog can name a file per memory page size ("pages"); the device's own
size picks it (ARMSX2 has 4K and 16K builds).
- On-screen controls: Auto keeps them off the desktop (the screen is a touchpad
there) and shows them for rail games and Steam when no controller is
connected; the drawer offers the setting in every session.
On device NFS Underground 2 ran at 17 fps in PCSX2 (one core at 100%, the PS2's
CPUs interpreted) and 59.9 fps at 100% speed in ARMSX2 (EE thread ~15%, all
recompilers and fastmem on under proot). Existing PCSX2 configs are left alone;
bannerlator-pad-defaults still covers them.
Upstream PCSX2 interprets the PS2's CPUs on ARM64 (pcsx2/arm64/RecStubs.cpp):
NFS Underground 2 ran at 17 fps with one core at 100%. ARMSX2 is the PCSX2 fork
with ARM64 recompilers. It is listed beside PCSX2 for the ps2 folder, installs
from the desktop catalog (package armsx2), and bannerlator-pad-defaults gives it
the PCSX2 profile under its own folder (ARMSX2/inis/PCSX2.ini).
Positioners and outputs were created without an implementation, and get_popup
created nothing. libwayland aborts on the first request to a resource with no
implementation - the compositor and the app with it. On device: a gamescope
started from the pixman desktop (droiddeck-gpu) beside labwc took the app down
(tombstone: abort in libwayland-server under wl_event_loop_dispatch). Positioner
requests are accepted and ignored, popups are dismissed at once (popup_done),
wl_output.release destroys the resource.
vulkan is the default desktop renderer (settings list it first). When labwc
cannot start on a GPU renderer the desktop falls back to pixman as before, and
now records the renderer with the patched wlroots and Linux driver it failed
on, so later desktops go straight to pixman instead of waiting 20 s each time;
an app update, a different driver, or choosing a renderer again in the settings
(which deletes the record) retries.
- A program from the rail draws with the desktop's Linux driver instead of the
Steam session's. The driver's shader cache is keyed on its build, so with two
drivers an emulator compiled everything once per way of starting it; seen on
device: desktop on the imported Turnip 26.3.0, rail on the runtime's own.
- RPCS3's default shader mode builds 6650 interpreter pipelines every boot.
bannerlator-pad-defaults starts a new install on Async Recompiler
(multi-threaded) and moves an existing one still on the default once; a
marker leaves any later choice in RPCS3's settings alone. Enum strings from
rpcs3/Emu/system_config_types.cpp.
bannerlator-pad-defaults now covers DuckStation, PCSX2, Dolphin (GameCube and
Wii), Cemu, melonDS, PPSSPP and RetroArch as well as RPCS3, from each project's
source: files an emulator would otherwise fill with keyboard-only defaults are
seeded when missing (Dolphin, Cemu, PPSSPP, RPCS3), or given SDL bindings in the
config the emulator wrote itself when nothing binds a controller yet
(DuckStation, PCSX2 with its SettingsVersion, melonDS). RetroArch gets an Xbox
360 profile for its sdl2 driver and is moved off udev, which finds no pads in the
runtime. The desktop re-runs it every 30 s, so an emulator's first config is
covered for its next start.
The PC keyboard takes 47% of the screen height, header included.
- The pad keeps Steam Input's virtual-gamepad identity only in Steam sessions.
SDL ignores a Steam virtual gamepad unless run under Steam, so on the desktop
and from the rail every SDL emulator saw no controller at all; there it is a
plain Xbox 360 pad now, which SDL and evdev map by themselves.
- bannerlator-pad-defaults writes Player 1 on the controller for emulators that
have no profile yet (RPCS3 first: without one it takes the keyboard). Run at
desktop start and before a program from the rail; never overwrites.
- The desktop and everything started from it, and a program from the rail, run
on the game cores when chosen, else every core but the slowest cluster
(program_cores); BL_PIN_CORES=0 turns it off. Game cores reach every mode.
The drawer's Keyboard row has two buttons: Hardware opens ui/PcKeyboard, a full
PC layout - Esc, F1-F12, Ins/Del/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn, the number and letter rows,
Tab, Caps, both Shifts, Ctrl, Super, Alt, AltGr, Space and the arrows - whose
keys are evdev codes pressed and released on the compositor's wl_keyboard, as a
USB keyboard would; Android opens the Android keyboard as before. Keys go down
on touch and up on lift (the program's key repeat works); modifiers are sticky
(tap: next key, tap again: lock, again: off). A controller moves over the keys
with the d-pad and presses with A; B closes it.
xdg-shell has the compositor reply to the initial commit; we only sent one at
get_toplevel. wlroots' Wayland backend (the desktop's labwc) moves its toplevel
to a private queue after the initial commit and waits there; on the vulkan
renderer a buffer import in between read the early configure onto the default
queue, and labwc waited for ever (WAYLAND_DEBUG: commit, then nothing). The
early configure stays for Wine's driver.
The vulkan desktop sat on the loading screen: labwc connected and never opened
its window, and it did not exit, so the exit-based fallback never fired. The
launcher now asks labwc's socket for an answer (wayland-info, 3 s) for up to
20 s, then stops it and starts the desktop on pixman. labwc runs with -d on
vulkan/gles2 so desktop.log shows where it stopped.
droiddeck-gpu runs a program in a gamescope of its own on the app's compositor
(wayland-0), full screen over the desktop - the path the rail's play chips use,
where Vulkan works. droiddeck-desktop-gpu gives every Game/Emulator menu entry a
per-user copy through it (auto: while the desktop is on pixman), keeping 'Run in
a desktop window' as an action.
droiddeck-desktop loads /usr/local/lib/droiddeck-wlroots for the vulkan/gles2
renderers and falls back to pixman when labwc stops at start. The build stages
the wlroots release named by tools/wlroots/release.env, once published.
wlroots 0.20.2 (Arch's wlroots0.20, what the desktop's labwc links) gains an
allocator that exports Vulkan images as DMA-BUFs for a GPU node that is not a
DRM device - the Adreno KGSL stand-in - where gbm and the DRM lease path fail
('unable to create allocator'). linux-dmabuf skips its GEM import check on such
a node so client buffers are not all refused. Built by build-wlroots.yml.
Compositor: without a Wine desktop, a window that opens on top takes keyboard
focus (a gamescope started from the Linux desktop).
With a controller, credits only showed the ripple's faint box on the
dark rail, and the primary button (Play) only grew slightly with a shine
that barely shows on its light fill. Both now get the 2 dp signal-blue
outline the other controls use; credits' text turns blue as well.
With the drawer open the controller still fed the game - PadBridge
consumed every pad key and axis - and nothing in the drawer had focus.
Now, while it is open, pad events go to Android's own handling instead:
the d-pad and stick move focus, and the framework's fallbacks make A
select and B Back (which closes the drawer), as on the app's main
screen. Opening it releases the game's pad (PadBridge.releaseAll), so a
button or stick held at that moment is not left down in the game.
It opens with focus on the STEAM button (in a desktop session, the first
setting), and the STEAM and ... buttons show a focus outline like the
rest of the app's controls. ToggleRow gains a modifier for its box.
On a fresh install the client starts signed out and drops the
steam://install/4427310 the session hands it, so the Proton Experimental
(ARM64) dialog only appeared after the user restarted the client by
hand. Ported from Bannerlator's session (device-proven there 2026-09-22):
- With no remembered sign-in, a watcher on logs/connection_log.txt waits
for the sign-in to complete and asks the running client again.
- A watcher on appmanifest_4427310.acf waits for StateFlags 4, registers
the compatibility tool again, leaves ~/.bl-restart-once and asks the
client to -shutdown; the start loop sees the marker and starts it once
more (not counted against the update cap), so the tool lists and
defaults are current before the user installs a game.
- The client-branch check runs before every start, not once, since the
client rewrites package/beta during its run.
The loading screen no longer says Steam keeps running in the background:
sessions pause when the app leaves the screen (Background behavior).
App name, app ID and code package: DroidDeck, com.droiddeck.launcher
(sources moved to com/droiddeck/launcher, the 68 JNI functions renamed
with them). The new app ID installs beside SteamDeck rather than over it.
Everywhere the name was the app's own: the sidebar title, the session
report, share zips, the shell title, wake-lock and log tags, User-Agents,
the Compose theme, the Download folder and switch files (droiddeck-env,
-osc, -driver, -tu-debug, -no-pad, -pad-log, -no-hud, -wlr-renderer; the
old names are not read), and inside the runtime (droiddeck-desktop,
Firefox's droiddeck.js, the shortcuts tag, the rumble socket, debug and
cache paths). Build scripts, CI artifact (droiddeck-apk), CMake project,
README and the progress log follow.
Kept on purpose: Valve's Steam Deck (the -steamdeck flag,
steamdeck_publicbeta/stable, 'Steam Deck mode', the steamos.cloud
package URLs) and names inside the hosted desktop package (steamdeck.png,
steamdeck-steam, steamdeck-bigpicture). 'Desktop installed' now tests for
labwc instead of the launcher the app stages itself. A committed
__pycache__ .pyc is removed.
xXJsonDeruloXx