Update: I figured it out, but keeping the post up if anyone has problems.

  1. I only had luck using Retroarch’s Dolphin core. Out of the box, the Retroarch menu hotkey was mapped to start + select for all my gamepads. You can easily change discs in the Quick Menu.
  2. Retroarch did not recognize my .rvz files at first, so I needed to do a manual scan of the m3u folder I created. Retroarch also has trouble finding .iso files and I’ve used the same steps to get those to appear.
  3. If you want to use a specific controller, make sure it’s the controller you turned on first or you might be using the one that was automatically assigned as player 2.
  4. In the Quick Menu input section, change R and L so they’re mapped to R1 and L1 instead of R1 and R2. I changed Z to select since I couldn’t get my triggers to work properly with the Dolphin Core, and from there this could be remapped to anything using Steam’s controller settings.
  5. I just needed to mess around with a few settings to improve performance, and it works almost as well as Dolphin does via emudeck out of the box.

I cannot seem to get multi-disc GameCube games to work on my Steam Machine and I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. Has anyone else figured out how to do this?

I’m gonna go through everything I’ve tried so far:

  1. Making Steam Rom Manager point to disc 1, excluding disc 2.

  • Even though “Change Discs Automatically” is checked in Dolphin’s settings for me, it’s not working for me.

  • Unlike PCSX2, Emudeck did not create controller hotkeys for launching Dolphin’s menu or to change discs manually.

  • Modifying hotkeys for full-screen toggle (to bring up Dolphin’s menu in-game) doesn’t work. Instead of going to windowed mode, I get a message about loading custom textures. The only way I’m able to edit keybindings in the hotkey menu is by right-clicking and bringing up a separate menu. It does not recognize my inputs on keyboard or controller (desktop and gamepad mode) normally.

  • Modifying hotkeys to change a disc manually doesn’t work either. It opens into the disc-change folder, but it doesn’t go straight to my ROMs folder and starts in an emulated C: drive. I cannot navigate though this menu using a controller.

  1. Making an M3U file.
  • The documentation says “your M3U file and disc files will parse as separate entries in Steam ROM Manager.” However, this was not my experience as it only parsed the M3U file. Anyway, the game mode icon I make in Steam Rom Manager instantly crashes. I then noticed the m3u folder name wasn’t exactly the same as the file names, so I corrected everything to be consistent and it still crashes for me, even after re-running it through Steam ROM manager.

**Folder Structure **

folder

  • Metal Gear Solid - The Twin Snakes.m3u

m3u filename

  • Metal Gear Solid - The Twin Snakes.m3u

ROM filenames

  • Metal Gear Solid - The Twin Snakes (Disc 1).rvz
  • Metal Gear Solid - The Twin Snakes (Disc 2).rvz

m3u file contents

  • Metal Gear Solid - The Twin Snakes (Disc 1).rvz
  • Metal Gear Solid - The Twin Snakes (Disc 2).rvz
  1. Opening straight from Dolphin in gaming mode
  • The game opens and reads my normal inputs, but doesn’t recognize any of Emudeck’s default hotkeys for Dolphin. When returning to the dolphin menu, it doesn’t recognize any inputs from my controller, so I can’t actually change the disc.
  1. Opening straight from Dolphin in desktop mode
  • Emudeck’s default keybinds for Dolphin are random keyboard letter keys, when then (I assume) goes through a custom controller profile to get it to work on a gamepad. This means none of my control inputs work in desktop mode with gamepad mode enabled. If I changed everything to work in desktop mode for one multi-disc game, it would mess up a working system for all the other single-disc games.
  1. (The nuclear option) Using the Dolphin core in Retroarch
  • Works, but leads to a severe performance hit compared to using the actual Dolphin emulator. Constant frame rate dips. Doesn’t recognize my Steam Controller in-game at all despite working in menus. Does not recognize any inputs when manually changing bindings either. Recognizes my DualSense but the triggers don’t work presuably due to weirdness with the GameCube’s analog triggers. After changing the per-game inputs on the DualSense to make LR the bumpers and not the triggers, it’s now not recognizing any in-game input whatsoever.

I’m completely at a loss for how to get things set up. I feel like I’ve tried just about everything I can think of and nothing is really working.