

1:24 am
August 7, 2019

Hey all. First post, but I think it may be a doozy. I have been working on my modified Nintendo Switch for about a week so far, and I gotta say, the results are pretty nice so far. Through extensive modification of the L4T Megascript, I have streamlined a large majority of the process to compiling and installing RetroPie for L4T Ubuntu. I have all emulators working, with proper button-mapping, metadata scraping, shader and bezels, just about everything. While the Megascript does automate a lot of the process, most of the setup is still pretty intimidating. With the scripts I modified, almost everything is automated. I really would love to ultimately share what I have built, but am a bit conflicted on how I should do this. I would love some recommendations.
The first option would be to simply share the modified scripts. This would allow anyone to pick up their modified Switch with Ubuntu, drop the scripts in, and run. This would give the most level of transparency (easy enough to audit the code), but also requires the initial Ubuntu setup. The second option would be to share a pre-built image. This would likely target a large SD card (I don’t own anything smaller than 512GB), but everything would be compiled, configured, and ready to go. I have tested building an image, flashing it to a micro SD, and successfully boot in a Switch that is not the origin device. The only initial setup that would need to be done is to reconfigure your Joycons in EmulationStation. I think this would be the simplest option, but sharing a pre-built Linux image is typically frowned upon for security purposes.
So, let me know. Would this be something you would be interested in? I would think the overlap between users here for emulation stuff and people with homebrew-enabled Switches to be pretty high. If you are interested, should I focus on simply sharing the scripts, or just say F it and release a complete build? I still have a bit more testing I would want to do before releasing anything, so expect it to be a week at least. I am building an image with my most recent changes currently. If everything looks good after further testing, this would be almost as close to final as I would want it.
For those curious about Switch homebrew and emulation, there is a ton of information available all over the internet. Look up any of the homebrew guides to get an idea what is possible. Plus, the likelihood of you already owning an exploitable console is pretty high. For emulation, it can comfortably handle some of the more demanding emus, such as Dreamcast and PSP. GameCube is close, but only for about 25% of the library. You can run PS2 on Android for the Switch, but it just isn’t powerful enough for any meaningful games. Everything else is a cakewalk, with it handling even some of the more demanding shaders.
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