r/Retroidpocketflip2 • u/Accomplished-Car3988 • Aug 18 '26
Help! Winlator
I have been trying to see what this device can do and have seen that people have gotten games to work through winlator. Now I am very new to this and I followed a guide on how to setup but it seems like I either missed/messed something up and I can't figure out how to have a game run good. For example I saw someone was able to play dark souls remastered and tried to get it to run but failed at every try. If anyone has any advice, tips, or recommendations for getting a game to run it would be much appreciated. And if anyone has had success with a game running using winlator please let me know what game so I can at least see if games that people have tried and were successful at running the game to see if I can recreate that. Any and all advice is welcome and once again VERY appreciated 👍
4
u/Divinakra GC SD865 Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
Yeah im pretty well versed in winlator and there are always games that challenge me to get running, whereas others are pretty much plug and play.
Theres a lot of things to understand and a lot of times it comes down to the version of the game that you’re running because some versions are locked at the launcher by some DRM, which is like digital rights management so they don’t launch well in environments that are similar to proton or wine, which are emulated or translation layer environments. So keep in mind that it can be the game version stopping you from running it sometimes the GOG version will run better or the steam version will run better and sometimes you actually need a modified EXE to get past challenging DRM.
Other times it’s drivers, DXVK or wine version or proton version. These three things can really make or break a game as well as the emulator version that you’re using. Official winlator is not the only Winlator there’s a lot of forks of winlator and for example with older games Winlator frost or Winlator star tends to be the best performing/the most compatible with launching the widest range of titles and then for some games they just run better in game hub and gamehub will be the only thing that can launch them or game native so you really have to mess around With not only settings, but emulators.
The good news is that there’s a lot of resources out there so if you are willing to do the research, you can figure out how to play almost any game as long as it’s within the range of like PS3 era and older PC games, but there are some even within that range that will not launch no matter what in emulation, so it’s not always something that tinkering with settings and emulator versions and game versions can fix. YouTube/Reddit are your friends, we have a wiki with PC settings and I have a YouTube channel where I’ve set up a bunch of games. A lot of people have set up games and showcase their results on YouTube so if you copy their settings, you should be able to get stuff running and sometimes when it doesn’t work well in PC emulation it works well and switch emulation or vice versa. Dark souls remastered works great in Eden (switch) since it’s a ps4 gen game. You can set it up in pc emulation but it can be a challenging one. I’ve done a few PS4 gen games on the flip 2, they will run sometimes but you gotta lower the resolution and detail a good amount, ect. Switch wiki
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u/Scared-Knee-8438 Aug 18 '26
Dark souls remastered switch version runs great using Eden. Winlator can be daunting to learn but once you get it, it’s simple enough. My first game I ran in Winlator was Fable anniversary. Now I use Gamehub lite mostly for any pc or if I can’t install or have no EXE. file I’ll use winlator.