solarus - RetroBIOS¶
Technical notes
2D action-RPG engine running quests scripted in Lua, built as libsolarus with
the solarus-run command-line player and the Qt Solarus Launcher on top. ES-DE
runs solarus-run <rom> on a single .solarus file, Batocera as solarus-run
-fullscreen=yes -cursor-visible=no -lua-console=no -quit-combo=<hotkey>+<start>
-joypad-num<n>=<index> <rom> off a bbecaf31 pin, RetroDECK ships the v2.0.3
solarus-launcher AppImage.
The quest arrives as the content argument. get_quest_path takes the last non-option argv and otherwise falls back to SOLARUS_DEFAULT_QUEST, which defaults to "." (src/core/MainLoop.cpp:108-121, cmake/AddOptions.cmake:8, include/solarus/core/Common.h:119-123). open_quest mounts that path through PhysFS directly, then tries <path>/data, <path>/data.solarus and <path>/data.solarus.zip, each both relative and under PHYSFS_getBaseDir (src/core/QuestFiles.cpp:151-165), and the quest counts as found once quest.dat resolves (src/core/QuestFiles.cpp:228-233). The rest comes out of that mount: quest.dat and project_db.dat (src/core/CurrentQuest.cpp:44,49), fonts under fonts/ as .png, .ttf, .otf, .ttc or .fon (src/core/FontResource.cpp:65-101), shaders under shaders/ (src/graphics/Shader.cpp:113), tilesets, sprites and music (src/entities/Tileset.cpp:156-174, src/graphics/SpriteAnimationSet.cpp:48, src/audio/MusicSystem.cpp:136-142).
Startup reads one file from outside the quest. System::initialize probes SDL_GetBasePath() then SOLARUS_DATADIR_PATH for gamecontrollerdb.txt and hands whichever it finds to SDL through SDL_HINT_GAMECONTROLLERCONFIG_FILE (src/core/System.cpp:71-99). The GLSL fallbacks are raw string literals in include/solarus/graphics/DefaultShaders.h:57,114, and glad, hqx and snes_spc compile in from third_party/.
Files the engine writes rather than expects: settings.dat and savegames under the quest write directory named in quest.dat (src/core/Settings.cpp:183-200,274-314, src/core/Savegame.cpp:132), the write root from SDL_GetPrefPath (src/core/QuestFiles.cpp:721), and error.txt under SOLARUS_FILE_LOGGING (src/core/Logger.cpp:29-45). Batocera's 002-pad.patch adds a read of /userdata/system/configs/solarus/pads.ini, which its own generator rewrites at every launch. The editor and launcher subtrees build separately from the root CMakeLists, which adds only cli/, tests/ and third_party/, and their assets are Qt resources compiled into those binaries (editor/cmake/AddQtFiles.cmake:47-51, launcher/cmake/addTarget.cmake:30).
1 files | 0 required, 1 optional | 1 in repo, 0 missing Categories: 1 game data
gamecontrollerdb.txt optional in repo game_data bundled
SDL gamepad mappings applied on top of the built-in table
- System: solarus
- Size: 586.4 KB
- SHA1:
ab035b780408... - MD5:
1e70da4de91b... - Source:
src/core/System.cpp:71-99,cmake/AddDefines.cmake:44-49,cmake/AddInstallTargets.cmake:23-28 - Looked up next to the executable first, then under SOLARUS_DATADIR_PATH, share/solarus by default (cmake/AddInstallDirs.cmake:14). Installed from assets/gamecontrollerdb.txt when SOLARUS_GAMECONTROLLERDB_INSTALL is on, which is the default (cmake/AddOptions.cmake:51), and carried in the release archives (.gitlab-ci.yml:306). Both probes are guarded by an existence test, and neither hitting leaves SDL on its built-in mappings.
Generated on 2026-10-10T11:26:02Z