GameCube & Wii Emulation

Ember launches GameCube and Wii ROMs through Dolphin Emulator. It supports both Flatpak and native installations.

Installing Dolphin

Flatpak (recommended)

flatpak install flathub org.DolphinEmu.dolphin-emu

This keeps Dolphin sandboxed and automatically updated.

Native package

Debian / Ubuntu

sudo apt install dolphin-emu

Fedora

sudo dnf install dolphin-emu

Arch

sudo pacman -S dolphin-emu

Auto-fullscreen setup

The Flatpak Dolphin build does not expose a --fullscreen CLI flag. To get fullscreen launches:

1. Open Dolphin manually once:

   flatpak run org.DolphinEmu.dolphin-emu

2. Go to Options → Interface → Start in Fullscreen
3. Close Dolphin

After that, Ember’s batch-mode launches will boot straight into fullscreen.

xdotool (X11 only)

After launching a game, Ember polls for the Dolphin window and sends Alt+Return to auto-fullscreen it. This only works on X11.

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install xdotool

# Fedora
sudo dnf install xdotool

# Arch
sudo pacman -S xdotool

How it works

1. Ember detects the ROM type by file extension (.iso, .gcm, .wbfs, etc.)
2. It checks for the Flatpak Dolphin first; if missing, falls back to the native dolphin-emu binary
3. Launches with -b (batch mode) to suppress the GUI
4. On X11, polls for the window and sends the fullscreen keystroke