SeedlessDS Setup Guide
Table of contents
What is SeedlessDS?
SeedlessDS is based off of Drastic, which was a long standing emulator in the community and then was discontinued and abandoned.
However, it was and still continues to be the best option for low powered devices, and so SeedlessDS continues that here.
There’s a few differences compared to Drastic, this has dualscreen presets to properly configure both screens, the UI has been adjusted to work entirely with controls, it’s a bit easier to understand and navigate, there’s upscaling up to 8x, this has RetroAchievements support for casual users – no hardcore support and a whole bunch more.
Why SeedlessDS over WatermelonDS?
SeedlessDS is only worth using if you’re using a low powered Android device, like the Retroid Pocket Duo Lite or Anbernic RG DS, or any single screen devices that are around that power or worse.
For powerful devices like the Retroid Pocket Duo, AYN Thor, Ayaneo Pocket DS and so on, you’d want to stick to WatermelonDS.
ROMs
You’re going to need ROMs for today’s guide – for many reasons, I can’t help you with how or where to get them.
Nintendo DS ROMs are either in a ZIP or NDS format – either of which are perfectly fine to be used.
You will want decrypted ROMs, not decrypted.
As for organizing these files, I would create a ROMs folder on your device or SD card if you have one connected and then create an nds folder and put all of your games inside of it.
Once again, all of this can be done directly on your Android device just using any file manager and web browser.
Installing SeedlessDS
Okay, let’s start the actual installation.
Head to the SeedlessDS Github releases page, and download whatever the latest release is – just the APK file under Assets of the latest post.
Once it’s downloaded, open the APK and install it – then open SeedlessDS.
Adding Your ROMs
This is the main page of Seedless DS.
The very first thing we want to do is tell it where our ROMs are.
If you followed along earlier, they’ll be in your ROMs folder, inside the NDS folder.
Tap Add Folder and then navigate to your NDS folder and select Use this folder and Allow.
Give it a second and it’ll populate all of your games and grab the artwork.
If your games aren’t showing up, make sure your ROMs are in ZIP or NDS format.
While we’re here, there are a few things you can do.
You can sort by Favorites, DS, DSiWare, and RetroAchievements games.
We haven’t logged in to RetroAchievements yet, but we’ll get to that.
If you press and hold on a game, you can star it as a Favorite, open its game settings, or create a shortcut.
Settings
For now, let’s jump into Settings in the top right settings cog.
Video
There isn’t a lot I’d change here.
Max fast-forward speed is set to 2x by default.
I suggest 3x, but it’s up to you.
It sets how fast your fast-forward goes.
Keep in mind it’s limited by how much power your device has, so it won’t magically run a game at 3x if the hardware can’t handle it.
3x is what I generally use.
Fast-forward as a toggle is what I prefer rather than having to hold the button down.
Internal resolution is set to 2x by default and goes all the way up to 8x.
The Retroid Pocket Duo Lite and Anbernic RG DS aren’t powerful enough for 8x, and the screens wouldn’t benefit from it anyway.
On the Duo Lite you can do 3x or even 4x in some games, but 2x is the safe choice.
This one is game-dependent and will vary by device, so play around with it to see what you can get away with.
Show FPS is a setting I’ll be turning on.
That’s everything on this page.
Let’s back out and go to Screens.
Screens
By default, this is already set up correctly for the Retroid Pocket Duo Lite.
The preset is Top here, bottom on TV, which is exactly what we want: the top screen is on top and the bottom screen is on the bottom.
If you have a different device where the screens are different, you might want Bottom here, top on TV instead, but this is correct for the Duo Lite.
Next, open Dual Screen Preset Configs:
- Keep DS aspect ratio: I’m turning this on, and I’ll show you what it looks like later. It keeps the original DS aspect ratio instead of stretching to fill both screens, while still using as much of the screen as the ratio allows.
- Same screen size: This makes the top screen match the size of the bottom screen. If you like having both DS screens the same size, keep this on. It’s on by default.
- Integer scale: This integer-scales the screens. I’m turning all of these on so I can show you what they look like, and then it’s up to you whether to change them.
- Fill width / Fill height: If you’re a monster and just want to fill the screens, you can stretch them to fill the width or height.
- Vertical alignment: I like both screens centered vertically, but you can align them however you want. For example, you can set the top screen to bottom-align and the bottom screen to top-align.
There’s nothing else I’d change here, so let’s back out.
On-Screen Controls
We’re using physical controls, so there’s no reason to use any on-screen controls.
I’m turning off Show Start/Select and changing Menu button position to Hidden.
It’s already set to hide when a gamepad is connected, but there are a few things worth turning off.
Leave the rest as is.
Obviously, if you are using on-screen controls, don’t turn these off.
Physical Buttons
By default, everything is mapped automatically for the Duo Lite.
If you open Map Gamepad Buttons, you’ll see everything is mapped exactly how you’d want.
What isn’t mapped is the hotkeys. I like:
- Fast forward: R2
- Swap screens: L2
There are other options too, like swap layouts, microphone noise, cycle layouts, and turbo, which you could put on L3 and R3 if you like.
Those first two are the ones I use, though, so I don’t touch anything else.
DS System
The only change you might want here is your nickname, which shows up in some games.
It’s set to “Dra Sapph” by default, so change it if you want. I wouldn’t touch anything else.
Saves & States
By default, save files are stored next to the ROM.
There’s also App storage, which I would never touch.
I suggest using a Custom folder.
Here’s how I set it up.
Change the option to Custom folder, then select the custom folder setting that appears.
On either your internal storage or SD card, create a new folder.
I’m putting mine on my SD card and calling it Seedless.
Tap OK, then Use this folder, then Allow.
Now any saves you make will go into that Seedless folder, so they’re easy to find.
You can keep them next to the ROM if you prefer, but I like having everything in one folder.
There are a few other options here too:
- Autosave: You can autosave on pause or every 5 minutes.
- Autoload last game: This loads the last state you made, not your save file when loading the game.
- Confirm state load: If you find yourself accidentally overwriting or loading states, this helps prevent that.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t touch anything else on this page.
RetroAchievements
If you have a RetroAchievements account, log in here.
After signing in, make sure you enable RetroAchievements.
There’s nothing else you need to touch here.
That’s it for settings.
Launching a Game
To launch a game, just tap it and give it a few seconds to load.
In-Game Menu
Use your device’s back button to get the in-game menu, or the back gesture or back arrow.
A few things in the in-game menu are worth knowing about:
- Game Settings: Set settings for just this specific game. I haven’t run into a case where I needed this, but the option is there.
- Save State / Load State: Use these if you didn’t set up hotkeys for them.
- Swap Screens: Use this if you didn’t hotkey it.
- Dual Screen Presets: For dual screen devices, gets you to the dual screen presets we talked about earlier.
- Close Lid, plus a bunch of other options.
- Cheats: We’ll cover this in a moment.
- Exit: Exit the game when you’re done and go back to the home screen.
Microphone
Getting the microphone working is a bit finicky, and honestly, it doesn’t work great on this device.
- Open the App Info for Seedless DS.
- Go to Permissions. The microphone will be under “Not allowed.”
- Tap Microphone and choose Allow only while using the app.
- Close Seedless DS completely and reopen it.
I’m testing in Phantom Hourglass, and it doesn’t recognize my voice at all from a normal distance.
It only works when I get really close to the device.
There are settings for this under Settings > Audio:
- Microphone level: I already have this on Very High. On Low or Very Low it doesn’t recognize anything, so High seems to be the most sensitive setting. That still isn’t enough for this device’s microphone.
- Audio latency: This affects audio playback latency and has nothing to do with the microphone.
- Use device microphone: This is enabled.
Long story short, I think it needs another sensitivity level above the current maximum.
Results will depend on your device, and hopefully this improves in a future update.
For now, this is how you get it working.
Encrypted ROMs (BIOS Setup)
If you ended up with encrypted ROMs instead of decrypted ones, here’s how to make them playable.
- Create a BIOS folder inside your ROMs folder, then a DS folder inside that.
- Put these three files in the DS folder:
- bios7.bin
- bios9.bin
- firmware.bin
- In Seedless DS, go to Settings > Advanced and scroll all the way down to System Tools. You’ll see it’s looking for the DS BIOS files.
- Tap Install BIOS, browse to the folder on your SD card (or wherever you put it), open BIOS > DS, select all three files, and tap Select.
Again, this only matters for encrypted ROMs.
Most DS games you’ll find should already be decrypted, so look for decrypted ROMs.
If they’re encrypted, adding the BIOS files takes care of it.
Cheats
In the in-game menu, there’s a Cheats option.
It looks like support for a cheat database is coming in the future.
That’s what we use with WatermelonDS, where you add one file and it provides cheats for everything.
It doesn’t look like that’s set up yet in SeedlessDS.
For now, go to Custom, tap the Plus icon, and add cheats manually.
Any Action Replay codes you find online for DS games can be added this way.
They’ll show up in the list, and you can activate them from there.
Once the cheat database is supported, it should be a lot easier.
Syncthing
The last thing for today is Syncthing, which is pretty easy.
Go to the folder you created for your saves.
You can see my Seedless folder on the SD card with two saves right now, for Advance Wars and Pokémon Black 2.
Just sync that folder with whatever you want.
The saves use the .dsv format, so sync them with another Seedless DS install, for example on another Duo Lite, an Anbernic RG DS, or any other device using the same emulator.