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samuelqwe
15 minutes ago, cayars said:

Emby Theater is available on more OSes than just Windows.  You could give this a try.
https://emby.media/emby-theater-macos.html

I don't use Gamebrowser other than a test setup so I'm not sure exactly what client platforms are supported.

Carlo

The Emby app for macOS is basically just a ported version of the iOS app. It doesn't have any support for external players or GameBrowser, as far as I can tell.

Edited by samuelqwe
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sundevil67
22 minutes ago, samuelqwe said:

The Emby app for macOS is basically just a ported version of the iOS app. It doesn't have any support for external players or GameBrowser, as far as I can tell.

Thanks - so if I am hearing all of this right, there is a Mac version of Theater (thanks @cayars, I don't know why I couldn't find that, but I sure couldn't - only links to the Windows version from the Game Browser documentation.. which may be a sorta subtle way of saying what @samuelqwewas alluding to... but no one is saying for sure that it doesn't work with Mac OS, so I guess there's nothing to lose by giving it a try... It would be a nice way to store & organize all of my ROMs which have gotten a little all over the place. If anyone knows for sure this won't work, please don't be afraid to chime in & save me the effort!

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Currently only Emby Theater for Windows and Linux support it via launching external players, but over time we'll support it on more platforms.

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sundevil67

I suppose then it could run on other platforms as a cataloging tool to display & organize a game collection without any connection to emulators... I've been trying to figure out where the most value is, but like the folder sync plugin we were discussing the other day, it's feeling a little like a partial solution in search of a problem. It looks like I won't have a chance to explore it further however, as I've just learned that I can't run that version of Emby's personal client on my version of Mac OS anyway. Once I have a new Mac Mini in the budget, I'll be able to test it out, though that budget will come from a new full-time work schedule that'll eliminate the free time required... ;<)

I was hoping to cobble together a portable user-friendly retro gaming system with the Fire Stick, with Emby as the front-end, but for this & some other reasons it looks like it makes more sense to go another way. Thanks again for taking the time to discuss!

11 hours ago, Luke said:

Currently only Emby Theater for Windows and Linux support it via launching external players, but over time we'll support it on more platforms.

 

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  • 1 month later...
yoyo77yo

Hello i would like to kwow if i can play on wan ? 

Emby is on synology server and if i' am not at home, i would like play games but not with lan : with WAN

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I don't think location matters.  You just need to have the setup in place as described in the guide.

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  • 2 months later...
stephen_hill

Hi

Is there a full list of file extensions that the game library/plugin supports?

I was planning on putting some of my GOG.com games in my library for local download. Most of the games are .exe installers.

I've setup the game system
image.png.6004d3b7cf2936bdc639a344337532e8.png

I've put the game installer into the directory I think is correct
image.png.81cd5587f6ba3c3686035d28daceee2d.png

After re-scanning the library, the game does not appear
image.png.0b539b2827d85df696969525a12c80c9.png

 

Have I done something wrong, or are .exe files not supports? (And if they are not supported, what is the list of supported extensions?)

Many Thanks
Stephen

 

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I don't use this myself as I'm not a gamer but it's my understanding this isn't meant to be used for running DOS or Windows games or games on the Steam platform but instead is for running "old school" games under an Emulation platform that GameBrowser supports.

Emby Classic was able to run DOS and Windows games to a limited extent.

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  • 1 month later...
Charliexyx

Hey there,

I started with emby a few months ago and i have archived a lot of movies and audio books right now. I love the possibility to accesss my media through this tool even though it is hard to organize the data, especially for audio books because data on CD are not well metadatastructured and somehow it feels like kindalike rarely any audiobook is found, therefore I have to add all images manually.

I have seen, it is possible to organize games and I have like a thousand of old Windows games or even more). But it currently looks like they are only compatible with Emby Classic.

So I got some questions probably they can be answered, that would be great!

- Is there any possibility to install "Emby Classic" so I can archive and run my Windows games, too? I'd love to!
- Is there any release plans if and when windows-Game-Support will be released for the new Emby?
- is it planned to support the same structure - if I make it compatible with emby classic, will it run on the new emby later on without greater adjustments?
- will emby (Classic) support different type of game-files: "Installer" and "ready to run games"?
- can Emby support .iso disk images with one or multiple different game installers?
- probably not the right place to ask, but maybe someone knows....: is it possible to connect SSD to Synology NAS and mark a single subfolder such that the server moves the Game files to SSD before playing the game? I have seen that the 50gb of emby metadata can be copied within about two minute to the same HDD it reads those from (I made a manual backup before updating emby to 4.7.9.0), but I guess thousand of small gamefiles could be accessed faster from SSD?!, I would be willed to buy the hardware and wait that time before playing a game for the first time and if my SSD reaches limit or maybe automatically after not plaing a game for e.g. 1 month, or even manually I would mark the game as "archive" so that the system copies the games back to HDD. But this should happen in the background without actually changing the folder structure...

I would be very happy about answers abouzt my questions.

Im not sure if this project can be realised with emby or not. But I hope so. :)

Best wishes!

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I do not want to give you any wrong information on this and have you spending time on something that may not work.  

I'm tagging both @ebr and @Luke to see if one of them can answer your questions definitively.

Carlo

 

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Ninja_Gundam

Trying this plugin, rom scanned ok, but.. I can not find "External Players"

following this : Settings > External Players > Add Player

to load the emu etc..

I am on the latest build 47100

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58 minutes ago, Ninja_Gundam said:

Trying this plugin, rom scanned ok, but.. I can not find "External Players"

following this : Settings > External Players > Add Player

to load the emu etc..

I am on the latest build 47100

Hi, you can do this in Emby Theater for Windows: https://emby.media/emby-theater.html

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sundevil67

I'm finding myself very interested in this topic again since buying an "Odin" (handheld Android-based system intended for retro gaming , and the coolest toy ever), and am finding that I really need a central location in which to manage my very large game collection. Emby runs great on the device, and every game launcher/organizer I've tried is a buggy mess.

I'm still not sure if the fact that my Emby server is MacOS, that disqualifies me from any option to use this plugin or if there is a workaround of some kind? I can't seem to dig up an 'official' page that might have any more specific info... but I wanted to check in and see if there'd been any movement on this or a user out there somewhere with a similar setup to mine who managed to get this set up.

Thanks.

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9 hours ago, sundevil67 said:

I'm finding myself very interested in this topic again since buying an "Odin" (handheld Android-based system intended for retro gaming , and the coolest toy ever), and am finding that I really need a central location in which to manage my very large game collection. Emby runs great on the device, and every game launcher/organizer I've tried is a buggy mess.

I'm still not sure if the fact that my Emby server is MacOS, that disqualifies me from any option to use this plugin or if there is a workaround of some kind? I can't seem to dig up an 'official' page that might have any more specific info... but I wanted to check in and see if there'd been any movement on this or a user out there somewhere with a similar setup to mine who managed to get this set up.

Thanks.

You can use the GameBrowser plugin on any server platform. That will allow you to import games into your Emby library and browse and manage them, but playback of games is currently limited to Emby Theater for Windows.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/23/2022 at 12:02 AM, Charliexyx said:

Hey there,

I started with emby a few months ago and i have archived a lot of movies and audio books right now. I love the possibility to accesss my media through this tool even though it is hard to organize the data, especially for audio books because data on CD are not well metadatastructured and somehow it feels like kindalike rarely any audiobook is found, therefore I have to add all images manually.

I have seen, it is possible to organize games and I have like a thousand of old Windows games or even more). But it currently looks like they are only compatible with Emby Classic.

So I got some questions probably they can be answered, that would be great!

- Is there any possibility to install "Emby Classic" so I can archive and run my Windows games, too? I'd love to!
- Is there any release plans if and when windows-Game-Support will be released for the new Emby?
- is it planned to support the same structure - if I make it compatible with emby classic, will it run on the new emby later on without greater adjustments?
- will emby (Classic) support different type of game-files: "Installer" and "ready to run games"?
- can Emby support .iso disk images with one or multiple different game installers?
- probably not the right place to ask, but maybe someone knows....: is it possible to connect SSD to Synology NAS and mark a single subfolder such that the server moves the Game files to SSD before playing the game? I have seen that the 50gb of emby metadata can be copied within about two minute to the same HDD it reads those from (I made a manual backup before updating emby to 4.7.9.0), but I guess thousand of small gamefiles could be accessed faster from SSD?!, I would be willed to buy the hardware and wait that time before playing a game for the first time and if my SSD reaches limit or maybe automatically after not plaing a game for e.g. 1 month, or even manually I would mark the game as "archive" so that the system copies the games back to HDD. But this should happen in the background without actually changing the folder structure...

I would be very happy about answers abouzt my questions.

Im not sure if this project can be realised with emby or not. But I hope so. :)

Best wishes!

Hi @Charliexyx you can actually run games in Emby Theater by setting up external players, although you cannot currently setup different external players for individual games, which I guess would be needed for windows games. So that's the last missing peice.

But about Emby Classic, that's legacy at this point because it only runs inside Windows Media Center.

Quote

- is it planned to support the same structure - if I make it compatible with emby classic, will it run on the new emby later on without greater adjustments

The required folder structure for games won't change. But as far as actually launching and playing games, I can't promise that everything will be done exactly the same in Theater as it was in Classic, because we're obviously going to take a fresh look at everything and see what makes sense nowadays as opposed to what made sense six years ago.

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Charliexyx
On 12/11/2022 at 6:29 AM, Luke said:

Hi @Charliexyx you can actually run games in Emby Theater by setting up external players, although you cannot currently setup different external players for individual games, which I guess would be needed for windows games. So that's the last missing peice.

But about Emby Classic, that's legacy at this point because it only runs inside Windows Media Center.

The required folder structure for games won't change. But as far as actually launching and playing games, I can't promise that everything will be done exactly the same in Theater as it was in Classic, because we're obviously going to take a fresh look at everything and see what makes sense nowadays as opposed to what made sense six years ago.

Hey @Luke,

thanks for your reply. That actually sound just like a little problem.

maybe.. I could just write my own external player? Not that I am that good at programming windows programs, but I mean, how much of work should it take?

I guess the external player is eventually just a file (or more) which takes some parameters about which game it should run, especially a path to the executable of the game, and then it can run that program, that could be written in just one line of code maybe?

Am I Missing something?

 

Looks like I can  give it a try after organizing the remaining Movie and Audio files.

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On 12/16/2022 at 12:17 AM, Charliexyx said:

Hey @Luke,

thanks for your reply. That actually sound just like a little problem.

maybe.. I could just write my own external player? Not that I am that good at programming windows programs, but I mean, how much of work should it take?

I guess the external player is eventually just a file (or more) which takes some parameters about which game it should run, especially a path to the executable of the game, and then it can run that program, that could be written in just one line of code maybe?

Am I Missing something?

 

Looks like I can  give it a try after organizing the remaining Movie and Audio files.

You could write your own windows executable to be the external player in emby, and then your program will need to launch the actual windows game file.

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  • 5 weeks later...
Whatscheiser

Would it be possible to add the option for GameBrowser to generate a .nfo file that could be placed with the ROM files? 

I ask because currently it seems nothing can be scraped off of the web (unless I have fundamentally misunderstood something) so I am entering metadata manually based on pulls I have from the LaunchBox database. It'd be great to have a way to save that data with my game files in the event I need to rebuild the collection at some point.

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1 hour ago, Whatscheiser said:

Would it be possible to add the option for GameBrowser to generate a .nfo file that could be placed with the ROM files? 

I ask because currently it seems nothing can be scraped off of the web (unless I have fundamentally misunderstood something) so I am entering metadata manually based on pulls I have from the LaunchBox database. It'd be great to have a way to save that data with my game files in the event I need to rebuild the collection at some point.

HI, what do you mean by within the rom files?

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Cheesegeezer
2 hours ago, Luke said:

HI, what do you mean by within the rom files?

Rom files date back to super cool but old arcade games we used to play in the 80’s like, altered beast, original street fighter,  ninja warrior, sport games, tron, double dragon afterburner, etc

what really needs to be done is use the old xbmc api for populating metadata for this.  Then create a nfo file to sit with that title so Emby can use the metadata 
 

however is someone knows of an existing api to use thats public, free and conforms with emby T&C’s for providers please shout out.

 

Edited by Cheesegeezer
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Whatscheiser
2 hours ago, Luke said:

HI, what do you mean by within the rom files?

Not within the ROM but placed with the ROM, in the same file folder.

As I'm doing things now, I'm placing my images with names that Emby understands in the same file folder as my Game ROMs. When I do a library scan, this automatically populates my images for each of my game entries. I'd like to be able to save a .nfo file in these directories as well, with the goal being that a library scan would also rebuild the metadata for the games if I had to recreate the library.

I believe (I'm new to this software) this can currently be done for Movie and TV libraries. I'd just like to do the same for Games.

Edited by Whatscheiser
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Cheesegeezer

Yeah we are talking about 3Gb of roms for thousands of titles for every arcade game that was done in the 80’s and 90’s before playstation ruined it all lol 😂 

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Whatscheiser
7 minutes ago, Cheesegeezer said:

Yeah we are talking about 3Gb of roms for thousands of titles for every arcade game that was done in the 80’s and 90’s before playstation ruined it all lol 😂 

No I am talking about generating a .nfo file for metadata I have already manually populated within my own library. I just want the ability to backup my own data entries.

 

Quote

however is someone knows of an existing api to use thats public, free and conforms with emby T&C’s for providers please shout out.

While we are on the topic though... it looks like there used to be an EmuMovies plugin that would cover this, but I'm under the impression its not been in working order for a few years. There is also separate launcher software I have been using called LaunchBox which maintains their own extensive database. Getting access to it outside of their software is something I can't comment on though.

Edited by Whatscheiser
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Cheesegeezer
9 minutes ago, Whatscheiser said:

No I am talking about generating a .nfo file for metadata I have already manually populated within my own library. I just want the ability to backup my own data entries.

 

While we are on the topic though... it looks like there used to be an EmuMovies plugin that would cover this, but I'm under the impression its not been in working order for a few years. There is also separate launcher software I have been using called LaunchBox which maintains their own extensive database. Getting access to it outside of their software is something I can't comment on though.

Apologies i miss understood. I could easily knock up a backup/restore plugin for this.

i will need details on format and a reference nfo or file. 
 

im not much of a metadata provider plugin guy, so that’s on the back burner, i got some channels (first time) im working on so nae promises pal.

pm me with any details you have (although i think the new lingo is to DM) lol 😂 

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