Remove Games from Emby

[Lyfesaver 64]

Games do not work 3.5.x and currently they dont work in 3.6.x. Also, they did not work in 3.4 or even 3.3 from my testing. Anything that does not work and is not important enough to fix, needs to be removed as core of Emby and be made to act as a plugin ONLY.

 

They day @@Luke said to me, and I am paraphrasing here, "Games do not work in 3.5 but I have started to look at them in 3.6" I then looked at the version number of 3.5. It was then, and is now, at 3.5.3. This means that 3 hotfixes/revisons were rolled out. I dont know what those addressed (I could go look) and while I am sure they were important you don't completely ignore another advertised feature that does not work at all.

 

@@Luke even said that Games were not a an important part of Emby (again I am paraphrasing, I could go find the quote). They are, at most, an afterthought. A byproduct of what ET can do cuz it is on a full PC, not a streaming box. And that's fine, but if it is not important enough for the core team to maintain, and if the core team is going to continue to treat it like an ugly stepchild, then remove it from core and make it plugin only.

Edited October 26, 2018 by Lyfesaver

[Spaceboy 2493]

Why? Even without the full functionality I like having my games in my library

[Lyfesaver 64]

Well, we can set aside false advertising (and I dont mean that in the traditional sense) its wrong to mislead people even when the software is free. How would you feel if Emby showed off your TV collection but could only play music and movies? What is important to one might not be as important to the other.

 

Games are important to me, not only because I am a retro gamer, but also because I use that same ability to launch not only games but other programs and web apps. One client, the main one in the Tiny House, needs to be able to launch everything I routinely need, including web pages that control my smart home devices as one example.

 

ET has so much potential to be a full HTPC front end even without doing anything other than getting out of Windows way. I have these websites, web apps and desktop apps all to be controlled using my remote (some EventGhost steps needed) so all I need is for Emby to launch it. Windows knows what to do with the file extension.

 

But all that aside.... you dont put out software that does not do what it says it does. Bugs are one thing, but complete lack of basic functionality of a named feature is completely different. The truth is the named feature in question is not nearly as important as other features (and I agree with that %100 btw) so the Emby team should decide:

1) Make sure Games work before ANY release just as much as TV, Movies and Music. I am just talking about testing, not development, and the same level of "We cant release it in this state" as you would TV or anything else.

2) Remove from the base application and make it a plugin. If it going to be treated as "less than" then do it the right way.

 

This is all just my opinion made from things I have experienced and seen from my point of view.

Edited October 26, 2018 by Lyfesaver

[HediSIX 45]

Hi @Lyfesaver 

If I understand your concern is that this module is not able to launch the games, right ?

Game management is already a plugin on the server side; is it different for Emby Theater ? I am not really using ET but I thought that you could set up the game module to launch your emulator using ET as a front end?

 

As far as I am concerned, I would not like Games to be removed from Emby for different reasons.

I am currently using Emby to manage my rom collection and I use Kodi with the addon Rom Collection Browser as a front end (correctly configured, it will use the metadatas, nfo and images stored by Emby). This works perfectly and allow me to manage the games info from Emby as I am doing with the other libraries.

But I don't know how it's going to work in the future with Kodi 18 as it will suposedly manage roms directly without an additional add-on… I hope that the Emby team will find a way to integrate this in the Kodi connector.

 

What would be super nice would be to be able to run the roms directly from the web browser ! I have read somewhere about emulators fully in javascript/html5 for old consoles (maybe up to SuperNES/megadrive)

[Luke 37010]

 

 

I am not really using ET but I thought that you could set up the game module to launch your emulator using ET as a front end?

 

Yes, but there is an issue with it that I haven't had a chance to look at yet.

[HediSIX 45]

ok, I didn't know about the issue as I am using Kodi as a front end 

BTW, I have just noticed that thegamesdb.net has been updated recently and they made some modifications to their API including the possibility to filter by plateform (which caused issues in the past to get the right game information). Did you see that ?

[Luke 37010]

Right now the gamesdb metadata provider has been removed altogether due to this:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/61292-gamesdb-returning-no-results-in-metadata-manager

 

Have they raised their api limit?

[HediSIX 45]

I don't think this will change immediately.

It looks like they are working on securing a server host as the guy that was provinding this for free will no longer be able to do it:

https://forums.thegamesdb.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=422

I hope they will find a way to increase their bandwidth when they will migrate their server.

 

Anyway, I think the question of limitation has to be discussed with them, hopefully they would be ok to provide you with "unlimited access". I don't think you will want to mirror their database to provide access to Emby users.

 

Are you using another provider?

[Luke 37010]

Emumovies but i don't know of any others besides that.

[HediSIX 45]

@@Luke,

I have done a quick research and the only one I found that look serious enough is IGDB.com (apart from thegamesdb.net and Launchbox-App discussed in the other thread)

https://www.igdb.com

https://www.igdb.com/api

 

They state that they have more than 100k games in their db, the big issue is the access conditions:

https://api.igdb.com/pricing

 

I'll let you know if I find anything better

[Lyfesaver 64]

[DELETED BY POSTER - IDCA]

Edited October 28, 2018 by Lyfesaver

[Luke 37010]

Thanks for the info.

[crazybbs 24]

I'll take this bug to update gamebrowser plugin , I asked for the api key and the limit are still 1000 request by month but BY IP . so I think it could  be manageable even if I know that some peoples have thousands of games because of NES but over the time it could be filled by the api.

 

So @@Luke , If I take the time to update gamebrowser plugin, will you accept the modification or i'm losing time because 1000 request by month by ip is not acceptable for you?

 

 

For the problem to lauch games inside Emby theater , I've already resolved the problem so you can install my plugin inside theater to resolve it, it should work even if you don't have metadata from gamedb, it's two differents bug that are not linked to each other.

 

plugin adress

 

https://crazybbs.github.io/Emby.Theater.Applications/package.json

Edited October 28, 2018 by crazybbs

[Luke 37010]

I can't merge those changes in, sorry. We will just get hit with too many "not working" reports. For me to merge it into our plugin catalog it will need to work better out of the box.

[VaporTrail 66]

@@Luke have you looked into giantbomb.com API? They say: "Space out your requests so AT LEAST one second passes between each and you can make requests all day."

 

https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/api-developers-3017/api-rate-limiting-1786442/

[Luke 37010]

Do they have good data?

[VaporTrail 66]

Doesn't look too bad. You may find some fields more useful than others, but w/ unlimited requests on a time-delay, perhaps worth investigating for stability's sake. It's also user-generated content, so Emby users can improve their own results.

 

Here's an example: https://www.giantbomb.com/battletoads-double-dragon-the-ultimate-team/3030-19366/

 

The same example displayed in Launchbox using EmuMovies, Launchbox DB, Wikipedia & Steam:

 

[VaporTrail 66]

There's also the same one-second-per-request delay in Launchbox because of EmuMovies. To scrape from them, one must create a free EmuMovies account, then login via Launchbox. A premium EmuMovies account removes the delay.

 

Launchbox users frequently mention it takes upwards of 5-10 hours to scrape their games library, hence why many go premium.

 

You may find more quality metadata options given an expected slower scraping process.

[VaporTrail 66]

If you can work with EmuMovies, perhaps the flow could be:

 

1. Create optional EmuMovies metadata plugin

2. User installs plugin, new option appears to connect EmuMovies account via Dashboard Settings > Users > Admin

3. Option now available in Games media library to add EmuMovies as metadata source

4. Since option to keep metadata & images next to media exists, lengthy scrapes are offset by using free EmuMovies account & only having to scrape once

 

Perhaps GiantBomb.com or other metadata sources are available by default. Data may not be as good, but good enough if it never denies requests, and requires no further config by the end user.

[Luke 37010]

We're happy to look into other sources of metadata for games if you can suggest any. Thanks.

[LichenKing 16]

Any more effort in this?

I have games scanned in emby but cannot take advantage of any metadata information so it is just folder items.

This looks pretty good even though the user needs to register their own API key

https://www.igdb.com/api

[Luke 37010]

6 hours ago, LichenKing said:

Any more effort in this?

I have games scanned in emby but cannot take advantage of any metadata information so it is just folder items.

This looks pretty good even though the user needs to register their own API key

https://www.igdb.com/api

Any options that wouldn't require individual user api keys?

[LichenKing 16]

• https://www.igdb.com/api (Required OAuth for personal token authorization) (Parent company Twitch)
• https://api.rawg.io/docs/ (Required apikey for authorization)
• https://www.giantbomb.com/api/documentation/ (Required apikey for authorization) (Parent company Gamespot)
• https://thegamesdb.net/ (Required apikey for authorization, access requires special request)

They all have similar requirements. Really the authorization is most likely to avoid abusing creating your own service to simulate their same data set and features.
IGDB seems to be the most robust in terms of raw data. GiantBomb seems second most favorable in terms of completeness.
Not too concerned about authorization flow. Pretty common these days and could be setup in the plugin settings.

There might be other players but with too small of databases.

Main reason I was asking about this is more and more home media (including Video Games) has turned into a hub environment. Games can be a big part of that ecosystem and like to see Emby take a crack at the presentation market for these libraries. I could always load up RetroArch that does this all in one presentation but then it is a separate presentation layer inside another app.

Edited November 25, 2022 by LichenKing