Gamebrowser Guide

[danny19901 1]

I'm pretty new to emby I'm trying to get emulators set up so far I tried to config PS2 with PCSX2 and Sega Dreamcast with redream (Unsure if redream is supported if not I hope it could get supported?)

 

So if I'm not mistaken I have game browser installed in that it asks to + add game systems I'm assuming point to emulator.exe 

After that I went in to external players 

Media Type = Game

Player path 

Point to redream.exe (For Example)

Under that says Game System but no options are showing up for Sega Dreamcast or PS2

Any help will be hugely appreciated.

Also is .chd supported?

Edited March 1, 2024 by danny19901

[Luke 42077]

On 3/1/2024 at 7:18 AM, danny19901 said:

I'm pretty new to emby I'm trying to get emulators set up so far I tried to config PS2 with PCSX2 and Sega Dreamcast with redream (Unsure if redream is supported if not I hope it could get supported?)

 

So if I'm not mistaken I have game browser installed in that it asks to + add game systems I'm assuming point to emulator.exe 

After that I went in to external players 

Media Type = Game

Player path 

Point to redream.exe (For Example)

Under that says Game System but no options are showing up for Sega Dreamcast or PS2

Any help will be hugely appreciated.

Also is .chd supported?

Hi, did you first setup the game systems on your server?

[danny19901 1]

On 01/04/2024 at 21:27, Luke said:

Hi, did you first setup the game systems on your server?

I believe So but oddly when I try select a external player Nothing shows up for them.
I may be doing something wrong But I did also try with other emulators like PCSX2 etc... but left with same issues so I thought I would try get 1 working then work to getting more working. Also thank you so much for reply.

[FancyNerd92 9]

Hello, I'm try to understand how it works. Can it play through Samsung TV app with connected controller on tv? Thanks

[Charliexyx 7]

6 hours ago, FancyNerd92 said:

Hello, I'm try to understand how it works. Can it play through Samsung TV app with connected controller on tv? Thanks

Hi FancyNerd

It is only supported by "Emby Theater", therefore by Windows (and Mac?).

you have to setup external players and that is not possible in the "Emby" Apps or via Browser access.

[tufeixp 1]

On 12/19/2020 at 6:41 AM, patrck269 said:

My apologies for not seeing your reply earlier,

I just pointed the game system folder to my windows games folder, under the main Games library. as far as I can tell it just designates the location of the windows sub-library of the main Games library. 

In regards to using cmd for this, I am unsure if that is possible to do. I originally attempted to use cmd for this as well, but switched to PowerShell as it seemed to be the easier solution. I wish you luck in your project!

I 'm trying to figure out the setup for windows as game system, but it does not work here.

I have added Windows | C:\games to Game Systems in GameBrowser, and also refreshed the media lib named pcGames pointing to C:\games folder, then I open up the External player menu, an can not find the Game system: Windows option there. Anybody knows why?

[tufeixp 1]

I found it works! Just leaving the game system empty.

But I can not find any gamedb metadata downloading option for game type, as descripted in the tutorial. Why?

Edited June 6, 2024 by tufeixp

[Luke 42077]

On 6/6/2024 at 6:07 AM, tufeixp said:

I found it works! Just leaving the game system empty.

But I can not find any gamedb metadata downloading option for game type, as descripted in the tutorial. Why?

Hi, GamesDb is currently disabled. Backstory is here: 

Although if anything has changed we can certainly revisit.

[Gummibeer 5]

On 1/20/2023 at 4:22 AM, Luke said:

Ok yes we should add support for nfo files for games.

Has anything happened about it? I'm running emby server 4.8.8.0 with GameBrowser 3.3.3.0 and don't have a "write NFO files" option in my games library settings and also can't get any NFO file I add to my games library to get picked up. 
With https://www.igdb.com/ it's super easy to get all the metadata and I have a local script that could generate NFO files for my games, if I would know how these NFO files should look like? 
Also can't find any NFO spec for games - so likely a very new topic. 

In case it helps, my current NFO file looks like that:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<game>
  <title>Final Fantasy Tactics Advance</title>
  <rating>81.997594424125</rating>
  <year>2003</year>
  <releasedate>2003-02-14</releasedate>
  <igdbid>414</igdbid>
  <uniqueid type="igdb">414</uniqueid>
  <genre>Role-playing (RPG)</genre>
  <genre>Strategy</genre>
  <genre>Turn-based strategy (TBS)</genre>
  <genre>Tactical</genre>
  <trailer>plugin://plugin.video.youtube/?action=play_video&amp;videoid=sLvY1zlPBCk</trailer>
</game>

Which is mostly copied from the existing movie NFO files and misses all the things like summary, studios, age rating etc.

[Luke 42077]

On 7/9/2024 at 8:28 AM, Gummibeer said:

Has anything happened about it? I'm running emby server 4.8.8.0 with GameBrowser 3.3.3.0 and don't have a "write NFO files" option in my games library settings and also can't get any NFO file I add to my games library to get picked up. 
With https://www.igdb.com/ it's super easy to get all the metadata and I have a local script that could generate NFO files for my games, if I would know how these NFO files should look like? 
Also can't find any NFO spec for games - so likely a very new topic. 

In case it helps, my current NFO file looks like that:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>
<game>
  <title>Final Fantasy Tactics Advance</title>
  <rating>81.997594424125</rating>
  <year>2003</year>
  <releasedate>2003-02-14</releasedate>
  <igdbid>414</igdbid>
  <uniqueid type="igdb">414</uniqueid>
  <genre>Role-playing (RPG)</genre>
  <genre>Strategy</genre>
  <genre>Turn-based strategy (TBS)</genre>
  <genre>Tactical</genre>
  <trailer>plugin://plugin.video.youtube/?action=play_video&amp;videoid=sLvY1zlPBCk</trailer>
</game>

Which is mostly copied from the existing movie NFO files and misses all the things like summary, studios, age rating etc.

Hi, here is a version of the nfo plugin with game support enabled:

NfoMetadata.zip

If you can test it and provide feedback then I'll publish it to the catalog. Thanks.

[Gummibeer 5]

18 hours ago, Luke said:

If you can test it and provide feedback then I'll publish it to the catalog. Thanks.

Have installed the dll from above and it works. I have the nfo option in the games library and it also creates nfo files if I change metadata. Reading them back in, as always, only worked when I moved the items out, did a scan and moved them back in with the nfo file and scanned again.

[Luke 42077]

3 hours ago, Gummibeer said:

Have installed the dll from above and it works. I have the nfo option in the games library and it also creates nfo files if I change metadata. Reading them back in, as always, only worked when I moved the items out, did a scan and moved them back in with the nfo file and scanned again.

Great, thanks !

[Guest Jaqo3000]

hello and thank you for this detailed guide. I am using Emby server and the plug in, I came to the step where I need to setup the Emby theater so I downloaded it and installed it. so I have two questions

1. Emby theater doesn't allow me to chose game system. when I click the drop down menu for Game System, it shows just full screen with a text says "Game System" see screenshot.

2. I only have ordinary Windows applications style Games with .exe files that run from Windows. can I add those? because I see in the guide you mention command lines and use of emulators. so what parts of the guide are relevant in this case?

Edited November 30, 2024 by Jaqo3000

[Charliexyx 7]

@Jaqo3000For your second question I have found a workaround. You can check that workaround here, but it is also a bit tricky and you should also check my post below:

Emby needs a "*.gbwin" file and expects it to be "the game" so the runner has to take the .gbwin file and has to be able to run the actual game with it, which is what I do with that batch script.

 

I can't answer you your question 1, it works for me with Theater Version 3.0.20 (which is probably an older version), I can go to the settings and add a Windows GameSystem, there is Windows at the end:

1.

2.

3.

4.

 

In fact I'm not a big fan of Emby theater so I use the Browser version of Emby whenever I can. It works a lot smoother you can Copy text and stuff, it does what you expect it to do (The Theater Interface is kinda buggy). Therefore I also didn't invest a lot more into this topic. But I got it to work, just didn't do the last step to add a lot of games now.

[Guest Jaqo3000]

thank you. I have already read the guide you attached as well as almost all the replies to this thread. I made the *.gbwin file as described in the guide which is empty txt file. but I still can't run the games or have a system choice in the drop down menu. even though the emby theater game section can see the games. I can only mark the game as played but no way to run it. hope others can help

[Luke 42077]

On 12/1/2024 at 8:18 AM, Jaqo3000 said:

thank you. I have already read the guide you attached as well as almost all the replies to this thread. I made the *.gbwin file as described in the guide which is empty txt file. but I still can't run the games or have a system choice in the drop down menu. even though the emby theater game section can see the games. I can only mark the game as played but no way to run it. hope others can help

Hi, currently Emby Theater does not support the old gbwin convention that we used for Emby for Windows Media Center. This is something that we'll need to look at, how to launch specific games differently.

[Betonhaus 18]

Can the plugin support emulatorJS, which is an emulator that can be played directly from a web browser (and possibly compatible Emby clients)? It's limited to anything older then the Gamecube, but that's still a lot of systems

[Xelator 2]

On 12/19/2024 at 4:23 AM, Betonhaus said:

Can the plugin support emulatorJS, which is an emulator that can be played directly from a web browser (and possibly compatible Emby clients)? It's limited to anything older then the Gamecube, but that's still a lot of systems

any info for this i want try the same on Unraid

[Luke 42077]

On 12/18/2024 at 10:23 PM, Betonhaus said:

Can the plugin support emulatorJS, which is an emulator that can be played directly from a web browser (and possibly compatible Emby clients)? It's limited to anything older then the Gamecube, but that's still a lot of systems

Looks neat. Certainly something to look into.

[Tony Wild Card 2]

Hey all

 

Trying to set Gamebrowser up on my Synology NAS via Emby, but i can for the life of me not find the "External players" tab in the Emby app from the windows store. Is there a trick to get it to appear or did it get removed in a new update?

[Charliexyx 7]

5 minutes ago, Tony Wild Card said:

Hey all

 

Trying to set Gamebrowser up on my Synology NAS via Emby, but i can for the life of me not find the "External players" tab in the Emby app from the windows store. Is there a trick to get it to appear or did it get removed in a new update?

Emby App from Windows Store sounds wrong. Try to download "Emby Theater" instead.

[Tony Wild Card 2]

49 minutes ago, Charliexyx said:

Emby App from Windows Store sounds wrong. Try to download "Emby Theater" instead.

Do you have a link for that?

I tried the one Luke posted in this thread and it took me to a download page where the only means of download is from the windows store and there's only one app there 

[GrimReaper 4739]

1 hour ago, Tony Wild Card said:

but i can for the life of me not find the "External players" tab in the Emby app from the windows store. Is there a trick to get it to appear or did it get removed in a new update?

 

On 4/5/2025 at 2:22 PM, Luke said:

Again just to clarify, it wasn't removed. The windows store version never had it in the first place. It will get added, but until that happens you can still use the downloaded desktop app:

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/emby-theater-windows/releases

 

[Tony Wild Card 2]

9 hours ago, GrimReaper said:

 

 

Ahhh cheers mate, that explains that, thank you

[m4gg3s 0]

Hi guys!

I am trying to set up some emulators in Emby via the Game Browser.

For testing I focus on snes9x and Dolphin right now. Both run on the same Windows NUC as the Emby server itself.

I have configured my game library according to the guide. It resides on a nas with UNC path \\192.168.0.4\Stream\Games\

Now, when I configure snes9x as an external player, In use the arguments

-m

{Path}

 

If I try to start a game, snes9x opens, but I only get a black screen.

However, I can load roms in snes9x once the app is open.

So it can access the nas and the files...

I assume that I am doing something wrong with the arguments. Is there anything I have to do with the PathVariable? Or what else could I be missing?

 

With Dolphin, the emulator does not even start after clicking the game. Also, I am probably doing something wrong with the arguments here...