Gamebrowser Unable to open games on laptop on internal network (check last post)

[HavokValor 5]

Hi Again! So my gamebrowser was working great on my server when playing games from the server. I tried to setup the same setup on a laptop inside my network and it didn't work out. I looked into what could cause it and found that setting the folders through network shares might help. So I removed the library and the systems and set it up using the network path after I setup all the folders to be shared. However now the server that was working fine cannot see any systems. So I removed the setup from being the network share route and set it up again with local paths. However this is also not showing systems. Any idea what could be going wrong and how I could set this up correctly so that my laptop can access and play the games on my server? Thank you again =)

Edited January 28, 2019 by HavokValor

[Luke 42077]

Hi, where are systems not showing up?

[HavokValor 5]

Here are screen shots of my setup, the third picture is where the N64 is not showing up where it used to show up.

[HavokValor 5]

Changed the library and got the system to pop up. 

Edited January 28, 2019 by HavokValor

[HavokValor 5]

So now the games don't have a play button, screen shots of my external player is attached.

[HavokValor 5]

Re added the external player and got the play button to come back up, however now I am back to the same issue I had before where I can use games on my desktop but on my laptop when I hit play Emby minimizes then comes back up without opening the game. Any ideas on how to resolve that issue?

[HavokValor 5]

Tried creating another test library with the network share linked but still having the same issue.

[Luke 42077]

You need to add the parent folder to emby library setup, not the game system folder.

[HavokValor 5]

Changed the library and got the system to pop up. 

Yep I did that before and got the systems to show up, so now the issue that I am having is that I can play games from the server but I cannot play games from my laptop on the internal network. . When I hit play Emby minimizes then comes back up without opening the game. Any ideas on how to resolve that issue?

[Luke 42077]

Try removing all external players that you've configured, and then add them back.

[HavokValor 5]

The removing of the external players and adding them back was something I did before to get the play button back.

 

HOWEVER

 

I fixed the issue, after a really huge chunk of googling, I found a previous post;

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/65109-36xx-testing-of-games/

 

In this post I saw that someone had it setup in a way that the server pointed to a mapped drive to access the roms. So I did the following;

 

1. Removed my previous game libraries, scan library

2. Go into the gamebrowser settings and remove the system, scan library

3. Add a new system using the mapped drive path, for me it was Z:\Nintendo 64, scan library

4. create the new game library and point it to the root of Z:\, scan library

 

Tested to make sure it still worked on my desktop, then went on my laptop and removed and readded the external players on the laptop, this time it opened the game. 

 

 

So my new venture is to now try and get this to work outside of my network, from my research I see that this is possibly only going to work on a VPN. Would you be able to confirm this?

[Luke 42077]

 

 

So my new venture is to now try and get this to work outside of my network

 

I'm not sure, sorry. In this scenario we'll be passing the emulators an http url where they can download the game. It really depends on whether or not they'll support that.

[HavokValor 5]

Is there anyway for me to have Emby Theater download the game and then have it utilize the downloaded game with the emulator through Emby Thearer?

[Luke 42077]

Not at this time but it's something we could potentially look at in the future.

[HavokValor 5]

Awesome, thank you for all the help!

[Samaritan 0]

On 1/28/2019 at 2:23 PM, HavokValor said:

So my new venture is to now try and get this to work outside of my network, from my research I see that this is possibly only going to work on a VPN. Would you be able to confirm this?

I'd like to know if you ever got this to work? Sorry for the thread revival, but I've been trying to get games abroad. Working with current Emby Server and Gamebrowser. I am also trying to forward the SMB ports (the system runs on its own network and doesn't have anything important so security is my last concern) but I'm also having trouble with that

[Carlo 4560]

1 hour ago, Samaritan said:

I'd like to know if you ever got this to work? Sorry for the thread revival, but I've been trying to get games abroad. Working with current Emby Server and Gamebrowser. I am also trying to forward the SMB ports (the system runs on its own network and doesn't have anything important so security is my last concern) but I'm also having trouble with that

Are you using Emby Theater on the PC side to run the game emulations?

What do you mean you're trying to forward SMB ports?  What's the purpose or what are you trying to do?

[Samaritan 0]

I do use Emby Theater. It works fine while I'm on the same network. I'm trying to reach an end state of being able to access games (and files in a broad sense) remotely, like if I'm on vacation. Since gamebrowser uses a network path I'm not sure on how to go about that. My family who also uses this isn't technically inclined so I'm trying to make it as easy as possible. I know there's not much I can do about the external player set up, but the actual games would be nice if they just worked wherever I took my laptop for instance. I run a Dell server running Win Server 2019

[Samaritan 0]

@cayars I have a habit of over-typing. Generally just trying to access the games on an external network. It works as it is on the same network. This will be used by several people, that's my end goal

[Carlo 4560]

I understand your issue now.  I don't have game browser setup anymore and never really used it so I can't remember.

You may/might be able to setup and use a point to point VPN connection to do this but I'm not sure.

Let see if someone who uses this can jump in and help, otherwise I'll reinstall and do some testing for you.

[Samaritan 0]

Wouldn't a VPN defeat the easy to set up for another user (my family?) I'm not familiar with VPNs pretty much whatsoever

[Carlo 4560]

The thing is Games aren't meant to run remotely as you have to have direct access to a network share.

So the only possible way you are likely to get this to work is to have some way to remotely access the shares and a VPN is the safest way.

To me this is a lot of work to play 20 to 40 year old game emulations. 

I'd personally just take the emulation with me on the road if that's your thing or provide them outside of Emby for family members that live outside your LAN.

This is only my opinion but I think game emulation via Emby is more a novelty than anything else and looses it's appeal quickly.  It's amazing it was ever made to work but is very limited in use unlike streaming media which is Emby's forte.

[Samaritan 0]

Yeah yeah I totally get it, my great grandmother wants to play the original Mario Bros and I have an emulator and such set up on her computer, she just doesn't know nor wants to know how to load a rom. She just wants to hit play. I have a few family members I could probably teach but are in the same way. Security is definitely not a concern as it has its own dedicated network with no important information and isn't critical that nothing is lost, just a bunch of movies and TV shows. What I was trying to do by opening up the SMB ports was to make the network shares public. Do you know of a way to do that? Opening those ports didn't seem to make a difference

[Carlo 4560]

I doubt you could easily get SMB (what version?) working through the internet without a VPN as most ISPs will block this for your protection.

Doing any kind of sharing like that is a giant security vulnerability that could make it trivial for anyone to get access to your machine.

[Samaritan 0]

I believe v3? I'm a hardware specialist, not great with networking. And yeah I came down to it's gotta be my ISP blocking it up. Still trying to find a good method