Roms on a NAS

[The Papaw]

16 minutes ago, PaulyC said:

@The Papaw Hi bud,  how are you accessing yours roms via launchbox?  Have you just shared a folder then mapped it to a drive from the NAS and edited your .xmls to point your game to that mapped drive?

I have all mine almost set up now. I went with unraid in the end and am just waiting for the parity drive to finish building then a can transfer it over and mass edit my .xmls lol

Yes Sir, I mapped the shared folder in Windows, in my example I made the mapped drive "Y". Then I made a copy of my xml files, (just made a copy of the ..\Data\Platforms folder in case of mistakes ). I used Notepad++ to find and replace the portion of the path.. In the shared folder, just have a folder names Roms, then a folder for each platform within that, then drop the games into their respective folder

Here is a copy of my Atari 7800 xml so you can take a peek at it:

Atari 7800.xml

Edited February 15, 2023 by The Papaw

[Baggio]

38 minutes ago, The Papaw said:

Yes Sir, I mapped the shared folder in Windows, in my example I made the mapped drive "Y". Then I made a copy of my xml files, (just made a copy of the ..\Data\Platforms folder in case of mistakes ). I used Notepad++ to find and replace the portion of the path.. In the shared folder, just have a folder names Roms, then a folder for each platform within that, then drop the games into their respective folder

Here is a copy of my Atari 7800 xml so you can take a peek at it:

Atari 7800.xml 318.36 kB · 0 downloads

Brilliant, thats just as I thought so nice and easy

I’ll check that xml out when I get home as well, thanks

[Tanoshimi]

Yes, I've had great luck with installing all of my ROMS and even emulators on a NAS mapped to a G:\ (for Games) drive in Windows.  And once BB was installed, I could run it from anywhere. 

But I'm still working out how to get AAA games (installed directly in Windows, or Steam or Epic) to exist only on the NAS drive, and not need to be manually installed on each computer in my network.

[The Papaw]

1 minute ago, Tanoshimi said:

Yes, I've had great luck with installing all of my ROMS and even emulators on a NAS mapped to a G:\ (for Games) drive in Windows.  And once BB was installed, I could run it from anywhere. 

But I'm still working out how to get AAA games (installed directly in Windows, or Steam or Epic) to exist only on the NAS drive, and not need to be manually installed on each computer in my network.

If you can run a VM on your NAS or something like that, you may be able to do something with it. The biggest issue that kept me from looking into it more was if you have multiple users and game saves being over written by another user. With most of the emulators that can be easily done with a little research.

[Tanoshimi]

38 minutes ago, The Papaw said:

If you can run a VM on your NAS or something like that, you may be able to do something with it. The biggest issue that kept me from looking into it more was if you have multiple users and game saves being over written by another user. With most of the emulators that can be easily done with a little research.

I did start looking into creating a single VM and running it on all machines.  Couldn't get it to work right.  The VM stored on the NAS could be opened by each machine, but when I did the changes didn't replicate.  It was like they started off as the same machine, but diverged from there.  I think they were using different Virtual Hard Drives.  But if I could get the VHD right, and IF a VM/VHD could be opened by multiple machines at the same time, then I'd have a one-and-done solution.  Of course, no idea how collisions would be handled, like multiple game saves, or two PCs accessing the same file at the same time.

[Baggio]

@The Papaw Me again lol.  I have the NAS setup now and it works great.    I have hit a snag though, do you play any standlone games off your NAS?  I never thought of this before and was only thinking about running emulators off the main PC but ive realised i have games like my touchscreen quiz games, probably eXoDOS and the newer arcade games that run with jconfig ect so am not sure how to get around this.   

I know we can use a VM but thats not a option for me so wondered if you know anyway around it?

[The Papaw]

2 hours ago, PaulyC said:

@The Papaw Me again lol.  I have the NAS setup now and it works great.    I have hit a snag though, do you play any standlone games off your NAS?  I never thought of this before and was only thinking about running emulators off the main PC but ive realised i have games like my touchscreen quiz games, probably eXoDOS and the newer arcade games that run with jconfig ect so am not sure how to get around this.   

I know we can use a VM but thats not a option for me so wondered if you know anyway around it?

By "Stand Alone" are you meaning like PC games, games that need installed? No

Touchscreen Quiz Games (not sure what you mean about these) About the only thing I have that are touch screen are games like fruit machines that I use the MFME emulator to play and Yes, I do have those on the NAS, but I use an actual touch screen PC (or other PC's using a mouse) for those. Not sure about the newer arcade game you are referring too, sorry

 

[Baggio]

21 minutes ago, The Papaw said:

By "Stand Alone" are you meaning like PC games, games that need installed? No

Touchscreen Quiz Games (not sure what you mean about these) About the only thing I have that are touch screen are games like fruit machines that I use the MFME emulator to play and Yes, I do have those on the NAS, but I use an actual touch screen PC (or other PC's using a mouse) for those. Not sure about the newer arcade game you are referring too, sorry

 

No not games that need to be installed,  just games have thier own folder and have a .exe to run them.

By touchscreen quizes i mean these that we get in pubs.  You can edit the game so you can use a mouse to play them.

But i think i have solved it tbh.   I just created a symlink of that folder from the NAS and put in in the folder it used to be in on the main PC and it worked great!   Hopefully thats the case for everything else.

Edited February 17, 2023 by PaulyC