Sure it does! You need to install Media Browser first:
When you have that set up, you then open up the Media Browser configurator, hit the plug-ins tab, click “More Plug-ins”, and select gamebrowser.
The trial lasts for a month I believe.
You can actually set up your directories any way you like. I created a “Game Links” folder where each platform has a folder, within which every game title has it’s own folder and a shortcut to the game/emulator exe with any parameters added in the shortcut:
I set it up this way because:
All my retail/indie PC games are in the program files folder so if I just point gamebrowser to that location all my other programs will show up and be displayed as “unknown game”.
Almost every PS2 and gamecube/Wii game needs it’s own custom config so configuring gamebrowser to load the isos using the same emulator would be useless.
Hmm, I will have to give it a try tonight. It seems like a bit of a hassle to setup different lists. I’ve tried out a program called gameex and in that you can just hit a button to mark something as a favorite while you are in the program.
yeah, it is kind of a hassle when first setting up especially if you have a large collection you want to include. I used to organise my games into shortcuts anyway so I am accustomed to it myself.
For gamebrowser, if you place all your game shortcuts in the platform folder, there is an option within gamebrowser’s config that automatically creates a folder for each shortcut. From there, once you open gamebrowser it will start to scan each folder and retrieve art assets and xml data for it. That’s about it as far as user friendly features go.
The gamebrowser dev definitely needs to work on some sort of automated folder scanning app that can differentiate between game folders and app folders in \program files. There is already one for movies, Media Center Master, which scans designated folders for movies and does all the work based on the file name - creates the movie folder, downloads the art assets and generates the xml file.
Really, if you are sitting at your desk playing games you are already being lazy and unproductive and changing to a more comfortable seat and a bigger screen doesn’t change anything as far as that’s concerned.
Yeah, that is a good point. PC gaming probably does suffer an image problem from being something that ‘boys’ do behind closed doors?
We have most of the house PC’s in the open plan living room in the ‘office space’ section, we just prefer executive chairs for pc work and play (better for the back etc). I would imagine conflict with the consoles if the PC’s tried to move over to the couch and TV? Add kids to that mix and it would start family wars?
I finally got a really nice, compact wireless Logitech keyboard with a touch pad.
Everything is finally all together. I can be playing a game of Lego Lord of the Rings, then decide to play Far Cry 3, then decide to watch something on Netflix.
Every one of these switches takes 2-3 seconds to get to a loading screen as opposed to 2-3 minutes when using an Xbox (getting up to switc discs, waiting for the Netflix app to load, etc).
So I spent some time messing around with Gameex and Gamebroswer II. Gamebrowser definitely looks better, but Gameex has more features and is more user friendly.
tried it, didn’t like it. There were things I found it couldn’t do regarding emulators, and the interface looked terrible TBH. On top of that, it costs $30? Pass.
A small disclaimer: didn’t do a lot of testing with Gameex because the trial version has this nag screen which pauses startup for an unusually long time. Half the time I spent with Gameex was just staring at that nag screen…
I’ve just discovered rom-jacket. Sounds VERY promising, will start seeing if this plays nice with my program files folder. Would be amazing for gamebrowser.
I found a Microsoft gaming receiver at best buy last night… Rumor was Microsoft doesn’t make them anymore. So I actually have a working Xbox controller for my pc which I am excited about.
I can work the steam big picture UI with my controller so I know the controller works.
I am working on mapping the keys for my controller right now for specific game… I am still pretty new to this stuff and have a bunch more to learn.
I have demo versions of pinnacle and xpadder.
Are there other utilities out there like pinnacle and xpadder which give a better UI experience to map controllers? Can people express their experiences with mapping controllers for certain games?
The screens show gamebrowser II, a plugin for mediabrowser, which is an extension for Windows Media Center. Currently both the extension and the pulgin don’t work properly in Windows 8. Also, Windows 8 doesn’t come with Media Center anymore, you have to pay $69.99 to get it.
Hope you didn’t upgrade to Win8 yet ;)
The reason there are Dreamcast, Playstation 2, Gamecube and Wii titles in my system is because they are all rips of the actual game discs running on emulators. You will not find these titles anywhere in the Windows 8 App store.
Just a small warning and preemptive reminder in advance in case you need it: The wireless receivers tend to die at some point or another; it took about 6 months for my first one and a year for the second one. Don’t throw it away if/when it does (like I did with my first one) but google how to fix it instead (like I did with my second one). It is actually the fuse or something that craps out and you just solder over it carefully and it works without issue after that.
So I have this problem. I connected the PC to the TV using an HDMI cable, and it’s mostly very good, but from time to time it just stops sending an audio signal. It always usually returns after a reboot but not always. I can’t figure what’s causing it to stop and resume. I had to connect my speakers which is a hassle because I don’t need more cables lying around the living room.
That sounds scary. I’ve never heard of this. Are you sure this happens to the official Microsoft receiver? The one that came with 360 controller for Windows has worked flawlessly for the past 5 years. If this is true, I wonder if this is responsible for the oft-repeated assertion that the wireless 360 controller is not as compatible with games as the wired one? Because I still haven’t come across a game where I had to switch to the wired one. Maybe for the people having trouble, they just had their receiver go flaky?
Sorry, I was under the false impression that everyone knows the model since it was discussed earlier in the thread. Obviously the forum does not revolve around me ;)
Its a GTX 560Ti. I’m using win7 64bit. I did swap a cable. I actually returned the first because I thought it was the culprit. I did a little search and found that this may be connected to the computer shutting down the monitor when idle. If video is not transmitted then audio doesn’t either. Maybe there is an issue when coming back from that mode so I disable monitor sleeping even though I’m not 100% sure about it.
