Games

A Games library keeps every game you own in one place: cartridge games, console discs and PC games, sorted by platform, each with its box art, screenshots, story, developer and publisher. Games for older consoles also play right in the browser, on a computer or a TV, with a keyboard or a game pad. Games libraries are part of Collectoh Plus.

#Add a Games library

In Admin → Libraries, choose Add library, pick the Games type and add your games folders. For how to arrange them, see naming and organising your files. Details and box art come from IGDB; see metadata.

The library shows each platform you have as a button above the grid, so one press narrows it to your Super Nintendo or PlayStation games. Continue playing lists what you played last, and a library's History tab shows every game you've played in it.

A game you have several copies of, such as the USA and European releases or a later revision, has one page, with the copies under Version. Collectoh starts the best copy unless you choose another. A game on several discs is one game.

#Play in the browser

These platforms play in the browser once an emulator is added: NES and the Famicom Disk System, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Virtual Boy, SG-1000, Master System, Mega Drive and Genesis, Game Gear, 32X, Mega-CD and Sega CD, Saturn, PlayStation, Atari 2600, 5200 and 7800, Lynx, Jaguar, PC Engine and TurboGrafx-16 (and their CD versions), Neo Geo, Neo Geo Pocket, WonderSwan, ColecoVision, 3DO, arcade games, the Commodore 64 and the Amiga.

Everything else, from the GameCube and the PlayStation 2 onwards and including PC games, is kept organised with its details, and you play it on the console or the PC as usual. PSP and DOS games are organised only for now.

Press Play on a game's page. The game fills the screen; a game pad works as soon as you press one of its buttons, and Back returns to the game's page. Saved games and saved moments are kept on your server, so a game goes on where you left it from any browser you sign in on.

#Add an emulator

Collectoh plays games with EmulatorJS, a free, open-source emulator for the web.

1. Download the latest EmulatorJS release from its website or its GitHub page, and unpack it into a folder your server can read, such as /config/emulatorjs in Docker or a folder beside your media.
2. Open Admin → Games and choose Choose folder… under Emulator folder. Pick the folder you unpacked, or the data folder inside it.
3. The page says which version it found, and lists each platform as Ready or Core missing. A full release includes the cores for every platform above.

Your server serves the emulator's files to the player itself, and the player can't reach anywhere else on the internet, so nothing is downloaded while you play.

#BIOS files

Some consoles need their BIOS: the PlayStation, the Mega-CD and Sega CD, the Saturn, the PC Engine CD, the Neo Geo, the Lynx, the Atari 5200, the ColecoVision, the 3DO and the Famicom Disk System; the Game Boy Advance can use one. Put the BIOS files from your own consoles in one folder, choose it under BIOS folder in Admin → Games, and the list there shows the file name each platform looks for and which ones it found. For the PlayStation that is scph5501.bin, for example.