How online play works
How online play works
Host a game, or join one somebody else is already running, and play against real people over the internet.
Online play on your console runs on Outbreak Arcade. You pick a game on the wheel, your console puts a session up, and anyone else with an Outbreak console and the same game can drop into it. There is no account to make, no port forwarding, and nothing to configure.
What you need
- Your console, connected to the internet. Wired is better than WiFi.
- Outbreak Arcade installed. If it is already on your wheel, you are set.
- The other player needs the same game, on their own Outbreak console.
Find Outbreak on the wheel
Scroll the main carousel past your game systems. You are looking for two entries:
- Outbreak Host is the list of games you can put online. Open a game here and you are the host.
- Outbreak Lobby is what other people have running right now. Open it to join something already in progress.
If neither one is on the wheel, Outbreak is not installed yet. That is a two minute job you can do yourself with a keyboard, and it is written out step by step on the Install Outbreak Arcade page.
Host a game
- Open Outbreak Host.
- Pick a game and press A to launch it.
- The game starts on your screen and your session goes up automatically. Other Outbreak consoles can now see it.
You do not have to sit and wait on a menu. Start playing, and when somebody joins they come into the game with you.
Join a game
- Open Outbreak Lobby and pick a session from the list.
- Your console matches the emulator to the host's, finds your copy of the game, and launches straight into it.
Get other people to show up
The hardest part of online play is not the technology, it is being online at the same time as somebody else. There are two ways to fix that.
Pick a time and invite people. Choose a game, a date, and a time, add the email addresses of anyone you want there, and everybody gets a reminder before it starts. You can set it to repeat every week if you want a regular night. Nobody needs to install anything to accept.
Or find out when other people are playing. Sign up for the weekly digest of scheduled sessions, or join the Discord for a live heads up the moment somebody starts a game.
Give it the best connection you can
Online play is sensitive to lag in a way single player is not, because the two consoles are keeping each other in step frame by frame.
- Use a cable if you can. An Ethernet run to the console is the single biggest improvement available to you. WiFi can add enough delay on its own to make a join fail.
- Keep the console near the router if a cable is genuinely not an option.
- Leave the console on and connected while you are playing. It is talking to the other machine the whole time.
That's all of it.
Open Outbreak Host to start something, open Outbreak Lobby to join something, and use the scheduler when you want a specific set of people in the room. Everything else takes care of itself.
If a session will not connect
Do not spend an evening on it. Tell me what happened and I will look at the console myself. Turn on Remote Support first, under Outbreak Host, then Select, then Settings, and note your IP address from Start Menu, then Network Settings.
Then fill in the report form. Choose Online multiplayer issue, name the game, and say what you actually saw, whether that was a lobby you could not see, a join that timed out, or a game that connected and then dropped. Leave the machine powered on and connected, and in most cases the fix lands without you doing anything else.
What gets sorted on your console goes into the next update for every Outbreak console, so it is worth telling me even if you work around it.
Report an online play issue