Using the room

This page is for players, not integrators. It explains what you see and click when you open a session, whether you started it or joined someone else's. For how the room talks to the broker under the hood, see Users and invites.

Opening the room

You get to the room one of two ways:

• You started the session. RomM opens it for you directly. You are the host.
• Someone invited you, either with a link they copied from their own room, or by adding you by name from RomM. Opening that link or URL drops you into the same room, alongside the host.

The first time a link drops you into a room with no name attached, you're asked to pick a username before you can do anything else. It's remembered in your browser, so you won't be asked again on that device.

Host, participant, or spectator

Everyone in the room has one of three levels of access:

• Host - whoever's game this is. Only the host can invite people, change who has a controller, and end the session for everyone.
• Participant - joined with a "Collaboration User" invite. Can chat, share webcam and mic, and be handed a controller or the mouse and keyboard by the host.
• Spectator (read-only) - joined with a "Read Only" invite. Can watch and chat, but has no webcam/mic controls and can never be handed input.

If you're the host, the last tile in the bottom bar is a dashed one with a big plus on it. Tap it and it flips over to two buttons, Player Invite Link and Viewer Invite Link; either copies that link to your clipboard, ready to send. Each is one link for the whole session: send the same one to everyone you want in, and each person who opens it gets their own seat. Links stop working when the session ends.

The bottom bar

Everything but the game itself lives in the bar along the bottom (swipe it down, or tap the handle at the bottom edge, to hide it and get the whole screen back). Left to right:

• The controller tray (host only), then your own tile, then a tile for everyone else in the room.
• The invite tile (host only), described above.
• Chat, on the right: the most recent messages with a box to type into. Tap into the box and it grows up over the bottom half of the game to show the whole history; tap anywhere else (or press Esc) and it drops back down. While it's closed, new messages pop up briefly above it so you don't miss them. On a small screen, once there are enough tiles to need the room, chat folds to a narrow tab at the right edge with a dot for unread messages; tap the tab to open it.

Game volume, fullscreen, saving and stopping the game are RomM's own controls, on the bar RomM shows above the stream, not the room's.

Your own tile

Hover over your own video (or tap it on a touch screen) and three buttons appear over it: microphone on/off, webcam on/off, and a settings gear. They only show while you're pointing at the tile, so the rest of the time it's just your video.

The gear opens a small dialog for picking which microphone and camera to use, if your device has more than one (your choice is remembered for next time), and a Reload Stream button for the rare case the stream freezes.

Spectators have no tile of their own and so none of these, since there's nothing for them to control.

Chat and webcam

Chat is plain text, with a reply button on each message if you want to quote someone. Joins, leaves, and username changes show up as system messages so the room stays easy to follow.

Turning your webcam or mic on shares them with everyone else in the room, not just the host. Each person's video tile has its own mute buttons so anyone can locally mute someone else's audio or hide their video without affecting what that person is actually sending. The host also has a star icon on each tile to highlight one person as the designated speaker, a visual cue for the room rather than anything that changes audio.

Getting a controller

This is the room's signature feature: the host can hand a virtual gamepad, or the mouse and keyboard, to anyone in the room, live, without pausing the game.

Only the host sees the tray of unassigned controller icons (gamepad icons numbered by slot, plus one mouse-and-keyboard icon). The host drags an icon from the tray onto someone's video tile to hand them that input; dragging it back to the tray takes it away again. Whoever currently holds a gamepad slot or the mouse and keyboard sees that icon sitting on their own tile, so everyone in the room can see at a glance who's driving.

Spectators are never a valid drop target: the host can watch and chat with them, but can't hand them a controller.

Resolution and stream layout

The game stream automatically resizes to fit whoever's watching. If you're the host, a lock icon on your own tile freezes the current resolution so it stops adjusting itself as people join and leave; unlocking it goes back to automatic. A second icon lets the host manually match the stream's resolution to one specific participant's screen.

Video tiles (yours and everyone else's) can be dragged to reorder them in the grid, and the whole video row can be collapsed with its own toggle if you'd rather focus on the game.

Ending the session

Only the host can end the session, with the stop button on RomM's own bar above the stream. It ends the session for everyone: the game saves, the emulator stops, and every link into the room stops working. Guests who leave (close the tab, lose signal) keep their seat and can come back on the same link; any controller they were holding goes back to the tray.

Language

The room's own text (buttons, chat, settings) follows your browser's language automatically; there's no in-room language switcher, so setting your browser's preferred language is what changes it. It supports English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Portuguese, French, Russian, German, Turkish, Italian, Dutch, Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Filipino, and Danish.