- Your laptop is connected to the internet too?
Yes, although is doesn’t have to be. Steam is using a direct connection via a local IP address on the same LAN.
- When you say “it doesn’t work with Wemod because wemod.exe opens the window and exits”, you are talking about WeMod app closing when you try to start through the app?
Let’s take the case of running a game without Wemod. When streaming with Steam, it detects a PC available from streaming services on the LAN, and gives a box that says “Stream” instead of play. When you pick “stream” Steam launches the game on the server PC, and redirects audio, video, and controls to the client. The client interacts with the server PC as if it’s local. Stream on the server PC monitors the status of the launched game. If you killed steam on the client and restarted it, Steam would displays a “reconnect” option - because on the server Steam knows the game is still running on the server and it serves the connection to the client.
Since Wemod has to be running on the server, and activate mods after the game starts, this presents a problem for remote streaming. It works, but I have to walk up a flight to the other machine and manually run Wemod.
The solution would seem to be to launch the game FROM Wemod, and stream THAT instead of the game. This works with other games that require launchers outside of Steam. For example to launch Call of Duty, you can install Battle.Net as a “non game app” on the server. You select the Stream option for Battle.Net from the client, Steam runs it on the server, and the Battle.Net launch screen displays on the client. You pick Call of Duty and off you go.
This method SHOULD work with Stream. In fact it DOES work if the game isn’t being streamed. I can add WeMod as a non-game-app to Steam, and when I pick play on the local machine it launches WeMod, I pick the game I want, and it runs with the mods working.
The only issue is when WeMod is streamed. Steam launches WeMod, but then after a few seconds returns to the “Play” button on the client. This happens because the server PC is no longer detecting that WeMod is running. Steam thinks the process crashed or was closed, when it fact it’s working fine. If I run WeMod from the command line, WeMod opens the window to the app and exits back to the commend line. Stream is detecting that exit and interprets that as if the WeMod process has exited when it has not. This is not a problem with most games and game launchers. My guess is that something about how wemod.exe terminates the program that opens the WeMod window is confusing steam. Maybe the process is exiting with the wrong return code. Maybe it needs to remain open as long as the window is opening. WeMod is one of the only games/apps that doesn’t seem to work with Steam Streaming. Even though it’s clearly designed to stream games, you can remote stream almost any app with Steam.
- You are trying to modify a game that isn’t in the same PC you are playing?
WeMod and the game are running on the SAME PC. The content (display, audio, and controls) are elsewhere and accessed via streaming. WeMod works just fine this way…except for the way the launcher terminates.
I have never seen modded games while you are streaming content to play. This is because when you mod a game, actually it needs to be on your “modded computer” (considering that WeMod app is kind of a DLL injector, and need to find the files in your PC). For example, in console cases (Xbox) WeMod uses Horizon to inject mods on console games, but you need to “download it” on your console.
WeMod and the game are running on THE SAME MACHINE and in fact it works correctly over streaming, except that I have to manually walk to the machine to start WeMod. If Steam didn’t think the process had terminated (when it hasn’t) there would be no issue. I have been playing many Steam games for years using the streaming functionality of Steam, and it works flawlessly - except for starting WeMod automatically.