SentaiBrad

bd000 said So am I right to assuming when a game is uninstalled, Steam leaves behind the appmanifest file? This is what causes the issues? So you got the appid from the appmanifest files, then used the Store API to pull the rest of the information you need, or SteamKit or something like that? Sorry to keep pressing on this, but I am considering creating my own solution so I can import installed Steam games and it would help if I knew what problems you faced. It shouldn't leave behind anything. Sometimes if the uninstall fails or gets uninstalled some other way... well its a PC. Anything can happen. :P I know I had a lot of files that were invalid and it found a lot of games that were not installed.

bd000 said Out of curiosity, did you use the appmanifest files with the old method? If I recall, yes. This is why it could be inaccurate and have less power.

It was flawed in the sense of it wasn't too accurate. It couldn't pick up everything like it can now. If you uninstalled a game and tried to run it through the old method it would fail. It could also pick up a game if you previously uninstalled it but there were files left over. This way, if a game is uninstalled it will prompt you if you would like to install a game and where like normal. It is also more accurate in pulling images and metadata. It is 100%. Unless its a game that later gets removed (which can happen) it will find everything on your account. As far as setups go, I do prefer DOS, GOG, Origin and Steam games to be seperate and anything else left as PC generalized. It not too hard to do if you do it at the right time.

CliveBarker said I don't know if I am correct, but I am pretty sure that you only need to make your profile public DURING the import process, you can go back to private afterwards and the problem is solved in my opinion. Of course, having the old method maybe will help some people too. The only problem was that the old method was a tad flawed... hence why LB went with the new method. But yea, a private profile is something some people can't change. I would agree with Clive though, try setting it public while it scans your profile. Once it is done and downloading metadata try setting it back?

bd000 said I am hosting some LBA meetings if anyone is interested? (LaunchBoxoholic Anonymous) Hang in, there is hope. It actually gets easier once you pass the 10,000 games milestone. Well, until the evil self aware processor adds some awesome new feature to tempt us all back. I want to cry. There is no hope, I lied. I finally got all duplicates and performance issues under control.. now im above 10k true games......... IT DOESNT GET EASIER.

Maddoc1007 said SentaiBrad said Then why bother. If LaunchBox does do it, then Jason is going to want to make a fleshed out an awesome feature set similar to what we have now. If LB does a bare bones approach then still nothing changes. A lot of gamers like to take video captures of their gameing thus a media field does make sense a place in Launchbox for them to have those gameing videos available so the addition of a media field does make sense, and also that field could also offer the oppertunity of people that want similar to me a place for video or music. I didn't put a game capture spin on it. I capture a lot of footage for my channel but I have my own network setup and YouTube... I never thought of that aspect.

Maddoc1007 said Have to disagree with both of you, would like to see multimedia included but not to the extent of games etc just a dedicated field you can click on under the dropdown in the sidebar Complete, Date added, Date modified, Developer Favourite, Genre, Platform etc say have this field called Media where you can put a list of movie types cartoon fantasy fairies etc the same as the Platform field (nes, snes sega ms-dos etc), then under those categories you could place shortcuts to the films (which i can under platform at moment, but want to keep platform for games directories as is) dont want plex or kodi or any other program as its for a machine im building for my daughter when she clicks on power button on machine it will open up to Launchbox easy for her to navigate windows os hid so she cant do damage to it, by clicking on media category she would be presented with her ripped movies or music, and clicking on platform she would be presented with her games, that simple, oh and have Launchbox have a shutdown key for computer as well. So just a media category no frills or downloading metadata involved and everything under that media category to be invisible from other items like Complete, Date added, Date modified, Developer Favourite, Genre, Platform etc and before anyone says custom filter tried that but doesnt allow for media to be hidden from other categories. Then why bother. If LaunchBox does do it, then Jason is going to want to make a fleshed out an awesome feature set similar to what we have now. If LB does a bare bones approach then still nothing changes.

kamyk2000 said As far as the movie library app suggestion is concerned... Lemme tell ya Jason, if you made an alternate version of Launchbox that used IMDB and/or other such sources for movie metadata rather than game data, not only would you have the best such program on the market, I'd very happily fork over another contribution fee to get it. You'd have to alter a few things, like making the category list a dropdown box so the details could take more screen and add things like actor sub panes or whatever, but seriously, I spent weeks looking for movie database software and none of it was anywhere near as usable as Launchbox. The free ones were very rudimentary, and the professional ones were both half assed and extremely pricey. The only pro movie software out there right now is soley for cataloging your physical dvd collection by either manual entry or barcode scan with your phone. Digital movie archivists get junk. Launchbox movie manager (with a few tweaks for media type) would be stellar software. I am honestly not very excited about multimedia prospects. Not that LaunchBox couldn't do that, but I would REALLY want the Game aspect to get to an extremely sophisticated state personally before then. Honestly, between Kodi and Plex, I don't need a competent TV Show, Movie and Anime library program with scrapers and tons of data. Plex will even allow me to stream outside of my Network assuming I set that port up. Hell, I've gotten it to work on my WiiU's browser. So while LaunchBox could do some cool things with it, that market has been covered competently where as games I don't think was covered competently. That's just my own thoughts though.

portachking said Hi Jason, I tried that, it made no difference I'm afraid. Just throwing an idea into the dark here, but I have two hardrives. All of my games are installed on my E drive, while Windows is installed on a smaller SSD C drive. I wonder if others have the same setup and if that has something to do with it? I dont think it should. Regardless of where a game gets installed, most of the time it writes to your registry and makes links with shortcusts in your start menu; which is a folder you can navigate to. LB is looking for those links then using. In the case of GOG, some games require that the game be launched via this route. Jason, all of my GOG games are not duplicates. If I had it on Steam, I wouldn't need it on GOG ;) So duplicates shouldn't be an issue.

portachking said Well, I guess it's not just me then. I enabled beta testing and tried that but it didn't make any difference. I'm going to disable it again now. I'd rather support something by giving ten dollars over beta testing these days. Well it doens't hurt to get both. It's very rare that, so far what seems to be a bug, gets in to a final build. All that toggle does is when there is a beta update, you'll download that. There is no beta right now, but when Jason fixes this he might put it out as a beta or an official update. Just depends.

portachking said Precisely that. About 20 Origin games, a few GOGs, UPlay etc. Most, if not probably all, are in the start menu. I think something is broken. I get the same grey. I have tons of GOG games it should see just fine.

portachking said Hey Jason, New poster, but a happy pro-user. I seem to running into a brick wall when I try to import non-Steam/Windows games. It never finds any. Running Windows 8.1. Here's a screen, so call me out if I'm doing something idiotic: Well how and what are you importing exactly? Edit: Well, I see Windows games, but GOG games, Origin games, generally installed games? That sort of thing.

scree said Hi Wattoo. There is a workaround but only if you have the Premium version. Select Spacing from the Options menu and set the "Game Text Lines to Show" to 0. Thats true... I spaced on that option. Thank you. Edit: Doing this, then making the spacing / size as small and as big as possible makes it looks seamless too.

Wattoo said Hello, Is it possible to hide names under covers in the game list ? As of right now, no. I just tested trying to change to font to 0pt and it did not work. I don't know how hard this would be to implement though.

Yea Kriven this has been something I've been bringing up to Jason as well. A Ribbon or Badge system to go on top of the images. It would show you simple things like platform, if its a favorite of yours, if you've played it and other similar toggleable options.

Jason Carr said I got a big slap in the face the first time I wanted to share my games with my son. I have a huge Steam collection, and he has a computer in his room. Suddenly I realized we both couldn't be gaming at the same time, even for different games, because all my games were in the same account. Suck. Tremendous amounts of suck. If I had bought physical copies of those games, we'd be able to play them at the same time. But no, not with Steam. This turned my enthusiastic view of Steam into one of much more disdain. GOG, of course, gives me no problem whatsoever, so ever since I discovered it I've been really pleased with it. I only wish they had a larger selection of games, and more of the newer games. But obviously that's not their fault. I got an alpha invitation for Galaxy too, and was pleasantly surprised by it. It's really nice and convenient, so much better than the previous ad-hoc approach. So yeah, I'm only wishing I could abandon Steam for new games altogether. But the fact of the matter is, most games only come out on Steam. But I see GOG Galaxy as being the missing piece that might be able to take GOG more mainstream. Let's hope. I don't mind the limitations of Steam honestly. That's probably because we hardly use the family sharing, but I don't see an inherent problem with it. I likened it back to Console carts or discs. If you have one disc and one console, unless it was multiplayer, only one person could play at once. :P Edit: I also think the limitation is there so that you don't share your library with several people and only one person buys the games. There is an inherent piracy factor to GOG saddly. Not that what you're doing in this case Jason is, but just in general.

CliveBarker said SentaiBrad said CliveBarker said I am an alpha tester since the beginning, and I like it very much because the development of Galaxy is almost like LaunchBox. They really hear the community and they implement a lot of features suggested by the community. Hopefully this create a healthier market where Steam is like Goliath and Origin and GOG Galaxy are raising slowly. I don't think this is a direct competitor of LaunchBox because LaunchBox have features that GOG Galaxy probably will never implement. I've been Alpha testing but I didn't hear anything about achievements, this is new to me. So, I am getting Witcher 3 for free because I bought a GTX 970, and my friend told me it would redeem on GOG. I was mad, I am an achievement oriented person. As well I like steam cards. I don't hate steam, I love steam. If they give me achievements with GOG Galaxy though, I will be happier. My hope is that games can get updated in the future to allow for more achievements on the platform. DOSBox games most likely excluded unless they develop a competent wrapper for DOSBox and intercept specific calls... but that might be way to complicated for its potentially less return. If Galaxy turns out to be a Steam client but oriented towards the games they Publish and / or Older Games with a lot of similar features, I might be swayed to Galaxy as my 'old games platform'. I more or less already do, but lets take Space Quest for example. I got it on Steam, neither of the 6 games launch. I can gaurentee they lauch on GOG though. Wrap that together with Steam like features and I will be all over it. Right now you can get achievements in Witcher 2, most of the newer games will get achievements too. Just imagine if older games implement achievements...oh man. I also love achievements, imagine Planescape Torment with achievements and such. I hope they find a way to encourage developers to implement and update their games. Also GOG has an excellent DRM free program, where you can redeem your Steam STALKER and WITCHER games at GOG and obtain DRM free copies at no cost. I've used GOG since it came out but I always had more reasons to use Steam except for older games.

CliveBarker said I am an alpha tester since the beginning, and I like it very much because the development of Galaxy is almost like LaunchBox. They really hear the community and they implement a lot of features suggested by the community. Hopefully this create a healthier market where Steam is like Goliath and Origin and GOG Galaxy are raising slowly. I don't think this is a direct competitor of LaunchBox because LaunchBox have features that GOG Galaxy probably will never implement. I've been Alpha testing but I didn't hear anything about achievements, this is new to me. So, I am getting Witcher 3 for free because I bought a GTX 970, and my friend told me it would redeem on GOG. I was mad, I am an achievement oriented person. As well I like steam cards. I don't hate steam, I love steam. If they give me achievements with GOG Galaxy though, I will be happier. My hope is that games can get updated in the future to allow for more achievements on the platform. DOSBox games most likely excluded unless they develop a competent wrapper for DOSBox and intercept specific calls... but that might be way to complicated for its potentially less return. If Galaxy turns out to be a Steam client but oriented towards the games they Publish and / or Older Games with a lot of similar features, I might be swayed to Galaxy as my 'old games platform'. I more or less already do, but lets take Space Quest for example. I got it on Steam, neither of the 6 games launch. I can gaurentee they lauch on GOG though. Wrap that together with Steam like features and I will be all over it.

Hippyshake said Jason Carr said Hippyshake said Although I blame that on my addictive personality and lack of self control, rather than gaming and alcohol. Oh man, I feel you there. Lack of self control, check. Addictive personality, check. I tend to latch onto things and never let them go. LaunchBox is one of those things, so it's not all bad, I guess. If nothing else, LaunchBox is showing me how I've replaced my physical addiction with a digital one. So far, I have 6238 (!) legal games imported, and there are more to come. Just seeing those pretty boxes on my virtual shelf, and watching that number climb, makes me want more. I've just bought another bundle this morning, and there's one at Groupees I pre-ordered yesterday that drops in a few hours. Allow me to paraphrase myself: "Hello, my name is John, and I'm a LaunchBoxoholic!" :D Feel free to use that quote in promotional materials. :) As a bundle junkie, I'm constantly purchasing the same game more than once (which is great for giveaways, but not so great for my wallet). LaunchBox finally gives me a way to see everything that I own already, so that I'm not making the same purchase on multiple platforms anymore. In fact, feel free to use that quote in promotional materials, too. :) www.IsThereAnyDeal.com helps me out a lot. I log in through Steam so it knows what I own and knows whats on my wishlist. So I get e-mails every day about sales from across the web. It only sends me e-mails if its a game on my wishlist that can be activated through Steam and it sends me e-mails about bundles. Sometimes its faster than the bundle sites, sometimes its slower. But in the e-mail any game that you own that's in a bundle will be crossed out. That has helped me a lot too, cause im a Bundle-holic and now LaunchBox-holic too. I haven't been able to really buy bundles recently cause we've been broke... but yea. So many good ones recently. :( My LaunchBox install is reaching 10k with no duplicates on the same system. I even count duplicates if its a different revision of a rom. I.e. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time v1.0 vs 1.1 vs 1.2. Master Quest wouldn't be a duple though. Ports I don't count as duplicates though. I would be over 10k but I deleted the Amiga roms. I still need to add in non-Steam but Windows games too.

Jason Carr said Hi hippy, the LocalDB is updated periodically from TheGamesDB.net for new releases. There's no real way for you to update it yourself. I meant to respond to this, but the site was down. xD Hippy, even though you can't affect the LocalDB directly still make updates to TheGamesDB since Jason can update the LocalDB with any data on the site, so new data can get added in and in the long run will help signifigantly if we get our own Database running.

Hippyshake said SentaiBrad said That's because it is in the upper left. Windows design changed. Good gravy. Hey, at least I'm consistent in my inability to pay attention. I missed it myself too when we first switched to it.

Hippyshake said Jason Carr said Per the game details, I see what you're saying. But generally, I would think that it would make sense that you're only favoriting or editing one item, because only one item's game details are displayed. Just noticed something while writing that post though: there's no "Back" option, although the window tells me there is: That's because it is in the upper left. Windows design changed.

Jason Carr said Nice. If you build it, they will come. We need to update this. "If you create a lot of content, they will come." xD Now... im still waiting.

Jason Carr said Ha, is that even *in* installation notes anywhere? Do we even *have* installation notes? ;) So easy to miss you don't even know. :P

whitoxx said Thanks for your reply but have you tried this? I think it is not that simple. If you can do it, please kindly quote an example for me. Thanks. I've never used it before Yea it might not be that easy, or it could be that easy. My point was really to experiment.