SteamLauncher

[Lahma]

On 2/24/2022 at 3:41 AM, Benuno said:

Here are the files for everyone (including a simple readme.txt file for instructions). Set those .exe as emulator launchers for each game of that particular pc store source. Then you should always have the Steam Overlay in-game with any of those launcher urls. Only for xbox apps you need to install glosc, as the batch does a game launch via glosc.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LQgrmWuwUxB3rWyXKZw8Kxxa6HbRYlve

Thanks for sharing your work @Benuno. I will take a look at it as soon as I get a chance. Hopefully there are other SteamLauncher users who will find it useful as well.

[Benuno]

No Problem! @Lahma the only important request I have currently is excluding any emulator/game entry from SteamLauncher. I can't use Teknoparrot (https://teknoparrot.com/) without writing any plugin myself/manually disabling your SteamLauncher.

Teknoparrot is a Windows Arcade Game Launcher which injects the Steam Overlay via Spacewar AppID to allow online multiplayer via Steam. When launching it via SteamLauncher Teknoparrot crashes as it is unable to inject Steam. Would be great if I could exclude that emulator/game entry from SteamLauncher specifically as the LaunchBox platform "Arcade" also includes MAME etc emulators/games which work fine with SteamLauncher.

Edited February 27, 2022 by Benuno

[Corgana]

On 11/14/2021 at 9:07 AM, Benuno said:

Yes, this is possible with any launcher (excluding Microsoft Store games) but you need to set up custom emulator entries for each Launcher. Just pm me (on Steam) for more info/files. My Scripts are working for me with any Epic Games/Ubisoft Connect/Rockstar Games/Amazon Games/Origin game utilizing this great plugin!

Roughly speaking my scripts kill the intended launcher if running and then immediatly launches it with the given game url and waits for the Launcher to appear and then remembers the first fullscreen window appearing on screen after some timeout. Then after the game window is closed after having played the script automatically kills the game's launcher after some timeout (to be able to upload save data) to save ram etc.. For Microsoft Store Games my ahk script also detects game closure and repositions the game window to make it borderless windowed without exclusive fullscreen for glosc to work seamlessly on top.

Not really related to your comment, but I wanted to point out Glosc is being replaced by Glossi. Currently in Alpha but it works for me.

[Benuno]

1 hour ago, Corgana said:

Not really related to your comment, but I wanted to point out Glosc is being replaced by Glossi. Currently in Alpha but it works for me.

I already did those, called xbox-launcher-new.exe. Had to change the .bat as it uses .json files now. You can make your own exe files with Bat To Exe converter btw using those uploaded .bat files. Set the .exe there to use admin rights, 64-bit and hidden for same settings.

Edit: If someone is interested I might also upload some emulator batches there as examples how to be able to launch games independent of drive letters and main (rom) paths. Like for example my batches search inside "Roms" and "Roms-Cloud" folders on any (smb) drive for any subfolders matching with the file title and search with all emulator compatible rom file-endings. (For example your laptop has a compressed cso to save space but your main pc has the full iso - no need for changing the entries). For Teknoparrot e.g. i edit the xml profile with the current rom path before execution etc..

Edited February 27, 2022 by Benuno

[Lahma]

18 hours ago, Benuno said:

No Problem! @Lahma the only important request I have currently is excluding any emulator/game entry from SteamLauncher.

I'm working on it. Got it mostly implemented already actually. Just need to do a bit more testing and then implement a tab in the GUI for managing the feature. You can refer to this previous post of mine to see the concept for how the feature will function:

 

[fromlostdays]

More of a general question but has anyone been able to get the Steam overlay working on Genshin Impact? 

Things I've tried:

• Importing GI exe into launchbox and launching with Steamlauncher enabled
• Importing GI exe into Steam as a non-steam game and launching.
• The above two methods while running Steam as an Administrator

The overlay just stubbornly refuses to show up.

Relevant details:

• I'm running in 4k windowed mode as GI doesn't let me run full screen.
• I downloaded the game from the website, not EPIC
• Every time I run the game I get that annoying Windows warning "Do you want to let this app make changes to this device?" (Can't make it stop, and wondering if this is somehow interfering with the overlay.)

Any advice appreciated!

[Benuno]

14 hours ago, fromlostdays said:

More of a general question but has anyone been able to get the Steam overlay working on Genshin Impact? 

Things I've tried:

• Importing GI exe into launchbox and launching with Steamlauncher enabled
• Importing GI exe into Steam as a non-steam game and launching.
• The above two methods while running Steam as an Administrator

The overlay just stubbornly refuses to show up.

Relevant details:

• I'm running in 4k windowed mode as GI doesn't let me run full screen.
• I downloaded the game from the website, not EPIC
• Every time I run the game I get that annoying Windows warning "Do you want to let this app make changes to this device?" (Can't make it stop, and wondering if this is somehow interfering with the overlay.)

Any advice appreciated!

Works for me (never played it), chose the launcher.exe, runs borderless windowed. Maybe try setting everything with admin rights as I mentioned above (also launchbox.exe, bigbox.exe, launcher.exe), disable uac prompts :? Otherwise idk it should work for you, too. I also use a 4K HDR screen btw.

Edited March 15, 2022 by Benuno

[Lahma]

14 hours ago, fromlostdays said:

More of a general question but has anyone been able to get the Steam overlay working on Genshin Impact? 

Things I've tried:

• Importing GI exe into launchbox and launching with Steamlauncher enabled
• Importing GI exe into Steam as a non-steam game and launching.
• The above two methods while running Steam as an Administrator

The overlay just stubbornly refuses to show up.

Relevant details:

• I'm running in 4k windowed mode as GI doesn't let me run full screen.
• I downloaded the game from the website, not EPIC
• Every time I run the game I get that annoying Windows warning "Do you want to let this app make changes to this device?" (Can't make it stop, and wondering if this is somehow interfering with the overlay.)

Any advice appreciated!

Steam has to be running as admin and if you want to launch it through LB using SteamLauncher, you'll have to run LaunchBox as admin too. The reason for this is Genshin's stupid anti-cheat driver which is implemented very poorly. It requires Genshin to be running as admin in order for it to communicate with the kernel driver.

[Lahma]

On 3/14/2022 at 7:59 PM, fromlostdays said:

More of a general question but has anyone been able to get the Steam overlay working on Genshin Impact?
[...]
Any advice appreciated!

Just wanted to followup with you and see if you were able to get the overlay working with my previous advice. Let me know if it works out for you.

Edit: Just thought I would also note that if you put the text '-show-screen-selector' (without the quotes) under 'Launch Options' in your non-Steam shortcut (or as a launch argument in LB), this will force the Unity screen selector dialog to be shown prior to Genshin launching which will allow you to set custom resolution and graphics options prior to the game launching (including being able to force windowed mode).

Edited March 16, 2022 by Lahma
Add additional info

[fromlostdays]

Thanks for following up. I got mad with it and put it down for a bit. Just tried again.

Does it work, yes and no.

Things I did:

• Set LB/BB Steam and SteamOverlayUI to all launch as admin.
• Turned off LB Gamestart screens because after seeing it so many times I got mad with it haha
• Tried importing genshinimpact.exe to launchbox 
• Tried importing launcher into LB instead of genshin exe
• Turned off that windows nag notification (but I'm not happy about having to do that, still can't figure out why it comes up every time I launch).

Nothing made it work through launchbox with Steamlauncher. However something in the above did make the overlay work when launching through steam proper, which is good enough for me. I setup all my steam games in LB, but the truth is I don't open launchbox just to then launch a steam game so I'm good to dive into this game I've heard so much about this evening. 

 

I do have one question: Is there any reason for me to not want to run all of these things as admin? Or should I just leave them like that from now on?

Thanks peeps!

Edited March 17, 2022 by fromlostdays

[The_Keeper86]

Hey guys, I've been having some stuttering issues with Flycast core in Windows 11 (not related to SteamLauncher) so I made an image backup and decided to go back to Windows 10. I decided to try the 2021 LTSC  build for testing and for whatever reason SteamLauncher doesn't work. It just loads the Steam Proxy window and does nothing. Anyone else have this problem? If it's an issue with the LTSC build I can go back to the normal 10 Pro edition.

[Lahma]

  

On 3/17/2022 at 4:53 PM, fromlostdays said:

Thanks for following up. I got mad with it and put it down for a bit. Just tried again.

Does it work, yes and no.

Things I did:

• Set LB/BB Steam and SteamOverlayUI to all launch as admin.
• Turned off LB Gamestart screens because after seeing it so many times I got mad with it haha
• Tried importing genshinimpact.exe to launchbox 
• Tried importing launcher into LB instead of genshin exe
• Turned off that windows nag notification (but I'm not happy about having to do that, still can't figure out why it comes up every time I launch).

Nothing made it work through launchbox with Steamlauncher. However something in the above did make the overlay work when launching through steam proper, which is good enough for me. I setup all my steam games in LB, but the truth is I don't open launchbox just to then launch a steam game so I'm good to dive into this game I've heard so much about this evening.

I just specifically tested the setup that I suggested (run Steam as admin, run LB as admin, launch Genshin from LB with SteamLauncher enabled) and everything works fine including the Steam overlay. Just to be sure, in LB, your Genshin Impact game entry is pointed to "GenshinImpact.exe", right (as opposed to trying to launch a Steam URL or the Genshin Impact Launcher or something else)? While you can certainly open up the file properties and configure an exe to run as admin if you want to, when I'm saying to run something as admin, I'm simply referring to right clicking the exe (or a shortcut to it) and clicking "Run as administrator". Btw, you don't need to set "SteamOverlayUI" to run as admin... It is launched by Steam so it will run with whatever permissions Steam is run with.

Let me expound on that a bit more actually... The only reason Steam would have to be run as admin for its overlay to work is if a particular game has a flag set that requires it to be run as admin (which unfortunately is common these days because of lazy devs and terrible programming practices.. in 99% of cases you can actually force these games to run without admin permissions by using a special command). The reason this is so is because if a game is running as admin and Steam is not, Steam won't have the appropriate permissions to inject its overlay into the game process (because low/medium privilege processes can't inject code into high privilege processes). Furthermore, if you're seeing a UAC ("Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device?") dialog when you run a game from a launcher (whether that be LB, Steam, or whatever), then that means that the launcher is NOT running as admin. Any process that is running as admin will NOT show a UAC dialog whenever it launches another process with admin privileges (by default, a process launches other processes with the same privileges it has.. so if it is running as admin, it will launch other processes as admin and won't show a UAC dialog)... so if you're seeing a UAC dialog when you try to launch Genshin from LB/Steam/etc, then you can be sure that for whatever reason your launcher is not actually running as admin.

I guess I'm unfamiliar with the windows nag notification you're talking about... Unless you're talking about UAC? If you're referring to UAC, then you absolutely should NOT turn it off. You're making a huge sacrifice in security doing so. You're welcome to take my advice or leave it but being that my occupation is in reverse code engineering (computer security), I can confidently tell you from an educated perspective that disabling UAC is a terrible idea unless you have a good reason for doing so and know what you're doing.

On 3/17/2022 at 4:53 PM, fromlostdays said:

I do have one question: Is there any reason for me to not want to run all of these things as admin? Or should I just leave them like that from now on?

Thanks peeps!

You really should not run anything as admin that you don't have to... If there is a bug in a piece of software that can be exploited by an attacker and that software is running as admin, the attacker will have complete, unmitigated access on your system and can do anything they please. You're of course always going to be playing a balancing game between convenience and security and only you can decide how much security you're willing to trade for convenience. My suggestion would be to only run Steam/LB as admin whenever absolutely necessary (such as when playing Genshin). In an ideal world, for normal, every-day tasks, users wouldn't even log into Windows with an administrator account.. However, due to a wide variety of issues, this isn't realistic for most people and that is exactly the reason that UAC exists. It helps to keep certain processes from running with unlimited, admin-level rights and warns you whenever a process tries to obtain admin privileges.

[Lahma]

On 3/17/2022 at 5:42 PM, The_Keeper86 said:

Hey guys, I've been having some stuttering issues with Flycast core in Windows 11 (not related to SteamLauncher) so I made an image backup and decided to go back to Windows 10. I decided to try the 2021 LTSC  build for testing and for whatever reason SteamLauncher doesn't work. It just loads the Steam Proxy window and does nothing. Anyone else have this problem? If it's an issue with the LTSC build I can go back to the normal 10 Pro edition.

Just leaving a note here that I talked with @The_Keeper86 directly on Steam about the issues he was having.

[fromlostdays]

As always you're a helpful fountain of information! Yeah I was talking about the UAC. And don't worry, I'm not a computer guru but I knew enough to turn it back on after testing. 🤣

I'm about to go stop everything from running as admin as well. Thanks for the heads up on that!

I've tried both the genshinimpact.exe and the launcher.exe in every facet I could, same problem either way.

Putting it all together, however, it sounds like Genshin Impact "has a flag set that requires it to be run as admin" and for whatever reason mine isn't (could it be because I'm a weirdo and I install all my PC games, even ones from other launchers, in the steamapps/common folder on an internal drive that isn't C:), and hence the UAC messages every launch. And maybe this is somehow messing with the overlay for normal operations through LB cause it sounds like our setup was almost identical. That mine gives me a UAC message is the only difference. I've also looked up ways to make the message disappear and theres plenty of info so I'm not the only one having this problem with the game.

Its a fun game, and the standard controls aren't terrible so I honestly don't think its worth all this fuss. I just tend to take things when they don't work as a learning opportunity. I'm happy to just make sure I run steam as admin before I play it. 

Edited March 22, 2022 by fromlostdays

[Darkcloud]

On 3/19/2022 at 10:13 AM, Lahma said:

Just leaving a note here that I talked with @The_Keeper86 directly on Steam about the issues he was having.

I have the same Problem, I am on Windows 11 and Steam Launcher just launches the Proxy and does nothing afterwards. 

[51mm5]

I'm not on Windows 11 but 10 and I get this issue

[Corgana]

So Steam updated, and now launching anything with steamlauncher enabled just kinda... exits launchbox (and doesn't launch a game obv).

EDIT: Was in the Steam beta program, reverting to stable fixed the issue.

Edited April 4, 2022 by Corgana

[Benuno]

Windows 11, Steam stable (not beta) - still working for me. Perhaps you have the Steam Client Beta installed? If valve changes sth the beta branch is most of the time first affected.

[Corgana]

4 hours ago, Benuno said:

Windows 11, Steam stable (not beta) - still working for me. Perhaps you have the Steam Client Beta installed? If valve changes sth the beta branch is most of the time first affected.

Beta program was it. No idea when I may have enrolled myself, but disabling fixed the issue. Thanks for the response- I probably wouldn't have thought to check!

[51mm5]

19 hours ago, Corgana said:

So Steam updated, and now launching anything with steamlauncher enabled just kinda... exits launchbox (and doesn't launch a game obv).

EDIT: Was in the Steam beta program, reverting to stable fixed the issue.

This resolved the issue for me, thanks