Adding non-installed Windows games from an Excel list to LaunchBox library

[an531]

Hello everyone, 

I'm thinking about buying LaunchBox to organize my games in a more classy fashion, but I'm not sure if it can do what I want it to do. Basically what I want is to create a library of Windows games from a list of game titles. I have a list of hundreds of Windows games that I have from various sources in Excel (which sadly is my current, primitive game organizer) and I would like to import that list to LaunchBox, and have LaunchBox automatically download all the metadata for each game on the list. The vast majority of those games are not installed. I install whatever games I want to play at the time and uninstall them afterwords due to SSD/HDD space limitations.

If LaunchBox can't do it (or is not optimal for this purpose), but you know of other means, I would be very grateful as a fellow gamer if you shared that information and hope that it's not inappropriate for me to ask about this here.

Thank you for your time and help in advance.

[DOS76]

if there is a way you can use Excel to use the list to generate .txt files for the items in the list then it would be possible to just import the text files as the roms and it will scrape them and display data for them but without a actual file to import then it is impossible.

[an531]

On 11/13/2019 at 2:18 AM, DOS76 said:

if there is a way you can use Excel to use the list to generate .txt files for the items in the list then it would be possible to just import the text files as the roms and it will scrape them and display data for them but without a actual file to import then it is impossible.

Many thanks for getting back to me.

Creating empty text files from Excel list is very easy. However, once I do that:

(1) Can Launchbox display data for games that come from different stores, like GOG, Steam, Epic etc.? 

(2) What kind of art/videos/gifs/pictures can I expect for current Windows games? I saw some gorgeous animations/short video clips for retro games that play automatically when viewing games in LaunchBox. Will there be any such videos/trailers showing gameplay for e.g. Steam games? Will there be pictures showing gameplay or perhaps only the cover?

(3) On the page that displays information about each game, can I manually add custom: (a) fields/categories (e.g., a yes/no field for "controller support"); (b) tags (e.g. tags for game genre, like "FPS", "simulation", "RTS"); pictures/videos (e.g., game trailers that I download manually from Steam)?

Edited November 14, 2019 by an531

[DOS76]

1 yes if the games are in the LB Database it definitely will regardless of where they come from.

2 That I can't answer as I'm more into retro than current PC games but this also depends on what is in the Database.

3 There is support for custom fields and you can add your own notes. This is one of the edit forms all those text fields are able to be edited and those tabs also have additional menu items when clicked.

[C-Beats]

In regard to number 2. If the game has a SteamAppID associated to it LaunchBox hit's SteamAPI to download images and trailers. If Steam has a video so will you (though only the first one it gets from the API).