[PROJECT] Steam \ GameEx Integration

[Krakerman]

One ? is it possible to have some of the steam games not show under steam games list and have them say under a different emulator like DOS ect ect. Since some of those games on steam are using DOSBOX like Wolfenstein and I want those games to show under my DOS Games.

Thanks.

[Draco1962]

I would recommend deciding where you want the games to show and using that method as it is not possible in the current setup to divide out on that level. i have some of the older legacy games like you mentioned (Commander Keen series) and there is a way to run them outside of Steam using the files created for the Steam distro outside of Steam (can probably Google for the workaround as I did to make it happen).

[Draco1962]

@Tom - I came across this about Valve's Big Picture Mode. You may want to take a look and see if this is something that should be implemented. For those of us pursuing the 10 Foot interface dream, it may have relevance.

[Tom Speirs]

@Tom - I came across this about Valve's Big Picture Mode. You may want to take a look and see if this is something that should be implemented. For those of us pursuing the 10 Foot interface dream, it may have relevance.

Interesting timing for that. Thanks for the post. It seems more of an alternative than something to implement. It can probably be launched from GameEx.

[Stu1983]

Interesting timing for that. Thanks for the post. It seems more of an alternative than something to implement. It can probably be launched from GameEx.

Yeah that's what I thought when I seen it there... to be honest if this had been available last week, I probably wouldn't even have thought of trying to integrate Steam with GameEx I would have just set GameEx to launch this as a program.

Now that Steam is integrated though I think it is a much better way as it keeps everything in one system and allows for wrappers

[Stu1983]

See attached, its done. What is the benefit of this?

I tested and it's working, I had to take a screenshot (F12) in Sega Rally while in game to get it to appear in the screenshot.vdf but its working fine now.

Thanks again Tom.

I have noticed a couple of issue though.

When Sega Rally didn't appear I decided to delete the steamdata.ini

When I went back to GameEx I only had 1 Steam game even though the log said it found 40.

I went back in again and there were 2 games.

Out and in again and there were 13

Then 28, then 33 then 42 (40 Steam + 2 shortcuts that aren't in the log)

I delete the steamdata again and the same again, though this time it went 7, 20, 32, 42

I also have noticed that over the last couple of nights I have had no videos, the log says

21:01:54.3  10/09/2012:  Failed Opening Video: f:\games\gameex\media\steam\video\92300.flv

All the files are present and play fine in VLC

Strangely the 2 shortcuts have working videos

[Stu1983]

Should wrappers work for none Steam games in the same way as Steam games? I've created a wrapper using the appid for the shortcut but it doesn't launch

[Tom Speirs]

My bad, please try 12.83

[Tom Speirs]

I tested and it's working, I had to take a screenshot (F12) in Sega Rally while in game to get it to appear in the screenshot.vdf but its working fine now.

Thanks again Tom.

I have noticed a couple of issue though.

When Sega Rally didn't appear I decided to delete the steamdata.ini

When I went back to GameEx I only had 1 Steam game even though the log said it found 40.

I went back in again and there were 2 games.

Out and in again and there were 13

Then 28, then 33 then 42 (40 Steam + 2 shortcuts that aren't in the log)

I delete the steamdata again and the same again, though this time it went 7, 20, 32, 42

I also have noticed that over the last couple of nights I have had no videos, the log says

21:01:54.3  10/09/2012:  Failed Opening Video: f:\games\gameex\media\steam\video\92300.flv

All the files are present and play fine in VLC

Strangely the 2 shortcuts have working videos

I hate to say it cannot duplicate any of this. So not sure what is going on. Please try the latest version anyway.

[Stu1983]

Hi Tom, wrappers are now launching for the non Steam games, thanks.

I'm afraid I'm having a lot of other problems with the latest version though.

Sometimes when I start a Steam game it's seems to be trying to load Steam twice, I get a message telling me that it is already running.

Sometimes the login box appears but it doesn't log in automatically.

Still no videos playing either, didn't get a chance to try deleting my steamdata.ini again

There seems to be a more serious issue with the non Steam games.

It would appear the screenshots file is unreliable. It would appear steam can decide to change that ID when it feels like it making all shortcut invalid, I had Sega Rally working last night, tried tonight and nothing, Steam just appears.

I launched the game from within the Steam menu and it worked. I now have 2 Sega Rally entries in the shortcut file:

"shortcutnames"
{
  "11501351716352163840"  "SEGA Rally Revo"
  "12773183831544954880"  "NinjaBlade"
  "9892729744938500096"  "Sensible Soccer 2006"
  "16479449632548585472"  "Punishment 2"
  "11239396562842943488"  "SEGA Rally Revo"
}

I noticed this happened last night when I was trying to get Punishment 2 working but I was hoping it was a one of

I've attached my log file

Also maybe it would be an idea not to log the users steam login to the log file before people start posting logs over the forum and someone steals their account

I'm going to have a play about on my none emu system to see how things behave there

log.zip

[Stu1983]

How do you exit Steam? do you kill the process or do you send the shutdown command?

Seems killing the process may cause issues as Steam needs to shutdown 'gracefully' to keeps files intact

http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/60444/non-steam-games-dropping-from-steam-library

[Draco1962]

I agree - or perhaps make the user aware of where the info is located (will likely also show in their gameex.ini file to).

[Tom Speirs]

OK, I am currently updating the install. Try it in 10 minutes. It does gracefully exit steam. I believe Ive fixed the login issue by closing steam before trying to login. It does try to close the actual window rather than kill the process for the latter. The password is stored encrypted but it does obviously show in runitgame.bat. Ive removed it from the log. Give it a try. In terms of the flvs try to deleting them and have gameex try and download again.

[Tom Speirs]

Also just to let you know, I am not really experiencing any issues with it here.

[Stu1983]

This is much better Tom, login issues are gone... I did get the double login once there but I've been playing about, in and out of games for half an hour with no issue so I'll just put it down to a freak of nature for now.

Still no joy with the flv's though, I deleted them and GameEx has downloaded them again but still won't play them, i will play the Sega Rally and Ninja Blade videos that it found though, its just the proper Steam games it doesn't seem to like anymore

As for the double entries in the shortcut file both times that it has happened, the second entry has been the correct item so maybe if you find 2 with the same game name you could pick the second instead of the first... or maybe just ignore it for now and see how often it happens, I can fix the shortcut file myself anyway by deleting the 1st entry

[Tom Speirs]

I am not sure about the FLVs. Maybe something you installed messed up codecs? Does the log show them as unable to open video? Could you please post the shortcut file with double entries. I can probably check for multiple entries.

[Stu1983]

Sorry Tom I have already fixed the file myself but the shortcutnames sections looked like this before

"shortcutnames"
{
  "11501351716352163840"  "SEGA Rally Revo"
  "12773183831544954880"  "NinjaBlade"
  "9892729744938500096"  "Sensible Soccer 2006"
  "16479449632548585472"  "Punishment 2"
  "11239396562842943488"  "SEGA Rally Revo"
}

As for the FLV's I'm not aware of installing anything other than a couple of Windows updates, the files play fine in VLC.

The log says

Failed Opening Video: f:\games\gameex\media\steam\video\92300.flv

[Tom Speirs]

VLC has built in codecs so they would play fine. Do they play in WMP?

[Stu1983]

I re-installed Windows 7 codecs and all is well again, thanks Tom

[Draco1962]

A quick question for whomever may wish to answer. What are the benefits of loading non-Steam acquired games to Steam?

[nullPointer]

Until the Steam enhancements to GameEx, I didn’t really see a benefit. But at this point the benefit for me is that I can leverage existing Steam functionality in GameEx, for ease of configuration within GameEx. This is particularly handy for any games that would otherwise require a unique Advanced Emulator Config (specifically for additional processes to watch). Previously those games each took up an emulator slot within GameEx, but now they can all reside happily under the Steam section and my emulator slots are freed up again. Yay!

[Draco1962]

Makes sense. Now what about caveats to doing so? Such as snaps and such?

[nullPointer]

That’s a very good question, as you are a bit more limited regarding artwork. Under the Steam integration you’ll be limited to a Video, a Snap, and a Banner in terms of GameEx artwork. So long as the name of the artwork matches the Steam ID for the game in question you should be good to go.

Due to the complexity of PC games over traditional console games I do often find it helpful to have a strategy guide on hand. So this is one drawback to the integration approach as your strategy guide(s) will not be available from within GameEx under Steam integration. There are of course workarounds for this specific drawback, but it is a drawback nonetheless.

So if you already have a large collection of artwork and supporting materials for your PC games within GameEx (and you wish to continue displaying all of it), it may be preferable to keep running those PC games as standard emulators.

[Draco1962]

Thanks for the answers. I haven't had a chance to play with adding anything to Steam that was not a Steam purchased game and this was a good opportunity to ask some questions that I ma sure others may have regarding using the Steam interface and GameEx integration.

[Tom Speirs]

Tom - would it be possible to make the available game videos loop? At present, the videos will play only once.

Just to let you know this is fixed for the next release.