Black Mesa in GameEx via Steam Integration

[T. Goodchild]

How can we add mods like Black Mesa to GameEx with artwork? They don't have a url but just an entry.

Edited September 19, 2012 by nullPointer
Split thread from Steam Video Snaps thread since the topic had shifted

[nullPointer]

I’m not seeing Black Mesa within that list, am I missing it? So long as the game has been properly integrated within Steam, It should be possible to manually add artwork for GameEx. I haven’t tried Black Mesa yet (I’m pretty excited to give it a try though!), but I’d be a bit surprised if Steam doesn’t launch the game via a URL. Even if it doesn’t have a specific URL it should hopefully have a globally unique identifier within Steam. If you can determine the GUID for Black Mesa the next step would be to track down applicable artwork for the game, name each artwork according to the game ID, and put the artwork in the applicable locations (as Stu describes).

This post should put you on the right track insofar as discovering the unique game ID for Black Mesa.

[Stu1983]

I haven't gotten around to trying Black Mesa yet but will do shortly.

I have a thought though, if you can't find the ID for it, can it be launched via an exe? If it can the you could add the exe into Steam as a non steam shortcut which GameEx will pick... bit of a roundabout way of doing it but should work

[T. Goodchild]

I've tried several variations of creating an .ini with the app ID or the launch # but none ever show up in GameEx. I can set banner pics in Steam and I tried setting the artwork in GameEx but I don't think I'm getting the config number(s) right or maybe they need an .ahk launcher idk. I've searched through the other thread for clues but I'm not familiar with setting up a specific Steam game in GameEx manually.

[nullPointer]

First thing's first; does the game appear in your Steam client?

[T. Goodchild]

Yes, it should be the second entry.

[nullPointer]

D'oh! I missed that entry in your first post too, Well now I feel a bit daft! Sorry about that.

So at this point, it would definitely be worthwhile to post a copy of your GameEx log.

I've been pretty curious to take this game for a spin, so when I get home tonight I'll give it a whirl and see what I can see. It may be that there's an issue with GameEx failing to detect the game.

[T. Goodchild]

After looking at my log I also see that my Half Life episodes 1+2 are not loading either. I did a reinstall of Steam when I first had this problem and it fixed it I'm going to try to verify the cache again for those games and see if it fixes them.

log.txt

[myonions]

Looks like it's not officially released yet:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=94128543

[nullPointer]

Looks like it's not officially released yet:

It’s a bit of a funny thing, that. Since Black Mesa is a Source mod (as in the Valve development framework), it can only be launched through Steam. When you install Black Mesa it actually installs directly to your Steam directory under /Steam/sourcemods. As far as I can tell there’s no way to launch the game externally (there’s no exe).

As far as GameEx goes, this game seems to be a bit of an enigma. It doesn’t have an entry in the Steam config.vdf which isn’t unusual for a non-Steam game. If you take an in game screenshot it will create a Black Mesa entry in the Steam screenshots.vdf, but GameEx still doesn’t seem to detect the game (at least not in my testing).

When you create a desktop shortcut it is in the form of a URL shortcut just like any other Steam shortcut. The strange part is that this doesn’t create an entry in shortcuts.vdf.

Long story short; I was unsuccessful in my attempt to integrate this game with GameEx. On the plus side as myonions points out, we’re less than a month away from an official Black Mesa Steam release. That may change the way Steam stores data for this game, which may in turn be easier for GameEx to detect. In the meantime Tom or Stu may be more successful than I’ve been.

[chaskas]

Hello, yesterday i suscesfully install Black mesa mod follow thw instrucction in this site http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/101chk/solved_how_to_run_black_mesa_source_if_the_game/

i think about method for generate the shorcut to game may be applied in gameex.

bye

[nullPointer]

Thanks chaskas. That’s interesting that Black Mesa not even showing up in Steam for some users. For me (and T. Goodchild) Black Mesa displays fine in Steam. The problem currently is that GameEx does not recognize the game in Steam, and thus does not display Black Mesa in the GameEx list of games (via the integrated Steam games feature).

It’s certainly valid that one could add the game to GameEx via the ‘traditional’ method though. Black Mesa does in fact utilize the in game Steam overlay, so if one were to follow the method laid out by couslev it would probably work just fine. In fact that may be the best option until such time that Black Mesa receives an official Steam release, at which point we might have more to work with in terms of natively integrating the game into GameEx via the Steam integration feature.

[Stu1983]

I've successfully added Black Mesa to the GameEx Steam list.

It's a bit of a cheat but will do the job until it's officially released.

I've created a simple ahk script that launches Balck Mesa

run steam://rungameid/13540830642081628378

I compiled this to an exe then added it to Steam as a 'Non Steam Game'

That's it, GameEx will now see it. If your Black Mesa has the same AppID as mine 13540830642081628378 then you can just use the attached exe

Black Mesa.zip

[nullPointer]

Stu, you're the man! I figured you might be able to apply some 'outside the box' type logic to get this done. Well Played!

Edited October 1, 2012 by Draco1962
This thread is now closed. If the problem re-occurs, please start a new thread.