Running steam as an emulator

[mviars]

I am trying yo run steam as an emulator instead of using GameEx's built in steam player so that I have more control over the display in my theme. I am getting surprisingly further than I thought I could with just about everything working with the theme showing what I want my problem is that when launching the game the focus returns to GameEx with the game running in the background. If I exit GamEx I can then access the game. I am thinking I need to do some advanced config file but not sure what it should look like. Anyone out there have an idea what I should do?

[morgoth32]

Hi, first make sure the executable you use for your game is not just a launcher because Game Ex checks for the exe.

For steam I use bat files to avoid those issues. Here is one example:

start "Batman Arkham Knight" steam://rungameid/208650
timeout /t 40
:loop
timeout 30
tasklist /fi "imagename eq BatmanAK.exe" |find ":" > nul
if errorlevel 1 goto loop
start /b "steamkil" taskkill /f /im Steam.exe /t
exit

The loop with tasklist will check if the exe is running and won't close until you close that app. Steam Kill is useful because after launching a lot of games steam will bug and won't launch anything until you reboot Steam.

You can find the steam game id of your game if you create a shortcut from steam and watch his properties.

[mviars]

Well this way work similarly to the way I was doing it except it seems to take a little longer to set up the batch files however if killing and restarting steam every time is the best way to have less issues then I guess I am on board with that. It is unfortunate that we have to do this as it seems to take a little longer to have steam start up before playing each game but I guess this is an issue on steams side. But I digress even doing it this way I still have the problem with the game losing focus and just running in the background. Now I just get a black screen but if I kill GameEx I can get to the game. I think when I was not using a batch file I would have the GameEx menu still showing but the game still running in the back ground but I don't think it matters if I have a black screen or GameEx showing as my problem is just getting focus to the game.

[mviars]

Anyone know how to make steam start and stay in the foreground?

[DazzleHP]

Well this way of doing it is laborious and will cause a lot of hassle, basically negating a LOT of work that members went through to make the Steam feature work in the first place

If you insist, it can be done, but you will need to mess around with advanced configs, with each and every game to get it working, something as i said before has already been done, painstakingly i might add, to get the Steam feature working in the first place..

Don't take it lightly either, it took 100's of hours of manpower within a well established team to be the first to have Steam Integration, and it still takes a lot to keep up with the ever changing client.

If you think you can do this on your own, then all i can say is fair play and good luck. But my personal advice would be... stick with what you got

[mviars]

I mean no disrespect to those that put their time into making the steam feature work I just wanted to have screenshots, gameplay video, game discriptions. Also sense this is still going into an arcade cab I only want a few of my steam game on the list anyways. Mainly platforms and 2D fighting games. 

[stigzler]

On 05/02/2017 at 10:19 AM, morgoth32 said:

start "Batman Arkham Knight" steam://rungameid/208650
timeout /t 40
:loop
timeout 30
tasklist /fi "imagename eq BatmanAK.exe" |find ":" > nul
if errorlevel 1 goto loop
start /b "steamkil" taskkill /f /im Steam.exe /t
exit

That's a nice bit of batch scripting, that.

[DazzleHP]

On 08/02/2017 at 4:53 AM, mviars said:

I mean no disrespect to those that put their time into making the steam feature work I just wanted to have screenshots, gameplay video, game discriptions. Also sense this is still going into an arcade cab I only want a few of my steam game on the list anyways. Mainly platforms and 2D fighting games. 

Oh, no, that wasn't what i was getting at My point was, that if you use the integrated Steam Mod you should be getting screens, vids and descriptions anyway, but if you try to use Steam as a regular emulator then you are putting yourself at a serious disadvantage, as per the reason in my previous post

To answer your question honestly in other words:

You can setup steam as a regular emulator, you can setup pretty much anything that has a command line in
GameEx, it is very flexible. But Steam is... i'm trying to think of an appropriate word... b..., f....r, nope, nothing i can think of will describe the absolute assholery of this stupid ass client and what it takes to keep up with it.

 

I guess in a way i'm just trying to prevent you from stepping into a room full of wolves holding a rump in your hand

[DJ Infinity]

mogorth32,

could I plz see your settings for this? Im not a complete stranger to the workings of Game Ex. I would like to get Steam up and running before I move on the the next. After Steam its Demul for me and If I remember correctly Ima need a wrapper for it.

[mviars]

Thanks for the reply DazzleHP. I guess I dont remember seeing the screen shots and vids when using the built-in steam option. However my other problem could be that I really dont want to see over 800 steam games in my list. The way I perceived the built-in steam option is that it is super easy to set up(just login info) but no ability(that I know of) to modify any settings. If I am wrong please tell me.

 

5 hours ago, DJ Infinity said:

mogorth32,

could I plz see your settings for this? Im not a complete stranger to the workings of Game Ex. I would like to get Steam up and running before I move on the the next. After Steam its Demul for me and If I remember correctly Ima need a wrapper for it.

 I tried mogorth32's method and other than killing the steam client it worked similarly to the way I first tried doing it myself however I still had the same problem with the game starting fine then going into the background and GameEX coming into focus. I dont think I like killing the client method I would rather kill the game process and keep the client logged in and running for faster loads especially since this will be on an arcade cabinet that many other people besides myself will be playing. After digging through the forums I did find an option that has worked great for me so far. I found it here. 

 

[mviars]

The program link is dead from the post above however if you scroll down to the next post below that one Tom put another link to the file if you would like to try it.

[DJ Infinity]

Thank You mviars. That made it real easy and all the Steam Games show up now I gotta hunt down some video snaps

[mviars]

Glad you got it going. As far as the video snaps I just used steam in a browser and right click on the video from the games store page and then save the video. I then used handbrake to convert to MP4 format as well as drop it down to 480P since its in a small window on the screen anyways and I save some HD space.