SteamGridDB support for Non-Steam games

[CartoonFan]

System Information

• SteamTinkerLaunch version: 6f5f68a
• Distribution: Arch Linux

Feature Description

I'm sure you've got a ton of stuff on your plate at this point 😆 , but after glancing at #738 and the recent commits, I was wondering if it'd be possible to have SteamGridDB grab (and assign) the game art for a specific game.

My current workflow for adding Non-Steam games is:

1. Install through Lutris and and use the built-in setting to add it to Steam
2. Use steamgrid to add the artwork to Steam
3. Rename the game to its Steam ID (where possible) to take advantage of Steam Input

Probably doesn't seem like a lot, but when you've got a bunch of Non-Steam games, it gets to be tedious fairly quickly. So...I was wondering if Steam Tinker Launch could maybe simplify the process somehow 🤔

Thanks!

[sonic2kk]

I like this idea. It crossed my mind before, I think I mentioned somewhere around #757 about having some sort of integration for Non-Steam Games (or at least investigated this without noting it anywhere for some reason).

It is possible to download artwork from Steam Grid for a game somewhere in the game menu / global menu, but I'm not sure if this works for Non-Steam Games, and I believe it's for the artwork you see when launching a game through SteamTinkerLaunch.

I suppose then it should be possible to fetch artwork. The question becomes how to implement this. We can't have as much of a dynamic UI like some other tools have, but I'll have a think and see what I can come up with in the future.

Probably doesn't seem like a lot, but when you've got a bunch of Non-Steam games, it gets to be tedious fairly quickly.

I can certainly see how this would be a pain. For emulation, Steam-ROM-Manager is pretty much magic, so I'd like a feature like this somehow.

---

Useful idea, no idea on an implementation strategy yet, but should be doable once the UIX portion is figured out (yeah, Yad hinders the UIX in general, but I still do my best to make new features as least painful as possible 😉).

[CartoonFan]

Useful idea, no idea on an implementation strategy yet, but should be doable once the UIX portion is figured out (yeah, Yad hinders the UIX in general, but I still do my best to make new features as least painful as possible 😉).

That's about as much as I can ask for 😄

Thanks for the consideration 💜 🙏

I can certainly see how this would be a pain. For emulation, Steam-ROM-Manager is pretty much magic, so I'd like a feature like this somehow.

I looked it up after the initial version of this comment, and apparently it works for more than just emulation! 😲

I'll look a bit more into it to see if I can use it for anything. Thanks for the advice! 👍

[sonic2kk]

It's still something I'd like to include in STL, even just as a personal challenge of sorts. They got the AppID thing down and I spent well over a year trying to figure out how they did it and, well, I finally did and I did it in Bash too (and even released it independently from SteamTinkerLaunch as a reference implementation for anyone else interested).

No ETA on when this will come, I have a couple of improvements I want to make to configuring+cleaning up Non-Steam Games which will require some time investigating methods of interacting with text-based VDF files. I also want to improve some of the logic around how we write out to the binary shortcuts.vdf file to make it a bit cleaner and more flexible. And of course, there are some SpecialK+ReShade improvements to do :-) Things have been busier around here than they have been in a while so lots of fun things coming!

I'll be doing my best to implement these features when I have time, in the order of the ones I am most motivated for. I appreciate the feature suggestion though and I do try to get around to things eventually (even if it can take several months...) so hope it's ok if it may take a while!

[CartoonFan]

It's still something I'd like to include in STL, even just as a personal challenge of sorts. They got the AppID thing down and I spent well over a year trying to figure out how they did it and, well, I finally did and I did it in Bash too (and even released it independently from SteamTinkerLaunch as a reference implementation for anyone else interested).

Congrats! 🥳

No ETA on when this will come, I have a couple of improvements I want to make to configuring+cleaning up Non-Steam Games which will require some time investigating methods of interacting with text-based VDF files. I also want to improve some of the logic around how we write out to the binary shortcuts.vdf file to make it a bit cleaner and more flexible. And of course, there are some SpecialK+ReShade improvements to do :-)

Of course 😁

Things have been busier around here than they have been in a while so lots of fun things coming!

Looks like you've been busy 👀

STL's had some really nice developments recently, so the near future's looking promising 😁

I'll be doing my best to implement these features when I have time, in the order of the ones I am most motivated for. I appreciate the feature suggestion though and I do try to get around to things eventually (even if it can take several months...) so hope it's ok if it may take a while!

I don't know if there's anything I can do this time to help things along, so...I might just have to wait 😅

[sonic2kk]

So thinking about this some more, STL already has support for SteamGridDB, though it works based on AppID. As far as I understand, this just downloads a bunch of grids from SteamGridDB. You can pass your own API token by generating one and adding it to the global config file either directly by modifying the SGDBAPIKEY variable, or by entering it on the Global Menu.

Since this works by AppID, we would need a way to allow searching by game name. We would also need to be pretty strict, narrowing down to only exact name matches (for example, searching for Touhou 6 should only return those matches). The issue is, expecting users to be strict with the game name might be a bit much.

The next problem even if we iron the above out, is how to integrate it with Add Non-Steam Game. Perhaps we could add a button to download the grids without closing the dialog, then we can add in the dialogue description where to find the game grids in the STL folder structure.

I am also not sure how to integrate this properly into the commandline usage, it probably isn't really possible in any meaningful way.

The problem with all of this is, at least to me, it's not that much easier than just browsing SteamGridDB and manually downloading the files. I think there may be a better way to solve this issue, or at least something we can do in furtherance of this goal of adding artwork to Non-Steam Games with lower friction.

---

With that, going in a completely different direction, there is a potential alternative to solve this issue. One solution could be to read game artwork from the game EXE folder based on name
- Read images with specific names such as hero, logo, etc from the same folder as the Game EXE, and have a checkbox (enabled by default) that says something like "Use artwork from EXE folder".
- This means a user can, before adding their Non-Steam Game, download and save files from SteamGridDB and put them in the same folder as the game exe. Of course they'd have to know where this is in order to save it, but they'd have to know that anyway to add their Non-Steam Game.
- This means the user can choose the exact artwork they want, and have a low-friction way of getting STL to load it.
- The same idea should be possible to apply to game icons, as many games have an icon file in the same folder as the EXE we can probably load this too
- We should only look for artwork to fill in if the mentioned checkbox is enabled AND only for artwork that isn't selected -- for example if a user already chose an icon and banner, we would only look for and fill in boxart, tenfoot and logo artwork since those are the only blank ones
- For commandline usage this will be disabled by default as it should be enabled only by an explicit flag, such as --auto-artwork or something

This approach does have some issues though:
- It's not using SteamGridDB automatically, which is the core of this issue
- There are some questions around how we would prioritize certain formats, such as if there is a hero.jpg and hero.png and hero.gif in the same folder
- The user has to name their files correctly in order for them to be picked up (we could note on the tooltip what the names should be, and on the wiki, and also in some text at the top of the window, and finally also in the commandline usage)
- If the user has to store these files deliberately, and in the same folder as the EXE so they know where it is, does it really save them that much effort? They could just choose the files themselves and paste the path into the GTK file picker window (though for commandline usage this would save a LOT of typing)
- We're expecting users to know how to name the files, not by the Steam convention but by knowing to name them exactly as hero, logo, boxart, tenfoot. We can note it, but I could see users maybe not using the right name and things not working. We probably can't do much about this, though, too much handholdiing isn't a goal for STL. And if they do mess it up, they can get the AppID and run steamtinkerlaunch sga <appid> and select the artwork again, so we probably don't have to do much to account for such user error as part of this feature

I also considered a way of trying to set this based on image dimensions, but that would be too unreliable I think. I don't believe SteamGrid enforces a standard size, and a user may want artwork that doesn't fall into the standard dimensions that Valve recommend.

---

This direction, I think, is potentially the better way to resolve this. The user searches for and saves the images they want and then puts them in with the game EXE, and by default STL picks it up automagically by filename. The user still has to go to StemGridDB to get the artwork but that means they get to review and choose it. Plus if they're adding from the commandline, the command becomes much simpler as it gets picked up. From the UI, it also saves them some clicks, and they don't have to worry about what they name the EXE (such as using a dash instead of a tilde for Touhou 6 ~ Embodiment of Scarlet Devil).

---

If you have any thoughts on this feature or a different way to solve this problem please suggest away! Though keep in mind Yad is pretty limited when it comes to any kind of dynamic UI behaviour, but suggesting things could help us discuss and come up with another solution that can work, so please feel free when you can to suggest whatever way you think would be good to implement this feature :-)

[CartoonFan]

I apologize if any of this is off-point; I really don't know much about how SteamGridDB works.

Since this works by AppID, we would need a way to allow searching by game name.

It's still hard for me to believe that SteamGridDB can't just pull the name from the Steam AppID. Like, it's right there in the name 😜

We would also need to be pretty strict, narrowing down to only exact name matches (for example, searching for Touhou 6 should only return those matches). The issue is, expecting users to be strict with the game name might be a bit much.

We can't just use a drop-down box? For example, on SteamGridDB's website, typing in "steins" grabs six different Steins;Gate games (are there more? IDK 🤷), with Steins;Gate being the first one. Typing "Touhou 6" also has Touhou 6 as the first suggested game,so it seems like SGDB can work with somewhat fuzzy searches.

Still, I feel like you know more about this than I do, so I can't really argue too hard here 🤔

This direction, I think, is potentially the better way to resolve this. The user searches for and saves the images they want and then puts them in with the game EXE, and by default STL picks it up automagically by filename. The user still has to go to StemGridDB to get the artwork but that means they get to review and choose it. Plus if they're adding from the commandline, the command becomes much simpler as it gets picked up. From the UI, it also saves them some clicks, and they don't have to worry about what they name the EXE (such as using a dash instead of a tilde for Touhou 6 ~ Embodiment of Scarlet Devil).

I like this. Still rather tedious, but it was nice to do that for my Steam games, so I imagine it'd be the same here 👍

If you have any thoughts on this feature or a different way to solve this problem please suggest away! Though keep in mind Yad is pretty limited when it comes to any kind of dynamic UI behaviour, but suggesting things could help us discuss and come up with another solution that can work, so please feel free when you can to suggest whatever way you think would be good to implement this feature :-)

Is there a way to...not use the exact game name from the UI? Like, kind of a way to somehow feed a search-friendly title into SteamGridDB, then (perhaps) have checkboxes for which assets the user would like to keep (or replace?) That way, they could still have the ability to choose which assets they want, and let SteamGridDB choose the others.

Hopefully my suggestions will improve as I better understand all this 😅

[sonic2kk]

It's still hard for me to believe that SteamGridDB can't just pull the name from the Steam AppID. Like, it's right there in the name

Non-Steam Games don't have AppIDs the same way Steam games do, that AppID is created. When you add the game to Steam manually, Steam generates a different AppID each time. For STL we have a fixed way of generating the AppID. That's why SteamGrid can't search by AppID for Non-Steam Games.

For Non-Steam Games, the AppID is generated when the information is written to shortcuts.vdf, which is where the AppID is written out to, it's a field in this file.

For games on Steam, the AppID is constant and used to identify the game such as on the Store Page.

We can't just use a drop-down box? For example, on SteamGridDB's website, typing in "steins" grabs six different Steins;Gate games (are there more? IDK 🤷), with Steins;Gate being the first one. Typing "Touhou 6" also has Touhou 6 as the first suggested game,so it seems like SGDB can work with somewhat fuzzy searches.

We can't have dynamic UI behaviour like that in SteamTinkerLaunch. All the information has to be fetched before the dialog box is loaded. We don't have a way to know what game a user will look for before opening the Add Non-Steam Game dialog, and we can't have dynamic behaviour on the UI because Yad doesn't allow for that. We can't for example have a drop-down appear while the user is typing and allow them to select the game name.

We also have no useful way of letting users preview the images, the closest is a thumbnail list view which scales and stretches the images down a lot, which isn't useful for things like heros.

Artwork would have to be fetched by game name (because that's the only way to know what game we're dealing with, AppID is generated and not fixed) when the user clicks the button to add the shortcut to Steam, or when they run the ansg command. We can't have dynamic behaviour to let them search for images within SteamTinkerLaunch.

Sadly the UIX for this is probably not feasible but I hope I explained the limitations properly.

Is there a way to...not use the exact game name from the UI? Like, kind of a way to somehow feed a search-friendly title into SteamGridDB, then (perhaps) have checkboxes for which assets the user would like to keep (or replace?) That way, they could still have the ability to choose which assets they want, and let SteamGridDB choose the others.

The problem is once the user clicks "Add" we can only fetch and add the artwork once. So we need an exact match to ensure the user gets the artwork they want. True, it's on them if they don't get the one they want, but to me it reduces the usefulness of the feature.

I also have some concerns of essentially adding a "frontend" for using SteamGridDB, as a third-party tool, even if it was feasible to do something like this in Yad (which it really isn't to be honest).

---

So really, we can't have any way to fetch X amount of artworks from SteamGridDB and pick the desired artwork in SteamTinkerLaunch. That's just sadly not possible with Yad.

But, we could add the functionality to just fetch the first best-match artwork, and gate that behind a checkbox like "fetch artwork from SteamGridDB". The user doesn't get to choose the artwork but the feature I mentioned of trying to auto add artwork from the game EXE folder would be a lower-friction way to set the artwork for users who want that extra flexibility. Doing this may be better than nothing?

[CartoonFan]

But, we could add the functionality to just fetch the first best-match artwork, and gate that behind a checkbox like "fetch artwork from SteamGridDB". The user doesn't get to choose the artwork but the feature I mentioned of trying to auto add artwork from the game EXE folder would be a lower-friction way to set the artwork for users who want that extra flexibility. Doing this may be better than nothing?

I'm still OK with this 😁

Just to explore the idea a bit more--since I'm still not 100% clear on the dynamic/static differences--would it be possible to let a user specify the SteamGridDB ID--rather than the Steam AppID--when adding a game or before loading the UI? If a user knows the exact game on SteamGridDB, there wouldn't be any need for a title search 🤔

[sonic2kk]

Oh, I didn't realise SteamGridDB had specific game IDs. It makes a ton of sense, I dunno what I thought, I guess I assumed they stored by game name or something and maybe some unique identifier after it.

I would assume this ID is constant, but yeah it would be totally feasible to have an optional SteamGridDB ID for the game to fetch game artwork.

I'm thinking we can work this feature like this:

• Have a checkbox something like "Fetch Artwork from SteamGridDB
• Have an optional textbox to enter the SteamGridDB ID that will only be read if the above checkbox is enabled
• If the option is enabled but no SteamGridDB ID is passed, try to search based on the game name
  • For commandline usage we will need some consideration around when and how to read the ID/name. I'm thinking we'll only use the ID and fallback to the name if a flag like --use-steamgriddb is passed (so even if the ID is passed from the commandline it'll be ignored if the flag to use SteamGridDB is false)
• SteamGridDB artwork will take priority over any selected game artwork as well as any artwork in the game EXE folder
  • If, say, SteamGridDB only returns a banner and some boxart, we'll then check if the user selected any artwork. This will then be used as a fallback. If the user selected a logo, then that logo will be a fallback for the one SteamGridDB didn't find
  • finally, for this example, if there was no tenfoot found, we'll check if there's a file in the same folder as the game EXE to use
• Update text on the commandline help screen and the Add Non-Steam Game UI to inform users when and how to use this feature -- We'll also update the wiki
  • We'll note about the SteamGridDB API key and how to update it both from the UI, textfile, and commandline
  • We'll note that SteamGridDB ID is used primarily and then we fall back to game name
  • finally we'll note that the "best match" artwork will be used. Of course a user can change any artwork they don't like from Steam, or if they want that extra flexibility they can always select the artwork themselves.

I think I have a much clearer idea on how to implement this feature request now. Thank you for pointing out the ID thing I probably wouldn't have caught that. I think being able to pass the ID when adding the game and doing a search is more than doable and I like it a lot more than simply guessing.

Again though they won't really be "choosing" the artwork from SteamGridDB but still think this solution is okay :-)

[CartoonFan]

Oh, I didn't realise SteamGridDB had specific game IDs. It makes a ton of sense, I dunno what I thought, I guess I assumed they stored by game name or something and maybe some unique identifier after it.

Yeah, I found this out the hard way when I was trying to rename a batch of games to their Steam IDs (for Steam Input and such). Got a good way through the list before I realized they weren't the right IDs 😆

My guess is that SteamGridDB's use of their own IDs is at least partly due to supporting other distribution platforms besides Steam.

To give an example of what I'm seeing with the different IDs:

• Steins;Gate has the SteamGridDB URL as https://www.steamgriddb.com/game/9557, but its Steam ID is 412830
• Archimedean Dynasty has the SteamGridDB URL as https://www.steamgriddb.com/game/5247436, but has no Steam ID, and the GOG link only has the game name
• Touhou 6 only has a SteamGridDB ID (https://www.steamgriddb.com/game/104)
• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is the same way (SGDB URL is https://www.steamgriddb.com/game/37654)
• PC Building Simulator 2, an Epic Games exclusive, only has the SGDB URL (https://www.steamgriddb.com/game/5357980)

SteamGridDB's system seems pretty versatile--which is to say, not limited to Steam games--so hopefully their IDs should work for a wide variety of games 🤞

I would assume this ID is constant, but yeah it would be totally feasible to have an optional SteamGridDB ID for the game to fetch game artwork.

I hope so 😬

The whole thing would fall apart if they suddenly changed it 😅

I'm thinking we can work this feature like this:

• Have a checkbox something like "Fetch Artwork from SteamGridDB

• Have an optional textbox to enter the SteamGridDB ID that will only be read if the above checkbox is enabled

• If the option is enabled but no SteamGridDB ID is passed, try to search based on the game name

  • For commandline usage we will need some consideration around when and how to read the ID/name. I'm thinking we'll only use the ID and fallback to the name if a flag like --use-steamgriddb is passed (so even if the ID is passed from the commandline it'll be ignored if the flag to use SteamGridDB is false)

• SteamGridDB artwork will take priority over any selected game artwork as well as any artwork in the game EXE folder

  • If, say, SteamGridDB only returns a banner and some boxart, we'll then check if the user selected any artwork. This will then be used as a fallback. If the user selected a logo, then that logo will be a fallback for the one SteamGridDB didn't find
  • finally, for this example, if there was no tenfoot found, we'll check if there's a file in the same folder as the game EXE to use

• Update text on the commandline help screen and the Add Non-Steam Game UI to inform users when and how to use this feature -- We'll also update the wiki

  • We'll note about the SteamGridDB API key and how to update it both from the UI, textfile, and commandline
  • We'll note that SteamGridDB ID is used primarily and then we fall back to game name
  • finally we'll note that the "best match" artwork will be used. Of course a user can change any artwork they don't like from Steam, or if they want that extra flexibility they can always select the artwork themselves.

Sounds good! 👍

I think I have a much clearer idea on how to implement this feature request now. Thank you for pointing out the ID thing I probably wouldn't have caught that.

You're welcome! 😁

I think being able to pass the ID when adding the game and doing a search is more than doable and I like it a lot more than simply guessing.

Nice 😎 👍

Again though they won't really be "choosing" the artwork from SteamGridDB but still think this solution is okay :-)

With SGDBoop, one can choose their own heroes/grids/etc. for their Non-Steam games through the Web UI, so they're not completely stuck with whatever SteamGridDB decides. I still think the idea of selecting specific assets and putting them in the game directory for STL to pick up is still a really cool idea, actually 🤔

---

Even though we've already covered a lot of ground between these two comments; would it be possible to have STL overwrite the game's name with the Steam ID (where present, and provided by the user)? I'm pretty sure it's needed for Steam to find community input layouts (and possibly other things). It doesn't have to be something that's always on, but the problem is that SteamGridDB searches with the game's name--which is less of an issue with our above changes--but Steam uses the Steam ID, and ignores the game name entirely.

Because SteamGridDB uses the game name (or its own ID for it), I feel like the Steam ID-renaming would be best after SteamGridDB does its work, but I'm not sure if that's possible with the current state of the tools in use 😅

That's pretty much it! Even one of these two big changes would be a helpful timesaver 💜 👍

[sonic2kk]

Sounds like the path forward for this proposal is an option to fetch the popular grid artwork from SteamGridDB with an optional SteamGridDB ID and a fallback to the entered name. If not provided, we fall back to the EXE name, so we could search on the basename without the extension (the only required field for ansg is the EXE and STL will fill out any other required field). In the case of this feature being off, SteamGridDB being down, or artwork not being found, we'll fall back to selected artwork or, if no artwork is selected, search for artwork in the same folder as the game EXE based on its filename.

Even though we've already covered a lot of ground between these two comments; would it be possible to have STL overwrite the game's name with the Steam ID (where present, and provided by the user)? I'm pretty sure it's needed for Steam to find community input layouts (and possibly other things). It doesn't have to be something that's always on, but the problem is that SteamGridDB searches with the game's name--which is less of an issue with our above changes--but Steam uses the Steam ID, and ignores the game name entirely.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. As in if you added a game called "Touhou 6" it would overwrite it with whatever the Non-Steam AppID we generate for it is? For Non-Steam Games, there is no fixed AppID. Each time you add a game to Steam from the Add Non-Steam Game option in the Steam client, the ID changes. For STL, we generate a fixed AppID. There is no option to enter the AppID by the user, and although there could be, it would be a pretty specific feature.

Are you saying you want an option to force the game name to be the AppID? Sorry, I don't really understand the ask here. Both specifying an AppID and overwriting the game name would be possible but I don't understand the reasoning or if this is exactly what you're asking.

[CartoonFan]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here.

I have a habit of doing that, unfortunately 😅

As in if you added a game called "Touhou 6" it would overwrite it with whatever the Non-Steam AppID we generate for it is? For Non-Steam Games, there is no fixed AppID.

Ooh, I didn't know this. Thanks for the clarification 👍

Each time you add a game to Steam from the Add Non-Steam Game option in the Steam client, the ID changes. For STL, we generate a fixed AppID. There is no option to enter the AppID by the user, and although there could be, it would be a pretty specific feature.

Are you saying you want an option to force the game name to be the AppID? Sorry, I don't really understand the ask here. Both specifying an AppID and overwriting the game name would be possible but I don't understand the reasoning or if this is exactly what you're asking.

My ask was more for games that are both on Steam and another distribution platform. For example, I have a license for Rebel Galaxy (https://www.steamgriddb.com/game/4195) on GOG--but not Steam. If I added Rebel Galaxy to Steam, as a Non-Steam Game, I wanted to know if it was possible to feed STL the actual Steam ID, either with the commandline or in a field in the UI. I'd likely have to supply the Steam ID myself, but I feel like it would reduce the number of steps in the whole process of adding a game 😅

If it's still unclear, I can try to give more info 💜 😄

EDIT: It wouldn't be applicable to games that aren't natively on Steam. After I posted this comment, I realized that was part of the actual question you asked 😆