Tool Others Game Manager 2.17.12.7

[kuraiken]

I'll release a version today :

- added Ren'py saves copy.
- an option to request me to add saves compatibility to a game (I won't do it for html games)

Awesome. You're doing god's work, son. (If god were a pervert.) Huh. (Reads some passages from the bible.) Alright, you're doing god's work. xD
Is there any way you could make it that you could allow simultaneous installations of "the same game" or to allow multiple exe files linked to one game, so you can click which one to launch?
This is an issue for quite a few episode games that release independent episodes in one umbrella thread, but when installing them via the game manager you can only install 1 (unless you repack them all into one archive) and ultimately only link one executeable to the game. (So you have to pick which one to link, episode 1, 2,3 ... or 43)

 

[CuddleBear]

Multiple Versions?

The Installing of Multiple versions is planed. It already has its own management tab under the detailed view.
Now, how it will be installed, managed or launched is another story. Hopefully the install process wont change much at all.
Hopefully the metadata servers also logs if there is multiple versions and what is the newest version of that.

This will all be unified though, do wonder what the plans will be if we could duplicate the title entry for a seperate title entry with its own image. Just a thought anyway.

 

[kuraiken]

The Installing of Multiple versions is planed. It already has its own management tab under the detailed view.
Now, how it will be installed, managed or launched is another story. Hopefully the install process wont change much at all.
Hopefully the metadata servers also logs if there is multiple versions and what is the newest version of that.

This will all be unified though, do wonder what the plans will be if we could duplicate the title entry for a seperate title entry with its own image. Just a thought anyway.

Good to know.
I wonder what the program is written with & written in? Depending on how complicated it is, I might be able to do a couple of simple tasks to help development along.

I can imagine a couple of easy of use functions such as marking games as interested/not interested so people can mark games they're interested in DLing but not right now (for example due to space reasons), not interested to mark games that you tried or for some reason disliked (perhaps even the ability to attach a personal comment to it so you'll know why in the future), etc.
q great degree of control for people to "tag" games would really help with keeping an overview of larger game collections.

Ideally it could be divided into segments(some of which already exist):
Posession: Owned/Not owned
Interest (helps with browsing): Interested/Not interested
Status: Not played/Played/Finished & Awaiting Update/Completed
Rating: (1-5 Stars Rating)
Favorite: Marking games as favorite

Also it could be helpful to allow people to add comments to games and attach secondary files. (Comments for tipps&tricks, links to guides, or why a game is marked as not interested. The other would be the ability to attach walkthroughs or guides that can then be launched from the game list directly.)

 

[CuddleBear]

Well sadly this is closed souce and he is doing it in Windev24 i believe as mentioned in a past post.
Would really like if it was on a git in python with qt ui or something as it would be super easy to edit and help for everyone.
Even those that don't really know how to code can learn python pretty easily and help out with all kinds of features.

Too bad really, would be sad to see this project die for whatever reason and the sourcecode not being out there.

Debated quite a few times to make something like this in the past. Years ago before even F95 was a thing.



As for what features you wrote up.
Tags and general searching should be refined with a good search bar that accepts creators, versions, engines, titles and tags.
Tag siblings is also a must as there is already quite a few duplicates of tags. That also goes for creators as some threads have typos.

Doing Segments sounds liks a really shitty idea. Better searching options and a way to quickly search for the content you want specifically or not by excluding is the way to go.
All you really need for insperation is to look at

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.
Most enteries can easily be typed in and auto-completed and added as a search param. Listing all the paramaters you have in your current search allows the users to remove any of them or even change one param to exclude.
Having an easy way to exclude from the query text box with something like - infront of it makes sense, like "-engine:rgpmaker".
Auto-completions should accept any form of metadata the user has in the system.
Owned state, ratings/favs, tags and all other metadata. With the addition to any other field that might be needed.

Having a full search system allows the UI to be much cleaner too. Instead of two chunky text boxes that cant even accept enteries of half values (like search "dude" for "the dude". Currently you need to start with "the" for it to show up as a result).


Interests and such can also be built on if needed with favorite tags.
All metadata fields could technically be tags and it makes sense that way.


TLDR; Copy the Hydrus search system and unify all searchable fields into a single query location with auto-completion.
Converting all metadata fields into namespaces as tags would make sense for this aswell for both searching and database location.
BTW: Try Hydrus, its great! (Shameless Discord Admin plug)

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Notes on tags, searching and namespaces:

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[kuraiken]

I think I might have misphrased that. I wasn't talking about code implementation but rather design.

What you're saying sounds similar what I had in mind.
The "segments" should work like tags, except they're custom tags that aren't auto-added but can be added manually, except that tags within one segment exclude the others.
So if a user tags a game as "interested", if the "not interested" tag was set, it will be removed so only the "interested" tag remains.
These tags should also be displayed seperately from the tags drawn from the website to prevent tag clutter in the info window.
Ideally, the user can browse through possible games, mark those he wishes to store for later consideration as "interested" and unlist those he doesn't want popping up in his search as "not interested" to reduce the vast number of displayed games.
I can understand that you could use "favorite" as a workaround, but it can become a bit more complex when you start deinstalling games you favorited and completed, but you want to look for games you were "interested" but didn't try yet. Then you'll see both upon looking for unowned favorites - those you're interested and haven't played yet, but also every one you played through and then uninstalled.

I agree that this sort of data should be saved in some metadata file locally, it's the kind of stuff I'd wish for more user-end optimization for overview based on user preference.
Hydrus looks interesting. What I'd considered using to organize stuff before the game manager was "tagspaces" which basically allowed you to create a custom tagging system to tag files and folders.

EDIT: Just noticed, do you mean that a tag based search should be included in the search bar, or a seperate search bar only for looking for tags?
Because some tags seem to have issues when looking for them in a mixed way. NTR, for example, would also yield every game that has the word "control" in its name.

 

[tid]

Hello there,

I'm planning to add a connection feature, so that I can see who requests witch save.

I would like to publish the code, but Windev is quite expansive so I'm not sure that anybody will be able to open it.

I could switch to another language but I don't have time for that, Windev is what I use at work so I can work on gamelist during my lunch time. I never work on it at home : I have two kids and a wife to take care off, a lot of work in my new house and I also organize a manga convention that takes me spare time that's left.

If you have suggestions fell free to add them on my forum, like this I won't forget.

 

[tid]

Version 2.12.2.4 :

Few optimizations

When you double click on a game it now opens it's page
Added a button to launch games from the list (the lightning in the upper right corner)

 

[CuddleBear]

No, i mean one search bar for every single type of metadata. All current metadata fields could be transformed into tags which makes it more unified with searching on the database level.

I really think the search and filter system should take much MUCH from Either

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or

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.
You would want a fast way to enter the tag on your own while it has an auto-complete feature to help users along that is not 100% sure about how to write it. Or if one is just lazy if its fast enough.

Clicking a tag menu that is badly missusing its space and then clicking that for a single tag then do it all again for another is a huge no go.

Also a huge trigger that there even is two text boxes, one for title and one for creator when it should have been one and the same from the begining with the addition of tags and other system fields like owned-state and fav-state and maybe ratings. Heck, one could throw in install paths ontop of that if users like to have files across the system.

All i really want to see is an easy fast way in an unified manner to input any type of metadata for queries.
This will also remove much of the need of the pre-set tabs as there is no. Rather let users make their own tabs and allow them to pin the tab on the sidebar or something as a saved query (note

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saved smart filters.)
This way the user have more control over the UI, can be able to remove the preset stuff aswell as make many more that they might want.

But i am starting to ramble again, is a subject i feel strongly about and i know it could be done better as i have seen it in the past.

 

[kuraiken]

Hello there,

I'm planning to add a connection feature, so that I can see who requests witch save.

I would like to publish the code, but Windev is quite expansive so I'm not sure that anybody will be able to open it.

I could switch to another language but I don't have time for that, Windev is what I use at work so I can work on gamelist during my lunch time. I never work on it at home : I have two kids and a wife to take care off, a lot of work in my new house and I also organize a manga convention that takes me spare time that's left.

If you have suggestions fell free to add them on my forum, like this I won't forget.

Yep, I've added them to the website.

No, i mean one search bar for every single type of metadata. All current metadata fields could be transformed into tags which makes it more unified with searching on the database level.

I really think the search and filter system should take much MUCH from Either

You must be registered to see the links

or

You must be registered to see the links

.
You would want a fast way to enter the tag on your own while it has an auto-complete feature to help users along that is not 100% sure about how to write it. Or if one is just lazy if its fast enough.

Clicking a tag menu that is badly missusing its space and then clicking that for a single tag then do it all again for another is a huge no go.

Also a huge trigger that there even is two text boxes, one for title and one for creator when it should have been one and the same from the begining with the addition of tags and other system fields like owned-state and fav-state and maybe ratings. Heck, one could throw in install paths ontop of that if users like to have files across the system.

All i really want to see is an easy fast way in an unified manner to input any type of metadata for queries.
This will also remove much of the need of the pre-set tabs as there is no. Rather let users make their own tabs and allow them to pin the tab on the sidebar or something as a saved query (note

You must be registered to see the links

saved smart filters.)
This way the user have more control over the UI, can be able to remove the preset stuff aswell as make many more that they might want.

But i am starting to ramble again, is a subject i feel strongly about and i know it could be done better as i have seen it in the past.

Sure, though I - not being a developer - am not sure how much work would have to go into smartfilters, etc.

I'd be happy if I got a custom tags system and can search in the browser for tags and other things specifically e.g.
search:
author:"funnymonkey" tags:"dating sim, romance, -ntr"
and it yields me all games from the nonexisting funnymonkey author that have the dating sim and romance tags, but not no ntr games.

Extra points if I can create color code schemes for custom tags or even add small icons. Just something that allows more end user organization.

 

[tid]

I've made a little test :



What do you think?

 

[kuraiken]

I've made a little test :

View attachment 323932

What do you think?

Looks good, though I might prefer if it's optional and part of greater titlepicture customization.
Visually, I think it's an improvement - much better space usage and it brings out the pics better - but I can spot a couple of problems down the line.

Problem 1: Extremely long titles will cover a lot of the picture, and can end up obscuring a lot. For most games it's fine, though.
Problem 2: Currently, the title font is a mostly uncontrasted yellow. If any game uses a very bright yellowish background and it overlaps with the name, it's gonna be very difficult to read. You'll probably need font + outline costumization down the line.
Problem 3: Not yet an issue, but if you follow one of my suggestions on the website that allows users to display custom icons for a few selective tags on title pictures, it may cover some of the space. That would probably need some limitations, and smaller custom icons.

 

[CuddleBear]

Oh that new one is MUCH better! I love it.
Less wasted space and did you remove the new launch button? (cause i hated that)

An option to and a dimmed layer for both titles and versions is a must. this also opens up for more icon use.
icons should be closer to the edges too!

EDIT: One thing that that design would love would be to automatically rotate the screenshots on hover.

 

[tid]

EDIT: One thing that that design would love would be to automatically rotate the screenshots on hover.

That's a good Idea, but this means that Screens should be loaded automatically. Not sure it's a good idea as it will make the database size grow.

The new launch button is still there, I added it because before when you double clicked on an owned game it was launched, now it opens it's window, so I wanted to add a way to quick launch a game.

 

[contramundi]

amazing what you've done so far with the program, absolutely love it

just a quick question, is it possible to add a filter for the status prefix?

I'm cleaning up my list because a lot of my games have been added when the program was still the old one before the whole rewrite, and a lot of them didn't have the version in the folder structure, not to mention all those multi-chapter games that had multiple entries.

Being able to simply filter out the abandoned ones would make it a lot easier to simply delete those.

 

[CuddleBear]

I would like automatic downloading on that stuff. or optional automatic, not everyone is going to like it.
If its a matter of bandwidth of the game-list server (if you are hosting the images there). Then give out the urls to the images instead of the actual images and let the f95 site handle the load.)
Download rate and limits would be good to not overload the servers. like 1 image every 5 or 10 sec, allowing users to have the client loaded and gathering in the background.

And aslong as the metadata is portable in the install folder then its all good really.
Keep the client as portable as you can, keep everything you need in the install folder for easy backups, moving and management.

As for the missing data like dev progress state (completed/on-hold/abandoned/ongoing) should really be there in some fashion.
More reason to unify most metadata in a single searchable manneras noted in previous posts.

 

[kuraiken]

There seems to be some issue with the process that reads available games, in some cases.

For some reason some games such as:
https://f95zone.to/threads/record-of-escape-from-ntr-luna-and-cynthia-wandowando.18929/

are not found and recorded in the game manager.

 

[contramundi]

There seems to be some issue with the process that reads available games, in some cases.
......

i had some issues with https://f95zone.to/threads/cross-love-ep-1-top-hat-studios.29444/

it's listed on the game-list site but the program can't find it for some reason.

I've also noticed that there's sometimes issues with the version comparison.

For example, i've got "Lancaster Boarding House v1.8" on my disk, but the last released version is "Lancaster Boarding House Final". This game should show up in the update section but it does not.

Same goes for "Cuntswell Academy". I still have the "intro" version on my disk but the latest release is "Chapter 6 ".

 

[tid]

There seems to be some issue with the process that reads available games, in some cases.

For some reason some games such as:
https://f95zone.to/threads/record-of-escape-from-ntr-luna-and-cynthia-wandowando.18929/

are not found and recorded in the game manager.

At the very beginning of game list I was adding games by hand, so I should have missed some. I added this one.

i had some issues with https://f95zone.to/threads/cross-love-ep-1-top-hat-studios.29444/

it's listed on the game-list site but the program can't find it for some reason.

I've also noticed that there's sometimes issues with the version comparison.

For example, i've got "Lancaster Boarding House v1.8" on my disk, but the last released version is "Lancaster Boarding House Final". This game should show up in the update section but it does not.

Same goes for "Cuntswell Academy". I still have the "intro" version on my disk but the latest release is "Chapter 6 ".

For version I try to compare the versions so 1.12 > 1.11 but What to do with Final or Chapter 6, I think I will just test if local version is different from server side version.

It's strange for cross love, in the past there was an option to reload a game from server by entering it's thread ID, I should add it. To resolve your issue I virtually updated it so you should get it.

 

[contramundi]

At the very beginning of game list I was adding games by hand, so I should have missed some. I added this one.


For version I try to compare the versions so 1.12 > 1.11 but What to do with Final or Chapter 6, I think I will just test if local version is different from server side version.

It's strange for cross love, in the past there was an option to reload a game from server by entering it's thread ID, I should add it. To resolve your issue I virtually updated it so you should get it.

thanks, i did a refresh and it showed up.

 

[kuraiken]

Another issue I've come across that's minor but a bit annoying:

Some games, when installed, don't just create an install directory, they also create an 2 copies of the folder with additional affixes, one adding _games, the other _gamelist to the name. Inside are some various subfolders drawn from somewhere else without clear reason and some other game subfolders with rvdata2 files, usually from various other games.
Folder examples:
Witch Act 1.05 (RPGM) [Clymenia]
Witch Act 1.05 (RPGM) [Clymenia]_games
Witch Act 1.05 (RPGM) [Clymenia]Game List

1. I'm using the sub directory scheme {game} {version} ({engine}) [{author}] which works without issues, so I don't think that's the culprit.
2. It really looks for everything inside other games, and has countless subfolders created or drawn that end with .rvdata 2, often including files of the same name.

EDIT: Oh, and my install directory is within the Game List program.
Game List\installed games