[REL] Vista Game Explorer Editor

[Ryan R]

As far as I know - it's an MS bug, since the upgrade to the VGE components doesn't take into account that some people have used VGEE. E-Explorer will be much better in this regard since it will do things properly, whereas VGEE was just a front-end to speed up the process that other people on this forum worked out.

Your choices are to reformat or to create a new profile

[Rich246]

As far as I know - it's an MS bug, since the upgrade to the VGE components doesn't take into account that some people have used VGEE. E-Explorer will be much better in this regard since it will do things properly, whereas VGEE was just a front-end to speed up the process that other people on this forum worked out.

Your choices are to reformat or to create a new profile

Thanks for the response I guess I'll just wait for E-Explorer is there one I can test?

[Ryan R]

Not yet

When there is one it'll be announced with size 72 font so no-one misses it :)

[Rich246]

LOL.... :D

[orien2v2]

Hey guys I just installed Crysis again but this time I realized that it didn't show up in the Games Explorer... if I add it in myself, it only uses the small icon and never retrieve any info from the web. So I tried VGEE but it said it can't find any games with boxart. So how can I create a boxart for my game? And after that how can I use VGEE to change the icon, and also retrieve info of Crysis from the web if possible? Thx.

[Ryan R]

Just open VGEE, type in all the info for Crysis and click Add New Game. Then get rid of the duplicate icon in your VGE.

[1WayJonny]

really cool thanks

hope to see updates in the future too because this great tool...

[Ayepecks]

Ugh, goodness... got the same error as the last person did. I even backed up all of my games before moving to SP1 just to be safe, and now VGE isn't even letting me import those back in for some reason. I tried removing all the games from the registry manually after VGE's repair didn't work, but that only let me add one game (and it worked fine, no errors or anything). Then it said it couldn't re-add the game back for some reason, so I did it manually... and then it never worked again.

Is there any way to fix this? I've cleared everything out of the registry, as I said. I'm not going to reformat for this or go through the hassle of doing the whole account swap thing, if it doesn't work I simply won't use the Vista Games Explorer again... I was just wondering if it's possible to fix.

[Ryan R]

I'm not incredibally sure since I'm not looking at the screen to fiddle with things. I do have some good news however - my Virtual Vista PC which I'm currently coding on is refusing to show BoxArt for legacy games that I've added in this account - but E-Explorer does show the Boxart with no action from me required. So it's definately a MS problem, but one that EE won't suffer from.

[blackroseMD1]

Thanks alot Ryan. This was always one of the things that bugged me most about Vista. Now all my games have box art and it looks great. :D

[ryoran109]

Hey Ryan: Will EE allow me to drag and drop boxart directly from the internet without downloading it first?

[medo_sd]

Will E-Explorer be a stand alone game explorer ? or it will be just like VGEE ... i mean will it replace the VGE ? or we'll just edit the games with E-Explorer and browse them with VGE

[Ryan R]

Didn't get any email notifs again for the last 2 posts:

@ryoran109:

Thanks to Julius, EE will go one better. When you go to enter info in for a new game, as soon as you enter in the Game Title in the first box, EE will try and search for all the other remain info online and will let you import it all and let you make any needed adjustments. Well, that's what I'm aiming for anyway. The search function already works successfully, it's just adapting it to work in the way mentioned.

@medo_sd:

EE will replace the standard Vista Game Explorer plus my currently release editor (v2.14a). It will show you all your games, allow you to launch games and other programs, sites, folders, etc and will let you edit games all within the one spot. There are also plans to allow you to add/remove/edit games in Vista's Media Centre (in case you've already noticed one or two games in there already, now you should be able to put them all there). In a later version I might try and get EE to show other things as well, like Movies, Music Albums, etc, which is why I went for the name E-Explorer (Entertainment Explorer) rather than just limiting it to a Game Explorer (plus MS already has that title). The only thing I don't really like about the name E-Explorer is that if you google it there happens to be another process similarly-named out there that is some sort of trojan. I will make sure that my executable is named differently for everyone's benefit.

My PC is not far away from being fixed - just a few weeks and my CPU (which was the faulty part all along) will be fixed, then I'll reformat the PC and build it up again and resume programming in a lot more of my spare time. (I enjoy playing games too) :)

[Jay!]

This doesnt work for me, crashes apon adding game. Also deleted the game i selected for 'overwrite'.

[nskid]

Hey all . Thanks Ryan , the idea sounds sweet and just what i was looking for ( vgee ) to bad i can't get it to work . It installs fine , but when i go to lunch vgee i get the first time use popup , and then another that says something bout no games in the list box . I did what it sugested and still no luck . I had hell gate installed and all the info showed up fine so i know that vgm is grabbing the info online and after coming across the problem with vgmm i installed wall-e as suggested , also got the info no problem . Sure hope you can help me out with this or of corse ill have to wait for e-explorer. I also cant find any game folder ( C\program files \Games , from what i read online ) that relates to vgm if thats important . Should add i have sp1 as well as .net 3.5

[Ryan R]

2 possibilities:

1 - the game has the boxart, etc included on the installation CD and isn't downloaded - so it's a 'Game for Windows' and not a legacy game (I don't know which it is).

2 - You have a bad Windows account - try make a new one to test it in

[TheQuad]

Just wondering if this project is still alive and kicking. Keep up the great work Guys.

[D!rtySh@dy]

I search a small software to add fonctionnality to browse .png file as Icon on VGE.

Anyone could help me please ?

[CY:G]

I just want to say that i love this program and i hope you keep it alive, more updates please :)

[Ryan R]

Progress is very slow atm unfortunately.

I haven't heard from Julius in a while - who I believe is still settling into a new job, I'm not 100% convinced I have the latest version of the program myself, although the newer bits of code are floating around in my email inbox, but I'm slowly coding away at a few things related to the main functions of the app to make it useful. I around 2 weeks time I should get my fixed CPU back and I'll format the PC again and set everything up on it properly and get back into the coding of VGEE. Sorry about not having it finished sooner.

There's nothing around that supports editing icons (as opposed to boxart) in the VGE currently, but E-Explorer will do this (Julius assures me of that anyway). In the meantime you could always do a screen capture of the large icon and save it as a jpg and use it as BoxArt.

[lolkop]

I search a small software to add fonctionnality to browse .png file as Icon on VGE.

Anyone could help me please ?

Game Explorer Builder lets you browse and extract .png/ico files. http://gebuilder.fdan.de

[k3nny]

Thanks but it does not start.

[ryoran109]

Really, all I want is to edit ESRB ratings. Is there a way to do this without using your program?

[DigitalD]

I just read through this entire thread and tried the VGEE program for myself on Vista 64. The program worked as intended and I'm happy with the results, however I have a couple questions.

1) How can I change the box art for "Games for Windows" games that do not appear in the VGEE "Load Game Information" list (e.g. Crysis, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, Call of Juarez). Vista automatically gave these games square icons instead of the traditional box art icons and I would like to change that. I've seen screenshots of the Crysis icon changed to its box art so I'm sure it is possible I'm just not sure how to do it.

2) Steam games (e.g. Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, etc.). These games require Steam to run and so it is not possible to create a shortcut directly to the game's .exe. Instead, to launch one of these games you have to create a shortcut to Steam with a command like this: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 80 which would launch Condition Zero. Attempting to place this into VGEE's App Path textbox will result in the program crashing. I'm assuming it does not like the quotation marks, but those are necessary for the shortcut to function correctly. As a workaround, I just set the App Path in VGEE for all the Steam Games to the steam.exe, and then used the Customize option from within VGE to change the shortcut to what it should be (i.e. I added the -applaunch ## commands). This works just fine, but when I load the game's information into VGEE, it still shows the old shortcut. So any time I make a change to the game in VGEE, I will have to update the shortcut link using VGE's Customize menu. I have no problem doing that, but I'm just curious if there is a better way to do this.

3) This relates to question 2. Because games like Counter-Strike, Half-Life, and Half-Life 2 require Steam to run, the icon that shows up in the VGE when its View is set to something smaller than "Large Icons" is the Steam icon instead of the actual game's icon. Is there some way to change this? When running VGEE, the icon textbox at the very bottom is always disabled thus not allowing me to change it.

Even with these shortcomings I absolutely love this program and I am looking forward to news of E-Explorer's release

[Ryan R]

GOOD NEWS! (No I'm not going to talk about the Dacia Sandero) :)

I'm 90% sure I've pinpointed my system troubles down to a faulty HDD or Sata cable/port. With the drive disconnected the system is very stable. I now have it reconnected with a different cable and port to see if it will freeze or not. Don't ask me how a bad HDD causes a complete system freeze - I have no idea myself, but within a few weeks I'll be right back into coding with my #1 priority being to release a beta of EE this year (to think I once said it could be finished by Feb/March 08).

Thanks for holding on guys, if you can think of any cool suggestions/novelty features for the program then please post them below.

Ryan R