Some Issues...
Opened this issue · 1 comments
Hello,
First of all thanks for such project since it is best alternative to other custom or similar solutions. But program as of current state is only as good as run once on small libraries with not forethought consequences.
It is because since the program both not have command line options and do not respect custom images with the 'APPID.jpg' whereas it simply overwrites anything from 'APPID (original).jpg' over handpicked images. Despite my better judgement, it made me lose over 100+ custom images (at least was recent so I can rebuild). So re-run of the program if you added more games to your collection have negative results instead of being helpful unless you manually backup-restore which the steamgrid was expected to handle so.
Also it is unnecessary to keep original files within the same folder as the current grid view images which just clutters the folder and if you have thousand+ titles, steamgrid doubles the amount burdening the filesystem and introduces overhead on loading images as well as any app trying to manipulate the folder. So originals could be kept on "...\config\grid\originals" instead of upper folder to ease the processing.
While downloading header.jpg (grid images) from Steam as is seems useful, some developers are ignorant of the images they put within Steam causing unnecessarily big images in size for a 460x215 image. One particular example of this http://store.steampowered.com/app/518660/ has a 22Mb file which is an overkill. For such cases and overall handling steamgrid can use something like http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/download/ if possible to downsize any image above 100kb (pretty much the average) to that size so that Steam and other programs can read thousands of images much faster. RIOT at 100% quality mostly does that while upscaling few images. Personally I found 90% quality setting to be most useful with file sizes nominal around 50kb and still artifact free unless you view doubled at 920x430.
While included overlays are good, inclusion of furthermore overlays from here https://www.reddit.com/r/steamgrid/wiki/overlays (or at least mentioning of them) would be useful to many users as of 'out of box' experience.
Do not get me wrong, despite all above steamgrid is an exceptionally good program only if you know what you are doing. So for the sake of new users I just wish it to be better so when I'm to recommend your program to others, I would not need to warn of issues. Other than that I'm fine with it as is since I now know how to deal its issues with workarounds.
So thanks for your time for long read and for great program.
Best Regards.
Awesome feedback, I'm sorry it took so long for me to answer. I'm please to say that most of it was fixed in the latest version, v2.0.0.
It is because since the program both not have command line options and do not respect custom images with the 'APPID.jpg' whereas it simply overwrites anything from 'APPID (original).jpg' over handpicked images. Despite my better judgement, it made me lose over 100+ custom images (at least was recent so I can rebuild). So re-run of the program if you added more games to your collection have negative results instead of being helpful unless you manually backup-restore which the steamgrid was expected to handle so.
That's a nasty bug. I'm really sorry, data loss should be unacceptable. It's been fixed now, by adding the hash of the overlaid image to the backup image. So if the main image is manually changed, there will be no "matching backup" to be restored.
Also it is unnecessary to keep original files within the same folder as the current grid view images which just clutters the folder and if you have thousand+ titles, steamgrid doubles the amount burdening the filesystem and introduces overhead on loading images as well as any app trying to manipulate the folder. So originals could be kept on "...\config\grid\originals" instead of upper folder to ease the processing.
Good idea. Now the backups are stored in "...\config\grid\originals" as suggested.
While downloading header.jpg (grid images) from Steam as is seems useful, some developers are ignorant of the images they put within Steam causing unnecessarily big images in size for a 460x215 image. One particular example of this http://store.steampowered.com/app/518660/ has a 22Mb file which is an overkill. For such cases and overall handling steamgrid can use something like http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/download/ if possible to downsize any image above 100kb (pretty much the average) to that size so that Steam and other programs can read thousands of images much faster. RIOT at 100% quality mostly does that while upscaling few images. Personally I found 90% quality setting to be most useful with file sizes nominal around 50kb and still artifact free unless you view doubled at 920x430.
I'm afraid this is still an open problem. I agree that 22 Mb banner is just stupid, and I've reported it to Steam. But it's hard to draw the line at a specific size. 100 kb may be acceptable to you, but some user may prefer higher-quality images. And monitor technology is improving, so sooner or later someone is going to view their steam library in a 8k monitor and complain that even 920x430 images lack resolution.
Apart from this outlier game, do you have many cases of large images that weight down the grid view?
While included overlays are good, inclusion of furthermore overlays from here https://www.reddit.com/r/steamgrid/wiki/overlays (or at least mentioning of them) would be useful to many users as of 'out of box' experience.
The overlays that ship by default are just a sample. I've now added a mention of the reddit wiki in both the README and console output. There's also http://steambanners.booru.org/ for banners, and I think it can be used automatically, but that's for the future.
So thanks for your time for long read and for great program.
It's awesome to see people using programs I developed. Thank you.