sonic2kk
commented
9 months ago Good catch! Sorry you ran into that. The good news is I have some ideas on the problem. The tl;dr: the AppID we're creating is probably not unique enough as I can reproduce the issue if I have similar names and/or paths, but not if they are sufficiently unique, which they seem to have been in testing up to this point. I have some ideas on generating a more unique AppID, and I'll try to push it later today.
I suspect we're not generating unique enough AppIDs and something is going wrong. An AppID is a unique identifier for a game on Steam. Games on the store have a fixed AppID, but Non-Steam Games can have any AppID so long as the format is correct. The format is most likely correct, as this has worked in my and others' testing, but if the AppID is not unique then Steam will do weird things. I confirmed that the AppID that STL generates is not always unique.
I can re-create the problem if I use similar app names and paths: "Test Game 1" and "Test Game 2", in mostly the same path but with one or two directories different at the end, give the same AppID. So I suspect games in your /home/user/Games path, or even "Biohazard 2" and "Biohazard 3" could cause this issue.
I agree with you that it looks like it should have succeeded, however if AppIDs are the same, there will be a conflict and so the compatibility tool will be set incorrectly. In my tests up to this point, I guess the paths have all been sufficiently different so it has worked. Adding "Test Game 1" worked and set the compat tool, but "Test Game 2" generated the same AppID, and partially caused a conflict that Steam probably wouldn't fully resolve until the game launched, so the compat tool was not set.
I have some ideas for how to generate a random number from a seed better, using an md5 hash, so I'll work on this hopefully later tonight. It should preserve the AppID being the same when the name is the same (so prior artwork/compat tools can be preserved) but also ensure the AppID is unique at least among games added by SteamTinkerLaunch and when the name and EXE path are unique. It is conceivable that with enough shortcuts, there could be overlap, but we're talking about millions of shortcuts :sweat_smile:
Unfortunately, you will need to re-add your Non-Steam Games, though hopefully removing it from Steam (optional, just keeps the library cleaner) and re-running the command you posted should result in things working, once I get the fix up. This kind of commandline usage is the kind of use-case I envisioned for ansg, so it is important to me that it works. It seems like it isn't totally broken at least from my tests, and hopefully making some changes to ensure the AppID is unique will work.
As a heads-up, though you may already know, if you have your artwork in the same folder as the exe and you name them hero, logo, boxart, tenfoot, then you should be able to use --auto-artwork to pick them up automatically instead of passing the paths explicitly. Though this is probably not going to work so good since setting artwork relies on the AppID, so probably best not to try it out much until I can get the fix up. It's also not very important, and you may already know this as based on your usage it seems like you actually read the wiki, it was just a small heads-up in case it helps you :-)
If you need to bulk-remove shortcuts, ProtonUp-Qt from git has a shortcut editor which you can access from the games list.
Though I'm very confident this is the issue, if you're interested, you could try to verify this: You can check your ~/.local/share/Steam/config/config.vdf file, look for AppID 3980761242 in a block like this under the CompatToolMapping section (though it will be indented more):
"3381908488"
{
"name" "GE-Proton8-16"
"config" ""
"priority" "250"
}Then in Steam, from the Properties dialog, edit the compatibility tool for your Biohazard shortcut, and then go back to your config.vdf and refresh. Steam should have created or updated a different entry to the one above.
Steam uses this to map what games (by AppID) are using which compatibility tool. If you see a block below it or a different block somewhere else being updated, then this means STL is inserting the block correctly, but since the AppID that STL creates is not unique, it is not reading this compatibility tool mapping entry.
Thanks!
cchulo
System Information
Issue Description
Writing some automation to automatically reinstall games to freshly imaged desktop and steam deck. I run the following command, and while it mostly works, it failed to set the compatibility tool:
I did not get any errors, and inspecting the log, from first glance, looks like it would've worked.
I made sure compatibility tool was spelled correctly, as
GE-Proton8-19Logs
steamtinkerlaunch.log steamtinkerlaunch-10-31.log steamtinkerlaunch-11-4.log