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Steam Library - Sorting & Art (Or How I Learned To Make It Look Good)

VN1X

Banned

K5WQ5Ai.png

Disgusting.

Let's be honest, for all the good Steam has done for PC gaming (a lot of features we now take for granted) there's still some bad stuff remaining as well. For instance some of the default (vertical) art, or lack thereof in a lot of cases, is kind of meh to say the least. Also, most of the time you're stuck with having a franchise be scattered across your library because of its naming conventions. Take DOOM for instance: You've got your bog standard DOOM 3, DOOM 64, DOOM (2016) and DOOM Eternal, etc. This already causes an issue if you're trying to sort based on title or you want the games to be displayed in chronological order and time of release. What's even worse is that not all DOOM Games start with the letter D so as you go through your list you have stuff like "Final DOOM" followed by "Master Levels for DOOM II" and "The Ultimate DOOM" pop up randomly. If you're even slightly inclined towards the OCD side of life it'll make you want rip and tear rip your hair out. This is where SteamEdit and SteamGridDB come in. These are amazing tools that allow you to spruce up your Steam libraries and make em worthy of scrolling through endlessly as you decide what to play next not play for plenty more years to come.

The example posted above is what most of my library used to look like (check your own hideous libraries yourselves) but here are some examples of what it looks like today:

zOKrDm8.png

Dishonored and DOOM looking fresh! Chronologically sorted for my viewing pleasure as well. The fact that the logos line up almost perfectly across the entire DOOM franchise is the cherry on top!

uxTBXXK.png

F.E.A.R. looking much better this way.

2EuGcT3.png

Not my favourite Half-Life art but these too are looking much better now, sorted chronologically for the most part. See also Hammerfight for another example to see the terrible state of the 'official' vertical boxart. Now looking like an actual game!

jcYn1Wg.png

Hitman never looked this good! If only I had the other two games of the recent trilogy it would've been perfect.

EJ0GELV.png

Cleaned up Serious Sam's art as especially the indie ones were a right mess. Even made the one for SS2 and Bogus Detour myself (ie: took some art and pasted the logo on top for that sexy aligned goodness).



Here's my entire library in video form so you can see some examples of animated ones.


These are just some examples and while some might find this a completely useless endeavour I thought it was a lot of fun beautifying my library. For me it kind of had this weird psychological effect as well as it made me more interested/excited to check out certain games from my backlog as simply seeing that all that shiny boxart just sitting there, collecting digital dust, felt wrong to the Gamer™ in me (and my wallet too!).

so tl'dr: with SteamGridDB you can
with SteamEdit you can
  • Do a whole bunch of things related to the sorting and tagging of library
  • Change display titles
  • Change Steam registry/sorting titles (DOOM Eternal is sorted as "DOOM 2020" for me but still shows up as its original title in my library list)
  • Enable controller support for titles in Big Picture Mode

I use SteamGridDB almost daily and sometimes even base my game purchases on the type of art I come across (that animated Persona 4 one for example is mighty enticing). I'm weirdo, I know. Otherwise I think this would be a fun thread to share some of our favourite findings from SteamGrid (or to show off your own creations!). These ones had me chuckling like a loon lol:

41b2b0d58d94eb0485213f31f0baa0d5.png


64c4b5da38968ae186bd776736b380c7.png


And some recent quality ones:

7734306758c97e4fad5b19a29ad9a4ee.webp


72cb534f060d1ffa8351c90aed73fcb7.png


6b07e15fda6a7bb7d5b7d10701dc4829.png


d220b363fa173729b6b2851776d4e6db.png


e1a19c58affd8e8794f8bd8de6309b77.png


Or if you want to pussify all of your DONTNOD games they've got you covered as well. Enjoy!
 
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Kuranghi

Member
Thanks for reminding me about steamgriddb, I just updated my currently installed games' icons:

m8dGZFs.jpg


I had the RE2R animated one of them in the rain, bobbing up and down for too long now so I had to change it and this one seemed suitably campy. No Cloud Gardens icons unfortunately.
 

VN1X

Banned
Oh and as a bonus tip I recommend using gg.deals to buy any remaining titles you still need to complete your 'franchise collections' so to speak. That website lists both the official affiliated stores and the grey market ones (even going so far as to list what type of risks you might be susceptible to when buying from those places).

Which reminds me I still need to get Resi 5...
 
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Soodanim

Member
SteamGridDB isn’t new to me, but SteamEdit is and I’ve wanted a tool like that for a long time. Custom sort should be a built in feature.

Another source worth mentioning for Steam Grids is Reddit. I got most of my Resident Evil grids from there, and the good thing is people often to do matching set for a series in one go.
 

JSoup

Banned
I guess it fell through, but there was an auto-fill app being worked on for SteamGridDB at one point. It would allow you to scan your library, pick which games you wanted to edit, select the images from the site, then automatically download and arrange.
 

Soodanim

Member
I guess it fell through, but there was an auto-fill app being worked on for SteamGridDB at one point. It would allow you to scan your library, pick which games you wanted to edit, select the images from the site, then automatically download and arrange.
I have and use that tool, last I checked it was still in beta. Not perfect by any means, but it has saved me a lot of time.

Update: according to the (lead?) dev in Discord, it’s still being worked on and some releases should be coming over the next few months.
 
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JSoup

Banned
I have and use that tool, last I checked it was still in beta. Not perfect by any means, but it has saved me a lot of time.

Update: according to the (lead?) dev in Discord, it’s still being worked on and some releases should be coming over the next few months.

I think I just pee'd a little.
Edit: Also, WOW SteamEdit is VASTLY better than whatever that other category tool was.
Edit 2: Say, could I get a link to that app?
 
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DGrayson

Mod Team and Bat Team
Staff Member
First - amazing thread thank you.

2nd - There is no way to sync these changes across different devices correct?
 

Soodanim

Member
I think I just pee'd a little.
Edit: Also, WOW SteamEdit is VASTLY better than whatever that other category tool was.
Edit 2: Say, could I get a link to that app?

Edit: I just remembered that it imports GOG games perfectly (for me), so it can make Steam your true launcher for all games with very little effort..
 
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The only step that's missing is being able to easily share your work. The only way right now is giving direct access to your account to someone else.

I want to show off not just the cover but also the different collections. I have custom categories for Japanese, Chinese, Korean and etc.
 

VN1X

Banned
Imho, life is too short to care about this sorta thing

I prefer the text based list view anyhow
Yeah that's fair enough. If you're like me and did all of this manually then yes it does take a bit of time and effort (which to me was worth it).

And even when just looking at the list view I was triggered due to the reasons mentioned in the OP. I guess I really am one of those OCD people. :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 

GHG

Gold Member
Thanks for sharing OP, just changed a few of the games I've played this year so far:

steam-E1o1r44v-Kw.jpg


Especially good as a source for non-steam game artwork.
 
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Soodanim

Member
VN1X VN1X or others: have you managed to sort the GTA games properly with SteamEdit? There seems to be an odd thing where they don't want to use the sort names, and I don't know if it's related to some of the games appearing twice in the list but clicking the second sending you to the first.
 
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VN1X

Banned
VN1X VN1X or others: have you managed to sort the GTA games properly with SteamEdit? There seems to be an odd thing where they don't want to use the sort names, and I don't know if it's related to some of the games appearing twice in the list but clicking the second sending you to the first.
Sometimes games appear multiple times in SteamEdit yes but it should always be possible to change a game's title to whatever you want (remember there's a difference between display name and sorting name). I don't own any of the GTA games myself so can't really help there unfortunately.
 

Soodanim

Member
Sometimes games appear multiple times in SteamEdit yes but it should always be possible to change a game's title to whatever you want (remember there's a difference between display name and sorting name). I don't own any of the GTA games myself so can't really help there unfortunately.
Checked the website and it mentions a known bug where games with the same name can be problematic, and I got an idea.

The fix:
Changed each game with a duplicate title to be one character different
Changed all versions of the games' sorting names
Changed the display title back to original

That allowed every version to get given the correct sorting name without SteamEdit getting confused.

I'll report back a bit later with some of collections I've done in the past, now updated to be in correct order (which is so much better when a Remaster of game 1 is after game 3, like Dark Souls and Deus Ex).
 

JSoup

Banned
I've meaning since forever to make some custom covers for a small pile of demos, betas and videos in my library that just never got one.
Same with a few OSTs, now I think about it.
 

Denton

Member
Man this shit is crazy

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I also replace the grid art for games I have installed when the original one is bad, but doing it for entire library..too lazy.

I am a bit pissed at Valve for not replacing the horizontal art for vertical themselves, on games where their creators do not bother doing it.
 

VN1X

Banned
I also replace the grid art for games I have installed when the original one is bad, but doing it for entire library..too lazy.
Yeah it can be a bit of an undertaking lol. I did it over the course of multiple evenings while listening to music and podcasts. :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 

JSoup

Banned
First - amazing thread thank you.

2nd - There is no way to sync these changes across different devices correct?

It's been a while since I last looked into it, but I believe your changes are all kept in a specific place that isn't synched across devices, BUT you can copy those files/folders to another device on your own to "synch" across. It's not perfect.
 

JSoup

Banned
Don't know if I want to crawl through all 1700+ licenses in my library, but at least my MMO category is nice and clean.
 

JSoup

Banned
Coming back this, I was bummed out to find that I can't change OST art. Lot of these albums don't have art at all.
 
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