Metadata Support

To improve and speedup existing and further automations and functions stl collects as much useful metadata as possible.

The base storage directory for all metadata is STLCFGDIR/meta with subdirectories

• id
  • custom
  • general
• title
  • custom
  • general

All metadata files are created/updated in the id subdirectories and symlinks with the game titles are created in the corresponding title subdirectory. (might make sense to use a sqlite3 db here, but having a transparent easily simple file structure also has its benefits)

Metadata are separated into custom and general to make sharing of general metadata in the community possible.

Custom Metadata

Currently custom metadata are only the WINEPREFIX and the GAMEDIR of the game.

General Metadata

The very basic general metadata currently stored are GAMEID and GAMENAME, depending on the detection function GAMEEXE and GAMEWINDOW will be stored as well. stl tries to autodetect the GAMEWINDOW automatically in the background, but it can also be picked via Tray Icon menu item.

Storing Metadata

When metadata is created via Command Line (either directly using the meta or indirectly the menu command line argument) only the GAMEID, GAMENAME, WINEPREFIX and the GAMEDIR are created/updated, as GAMEEXE, GAMEWINDOW and probably any other value are simply not available outside steam. When launching a game via steam using stl (here it doesn't matter if the game is actually started, or the user exists the launch via stl) the additional values are stored as well when entering the closeSTL function (so usually after the game has exited)

Backup using commandline:

see Command Line