Hi guys,
we’re excited to reconnect with you all here on Lemmy after our project “Crackpipe” generated quite a buzz recently. With its brand new name, we proudly present “GameVault”!
In case you missed our, let’s say - “controversial” debut on reddit and lemmy, let us give you a quick rundown of what GameVault is all about:
GameVault is a fantastic gaming platform that you can host yourself, allowing you and your friends to enjoy “alternatively obtained” games on your own terms. It simplifies the whole gaming experience by organizing, downloading, installing, playing, and tracking your favorite games right on your file server. GameVault automatically detects game files, builds a metadata database, and offers a user-friendly client for seamless downloading and gameplay. Imagine having your own personalized Steam for games stored on your file server!
Linux users, please note that we don’t currently have a native client available. However, our documentation includes a community-driven approach to running the client on Linux, which you can find under “Advanced Usage.”
Are you ready to add another Link to your Dashboards?
Feel free to pay a visit to our website and join our Discord and Lemmy Community to become part of an awesome community!
I would love to try to get this integrated with Lutris!
sounds great, we rely heavily on 3rd party developers for these requested integrations. Could you kindly create a github issue for it on the board and kindly keep us informed about the progress?
Sure, could you send a link to it? Not sure which repo is the correct one. Also, I’m going to work on creating a NixOS option for GameVault first, so once that is done I’ll start on the Lutris integration.
Is there any documentation available for building the backend manually? I would like to make it available on NixOS, which requires writing a Nix package for it.
Thank you so much for the effort.
Unfortunately there is no documentation available for manual installation as of right now, but you can follow the steps in the Dockerfile provided at this link: https://github.com/Phalcode/gamevault-backend/blob/master/Dockerfile
In a nutshell:
- Make sure you have NodeJS installed (version 20 or higher)
- Install the pnpm package globally with “npm install -g pnpm”
- Clone the project and navigate to the appropriate folder
- Run “pnpm install” to install dependencies
- Execute “pnpm build”
- Create an .env file in the main folder, including the desired configurations from https://gamevau.lt/docs/server-docs/configuration
- Launch production mode with “pnpm start:prod”
Depending on your preferred database, you can either run a PostgreSQL instance (recommended + nixos probably has a suitable package you can rely on) or use SQLite (unrecommended).
We would be very grateful if you could grant our organization Maintainer permissions. By doing so, we will have the official capacity to provide support, updates, and share the NixOS integration with others. It would mean a lot to us if you could also include it in our documentation, which can be found at this link: https://github.com/Phalcode/gamevault-docs/blob/master/docs/server-docs/setup.md
Thanks! I’d be happy to add one of you as the maintainer to the Nix package. If you let me know who, I can @ someone in the nixpkgs PR. I’ll make a draft for the docs once I’ve submitted the nixpkgs pr.
the @Phalcode organization or if that doesnt work @alfagun74 directly
Thanks!
I like the idea. Personally I’d market it as for DRM-free games. It’s agnostic as to how they came to be DRM-free but doesn’t sound as fishy as ‘alternatively obtained’.
“alternatively obtained” is funny but yea I completely agree. also makes the project description much less clunky sounding and more descriptive.
How about Profiles and Community Achievements? Something like Retroachievements?
Open up a feature request for it on Github
Youre the guys from crackpipe? Lol i was recently wondering if you ever got around to changing it. Even though it was a god awful name, it did give me a few good laughs
How about Profiles and Community Achievements? Something like Retroachievements?
First of all, thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it, game preservation depends on DRM-Free packages. And there is no other software that I know of that is trying to offer the closest thing to a Steam-like experience for this scenario.
With that out of the way, I must bring up a specific section found in your documentation.
It simplifies the whole gaming experience by organizing, downloading, installing, playing, and tracking
https://gamevau.lt/docs/client-docs/how-to-use
From what I can read in the docs, the installation is completely manual. Even games that don’t have an installer, they get compressed and must be manually decompressed to the proper gamevault folder.
If games that don’t require an installer, actually do get automatically “installed”, then my suggestion is that you add that to the documentation. If that is not the case, then I suggest you stop advertising this functionality as if it was true.
As for Linux, if this software does offer an advatage over just copying games, I guess someone will eventually make a plugin for Lutris or Heroic. But one thing that I suggest for GameVault is developing a way to automatically add the games as a non-Steam game to the Steam application. The majority of users prefer Steam over any other launcher, specially for people using their PCs connected to a TV, Steam Big Picture is just superior to anything else out there.
Ahahaha, the first approach was hilarious I will give you that. But I’m proud to see your new branding — I really think this could build some traction. Hopefully you will be able to work on a Linux client in the future.
Best of luck!
Are there any plans to implement a steamlink like feature? Meaning game running on computer but played on tv, etc. Project looks very interesting!
Not planned from us at least but we currently use Moonlight/Sunshine Gamestreaming to do that.
Thank you, totally forgot about them!
There is something that I do not quite understand, suppose I host GameVault, those who use my instance will be able to download games from a library that I host, or everyone gets their own games and the system simply takes care of showing which game play each person?
And is GameVault currently federated or is it planned to be? I mean, that I can see what someone from another instance is playing?
