BKGaming: Anyone else feel like having to go to the library in Galaxy is an unneeded extra step? GOG use to clearly have plans to have this more like Steam, the left side of the client could show both installed and uninstalled games and user could choose between showing or not showing uninstalled games. GOG however did not fully implement it and then removed it. I kind of feel like GOG should go back to this and perhaps even take out the library.
Would make it a lot quicker to install a game... and not to mention the library is still kind of buggy.
I agree, the Library needs a huge overhaul. If someone has 50 games or less it isn't too hard to manage, but having over 500 games and having to scroll to the bottom of a page to find the pagination controls to go to page 2, then 3, then 4 then ... or having to manually click on the box and type in the page number having no idea what page I actually want because I have no idea what page a given game is on, or having to type it into the filter text entry field is extra unnecessary work.
Comparison with the Steam client in a similar situation, it has 4 different views of one's library which allows for one to find the view that best suits their hardware setup and personal preferences for whatever reasons they may have. It's been a long time since I installed Steam on any computer that didn't previously have it on it so I have no recollection as to what the default view is on Steam but it's probably either the "list" view or "detail" view IIRC.
The "list" view shows every single game one owns in their library all on one page, organized on the left column by game title broken into categories (roughly equivalent to GOG's "TAG" feature) first, and then alphabetically by game title within a category. Further fields show favourite status, cloud storage support, status (installed, not ready, etc.), last played, and other optional fields that can be enabled via configuration including disk space used, metacritic score, developer etc.
The "detail" view is the one that I normally use, which is similar to "list" view but when clicking on a single game, you get a bunch of detailed information about that game as well as directly viewable single click links to the store and other navigation controls, no menu or other widget with multiple clicks to slow you down. GOG's view seems closest to this view but with a fraction of the information available, and with all of the links to click on buried inside the "More" button and submenus requiring multiple clicks to discover and activate.
The "grid" view, appears designed more for the minimalist and shows only a bunch of game card icons with game graphics on them, similar to clicking on a DVD box or whatever to start a game. The size of the icons is resizeable from fairly small to huge to be able to customize how many you see on the screen as per your preference.
Finally there is "big picture" mode which is an entirely different user interface for Steam designed for displaying to a large television or whatever and is geared more towards a console type gamer. It has a user interface that is more customized for use with a gamepad controller and has a more "appliance" like feel to it.
I can totally understand why all these views exist both because different people have different tastes, and for ease of accessing certain types of information, and I'd like to see Galaxy evolve to something more elaborate like this which lets individual users choose something that matches their own style and need.
One thing completely consistent in the Steam library no matter which view one chooses, is the complete lack of pagination controls. No matter how many games you own on Steam or what view you're using, you see all of your games all at once, and I can say that with 400+ games there are zero performance problems or delays loading them up and throwing them on my screen.
My biggest dislike of the GOG library view is the fact that I have a 30" monitor and it wastes 90% of my monitor displaying whitespace, and forces me to use pagination controls and/or title text filters to locate a specific game in my library. Sometimes you just want to peruse your entire library with one hand on the mouse and another hand on a sandwich by scrolling and you're not looking for a single specific title, so there is nothing to type into the filter box. You have no choice but to use the pagination controls, and they drive me absolutely nuts.
If there was one feature I wish they'd add to Galaxy it would be an HTML+CSS editor built in that lets us write our own HTML+CSS code and create our own library view so they don't have to guess what we do or don't want. I've hacked on the Galaxy UI's HTML and CSS a bit already although mostly minor tweaks and I've contemplated doing more destructive changes to make it do what *I* want it to do, but the downside to this is that I have to back up the entire directory and replace it with the original files when doing beta tests so I'm not on my own planet different than everyone else, plus Galaxy updates will totally blow away all of my changes and I can't just copy them back because the files will be completely new based on changes they've made, so I have to recustomize every change I made all over again.
I'm not sure how easy or even if it is possible to remove the pagination and force all games to show up on the one page currently but it is on my list of things to hack on, and I'm also going to see if there's a way to automate making mods to the files.
Originally GOG announced that they would be publishing the Galaxy APIs to allow people to customize their own clients. It makes total sense why there is no published documented API currently as it is under intense development and they obviously don't want people starting to rely on a moving target and then get upset when they make changes based on things they learn during development and decide to change. I would totally do that too. But it would be nice if we did have a way to make customizations to the client either because it includes multiple customizeable views built right into itself, or because they allow some way to do custom skins that can not only change the appearance but also the layout, whether or not pagination is used and other factors.
I'm pretty sure though that sooner or later, the ability to have a customized Galaxy interface to your library will come to exist whether GOG provides it themselves, provides the tools to enable people to do it in a supportable manner, or people just raw hack on the HTML+CSS like I am currently and/or the actual Galaxy binaries to do it anyway.
My personal preferred view would more or less be the Steam "Detail" view maybe with some additional customizations/tweaks. I want to fit as many game titles on screen as possible regardless of aesthetics and I want to waste zero screen real estate and have zero pagination basically.
Maybe I'm the only one and it's too much effort to do all of that for one person, I dunno. :) Who's with me? :)
