Ice (add console ROMS to steam automatically)

[kazgar]

Haven't tried it yet, but looks interesting in that "one library to rule them all way"

http://scottrice.github.io/Ice/

Some more details here:

https://github.com/scottrice/Ice/blob/master/README.md

Description
The purpose of this project is to leverage Steam's Big Picture mode to turn it into an emulator frontend (similar to Hyperspin). It accomplishes this by creating folders in specified locations on the users hard drive, and when a ROM is placed in one of those folders, my application will automatically add it to Steam as a non-steam game. Emulators to run each game should come pre-configured to support Xbox 360 controllers intelligently while still allowing all Steam features to be accessible (community etc)

Looks like it even downloads and configures the emulator for you.

Handles the following:

Supported Consoles

• NES - Nintendo Entertainment System
• SNES - Super Nintendo
• N64 - Nintendo 64
• Gamecube - Nintendo Gamecube
• PS1 - Sony Playstation
• PS2 - Sony Playstation 2
• Genesis - Sega Genesis
• Gameboy - Nintendo Gameboy
• GBA - Nintendo Gameboy Advance

Unsupported Consoles (which may be supported later)

• Wii - Nintendo Wii
• Dreamcast - Sega Dreamcast
• DS - Nintendo DS

 

[Infinitron]

Here's another useful Steam utility: https://code.google.com/p/depressurizer/

It lets your sort your games into categories with a standard drag-and-drop interface.

 

[sea]

In before gaben bans everyone who uses this.

EDIT: Can't get it to work. There doesn't appear to be any obvious way to even specify where my current ROMs are located. It says it will "automatically" add your ROMs to a directory you specify, but when I run the program nothing happens.

Of course, if it's the opposite that the readme specifies and I need to give it my ROMs folder, then, well, readme fails.

EDIT 2: Also, it says "Make sure that '[Steam] Location' in config.txt is correctly set to your Steam installation directory", but there is no [Steam] Location entry in config.txt.

EDIT 3: Re-read the readme, says it will create a folder for ROMs at the specified directory when you run ice.exe for the first time. But, it never actually does this, despite running it with admin permissions. So basically, the software seems to be broken. Maybe I'm missing some special version of Python it needs or something, but if so then the author does not make that clear at all. There is no log file to check what is going wrong either.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Functionally speaking, it's kind of useless right now unless you REALLY care about having everything you play in your Steam library. It might become useful once SteamOS launches and you want to stream some PS2 or Wii/GC games to your TV.

However, having some very recent experiences with various emulators, I don't trust the auto configuration at all. Maybe in a few years, once there's a mature database of optimal configurations, but we're not there yet. Especially with pcsx2, there's a lot of really weird and arbitrary behaviour of various games relative to emulator settings. Dolphin is much better, but nowhere close to ideal. Currently, if you care enough to emulate games, you care enough to tweak the settings yourself, I feel.

If this is still alive in like three years, it could be interesting though.