grundy

Grundy crushes your non-Steam games into Steam shortcuts so you do not have to! It is a headless service that looks for configured game collections. It will automatically add your games to Steam based on your configured game launchers. Your changes are automatically discovered.

Why?

I created this application so I could easily add my Nintendo Gamecube games to Steam and emulate them using Dolphin. I wanted to let other people use it, so I tried to make it as extensible as possible.

How do I set it up?

Download the installer from the tags / releases section and run it. Grundy starts automatically once the installation finishes - there are no extra steps after the installation completes. It will automatically start on system startup and login.

Adding your games to Steam

The following steps explain how to add your games to Steam using the application.

1. Organize your game collections

First, you should organize your games into what I call game collections. A game collection is a directory (folder) that contains subdirectories with your games' files. A game collection can be stored anywhere on your computer.

For example, if you have a collection of Nintendo Gamecube games consisting of Metroid Prime and Pikmin, you should create the following directory structure (the name does not need to be gamecube-games):

Note: A trailing / indicates a directory (folder):

gamecube-games/
|
|---- Metroid Prime/
|   |
|   |---- mprime.gcm
|
|---- Pikmin/
    |
    |---- pikmin.gcm

This means you should create a directory named gamecube-games (or something similar) and then create two directories inside named Metroid Prime and Pikmin. These names will tell grundy how to name the shortcuts. In other words, naming the Metroid Prime game directory as Metroid Prime will create a Steam shortcut named Metroid Prime.

You would then copy the Gamecube files into their respective directories. The Gamecube files do not need to be named in any particular manner. Just make sure they have a consistent file extension (usually .gcm).

2. (Optional) Add icons and grid images

Steam allows you to set custom images in the following forms:

• Icons for use with the compact "Games Details" view (e.g., 64x64 pixels)
• Grid images for use with the "Games Grid" view and "Big Picture" mode

If you would like grundy to add an icon or grid image for your shortcut, make sure to copy your images into their respective directories. The image files must end with the following suffixes:

• Icons:
  • -icon.png
  • -icon.jpg
• Grid images:
  • -grid.png
  • -grid.jpg

If multiple files exist with the above suffixes, grundy will pick the first one it finds. Make sure your images conform to Steam's image requirements.

For example, if you have images for Metroid Prime and Pikmin named METROID DUDE.png and Pikmin Are Cool.png, make sure they are renamed to METROID DUDE-grid.png and Pikmin Are Cool-grid.png:

gamecube-games/
|
|---- Metroid Prime/
|   |
|   |---- mprime.gcm
|   |---- METROID DUDE-grid.png
|
|---- Pikmin/
    |
    |---- pikmin.gcm
    |---- Pikmin Are Cool-grid.png

3. Find the main settings directory

Now we need to define some settings so grundy will add game collections to Steam. These settings can be found in the main settings directory.

The main settings directory can be found in the following locations, depending on your operating system:

• macOS and Linux: ~/.grundy (where ~ is the path to your home directory)
• Windows: C:\ProgramData\.grundy (note the leading period)

4. Tell grundy how your game launchers work

Once you have located the main settings directory, you will need to edit launchers.grundy.ini. You can open this file in a text editor (such as Notepad). Each section in this file will represent a launcher (i.e., a game emulator such as Dolphin).

Let's pretend we are using Dolphin to run the collection we added in the previous step. Go ahead and add the following to the file:

[dolphin]
exe_path           = C:\Program Files\Dolphin\Dolphin.exe
default_args       = /b /e
game_file_suffixes = .gcm

This tells grundy that there is a launcher named dolphin that uses the executable C:\Program Files\Dolphin\Dolphin.exe with the arguments /b and /e to start games. Lastly, it tells grundy that it should look for files ending in .gcm when searching for games in a game collection that uses the dolphin launcher.

5. Tell grundy where your game collections live

Once you have setup a game collection and a launcher, you will need to tell grundy which launcher your collection uses.

You will want to copy the path to the collection. On Windows, you can do this by opening the game collection in the Windows File Explorer and clicking on the location bar. This will reveal the path, which will look something like: C:\Users\Me\Documents\My Games\gamecube-games.

Now open up app.grundy.ini in a text editor (like Notepad). You will see a line starting with [game_collections]. On the next line, paste your game collection path and surround it with single quotes. It is very important that you put single quotes around the collection path. This should be followed by an equals character (=) and the name of the launcher to use for the collection.

For example, if your gamecube-games collection lived in C:\Users\Me\Documents\My Games, this file should now look like this:

[settings]

[game_collections]
'C:\Users\Me\Documents\My Games\gamecube-games' = dolphin

6. Reload Steam

Unfortunately, Steam needs to be restarted to learn about new shortcuts. Once you have restarted Steam, you will see your new shind shortcuts.

How do I build this?

Please refer to the building documentation.

Are there advanced configuration options?

Please refer to the configuration documentation.