Appinfo

Appinfo

The Steam binary appinfo.vdf (~/.steam/steam/appcache/appinfo.vdf) contains lots of valuable information about games. steamtinkerlaunch is able to extract all raw data for a game (on demand or also via Command Line), store it into ~/.config/steamtinkerlaunch/games/appinfo/$SteamAppId.bin and extract required data from it.

The extracted data is identical to that coming from appinfo.vdf, but stored in a separate (binary) file per game for later use.

Additionally the most important/common categories (see /usr/share/steamtinkerlaunch/misc/appinfo.txt for an up-to-date list) can be read from the extracted binary file and stored directly into its corresponding general Metadata file (from where the data is loaded first if available). Storing the metadata is both started on demand and also via Command Line)*.

Both extracting the raw data and extracting the metadata can optionally be

• launched per game
• for all installed games
• for all owned games via Command Line

Appending any additional argument forcefully updates the raw data and the Metadata ( so f.e. steamtinkerlaunch caim o F to update all raw data and metadata info for all owned games)

(be aware that extracting the data for many files can take a long time - >30min for ~6500 SteamAppIds when testing)

When extracting the raw data was requested (either because it is missing and needed or forced via commandline ), steamtinkerlaunch creates a temporary hexdump from appinfo.vdf (in /dev/shm/steamtinkerlaunch/appinfo.hex) if it is not yet available. So the first run will needs a few seconds longer. As soon as it is available, it is re-used for every further function.

For as seamless as possible integration, the function which extracts the Metadata from the Appinfo is automatically started non-blocking/in the background as soon as the Wait Requester is launched, which in turn will extract the raw data file if required.