I've been trying to get Galaxy to launch a few games via source ports rather than DOSbox. Previously, I've been able to do this by editing the game's .info file, but lately it seems that if I make any changes to those files, the game in question vanishes from Galaxy, and doesn't get picked up on a folder scan unless I restore the original .info

Now, .info editing has been suggested on these forums by blues in the past, which suggests it's a supported trick, but it looks as if Galaxy is now checking for and rejecting anything with a modified file. Is this actually the case, or am I just getting things wrong and breaking them?

I'm sure the same as any program that it would be looking for it's related specs.It's pretty hard to convince a program to over ride changes that you may have come up with and the next update would do just that.What could happen is you break the program and be forced to install again.Just my opinion.

Well, I was little bit worried about this so I've tried to add a new item to the menu for one game, and apparently the trick still works, so maybe should be another problem.
Sometimes a missing comma ruins all the trick. That happend to me several times.

This is indeed a very important trick to use Galaxy everyday, and it should be a supported option of some kind to manage mods, sourceports and useful stuff. I use a several modified .info files, for some games is a must have option.

Anyone know how to edit that file so I can play the DOS version of Earth 2140 through Galaxy? I've tried a simple copy/paste and edit of another DOS based game's info file to the Earth 2140 Windows info file along with copying the DOS version game files to the installed Windows version location, but no matter what I do I can't get Galaxy to play the DOS version.

It would be nice to fix this since GOG refuses to add Galaxy support for the AI fixed DOS version and only has Galaxy support for the Windows version with the well known broken AI for some baffling reason.

I have seen a few cases (the first two S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games and the first Mount & Blade game) where the Galaxy client has been unable to import a game that I just had installed on another computer and then copied over to my main gaming PC, so sometimes even unedited .info files don't work for some odd reason.

Instead of us needing to edit .info files to add modded or non-GOG games to the client, it should just have an official "add a custom game" wizard and also allow us to create extra launch buttons on any installed game. Not only could add-ons like Silent Storm: Sentinels then be made to start form such a button instead of from a pop-up, but any game that is easy to keep multiple copies with different mods,total conversions or alternative engines co-existing at the same time on the same computer could have custom buttons for each of them beside the button for the official version.

This would be the best solution. I think Steam client allows this somewhat.

Looks like this might be moot now... let's see what Galaxy 2 can do

It's not possible to say with certainty what is causing the issue for you, but the goggame*.info files are very much editable. Being JSON data however the file syntax is extremely strict and any errors found cause the file to be considered corrupted and will be ignored or blown away.

It is absolutely crucial if editing these files that the syntax is strictly adhered to with absolutely no syntax errors in order for them to work properly. This is just the nature of JSON files and their parsers by design. When the beta program was running (is it still? There was never any formal announcement of it closing... ), we often had to edit these files in order to try to find workarounds for games that were not launching properly etc., and details would be communicated here in the forums on how to workaround problems for various games.

In addition to this, it is possible to create your own custom .info files for launching other games from other platforms or just about anything, so long as the syntax is correct and Galaxy will gladly load them. There is a 3rd party program available for creating shortcuts for off-platform games from what I understand (never used it myself).

So if you're modifying or creating your own .info file and it is being ignored or deleted by Galaxy, then there is a high degree of likelihood that syntax errors such as a missing or extraneous comma are present in the file (a common mistake), or some other similar typo or bad syntax. We were trained to ALWAYS pass the *.info file that we modified through an online JSON lint checker and make any corrections before trying to have Galaxy read the files in order to avoid problems from unintentionally corrupted files.

That'd be my recommendation today, to pass the JSON files through an online JSON checker first to ensure they are syntactically correct.