Hey there,

I'm currently thinking about new methods to organize my game collection and I thought what better place to ask for advice than the GOG forums? :)

I prefer to have all the shortcuts to my games in one spot, so that I have a good overview over what is currently installed on my harddisk and could start any game at will with a mouse click or keystroke. Back in the good old days of DOS, I actually wrote a simple batch file acting as a shell to choose and run DOS games. In times of Windows, I didn't like my desktop cluttered with all kinds of game icons, so I usually just created a "Games" folder on my desktop and put all the game icons in there. I'm not very happy with how Vista and 7 handle folder settings though, so now I'm looking for more elegant ways to list my games.

I actually like Launchy a lot, but it doesn't give me an overview of the games, I always have to know what specific games I'm looking for.

I'm aware I could use the Steam client and also link all my non-Steam games to it but that's a solution I'd rather avoid seeing that I'm not very fond of it and only own one Steam game anway. ;)

Do you know of any other nice shell programs that would allow me to create an individual list of shortcuts for all my games? How do you manage your game colection?

Launchy actually sounds quite cool. I do not think I have even heard of Shell programs yet.

I use various third party programs and some registry hacking to make my Windows 7 Games Explorer useful.

For me it's <windows key> + first few letters from the name of the game + enter. No other thing needed. This on Windows 7, Vista is a bit slower.

I have a folder on my deskop that has folders inside of it labeled music, movies, games, documents, porn, pictures and other. Inside those folders are what you would expect, though shortcuts for games obviously. I also have a folder called game backups which has exactly what you would expect in it.

I'm a simple guy.

Indeed.

On XP I had an elaborate setup using folders with shortcuts as toolbars, shrinking them down so that only the folder name and two arrows for a menu was visible.

True, that's similar to what Launchy does and already integrated in Windows but it wouldn't give me an overview either. Besides, I'm looking for something to combine practical function with clean and attractive looks, and in this regard the windows start menu doesn't score too high (plus, I'd like to see my games and my games only, no other files - I'm a bit picky in that regard). ;) My issue is that the "Games" folder I create on my desktop always shares the same look with the way my Explorer is set up. That wasn't the case with Win98 (and I assume neither with XP) but it is with Vista (which I'm running on my desktop PC). I find that very impractical, e.g. I don't need a navigation window in my "Games" folder but when I remove it, it's gone in the Explorer, too, where it is a necessity. Were you able to resolve that problem or was it already fixed in Win7?

EDIT: Oh, ok, I got it - the Games Explorer has its own look and is different from a folder you create on the desktop, right? I think I never used it because it didn't give me full control of the items within it. What changes did you make to it to make it more useful?

These two programs:
http://gameeditor.webnode.com/
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2131076

Plus a bit of hacking to fix GOG's GE entries (they put them in the wrong place in the registry and write the genre tags in lowercase).

Hm, I tried them, but they both give me different error messages, I guess it will be quite complicated for me to make them run properly and then get the Game Explorer to work like I want it to (I also read VGEE has issues with non-English versions of Windows? that would be a problem). Thanks for trying to help me though!

Does anyone have any other suggestion? I'm really looking for something, simple and effective that gives me full control over my game management and looks clean and attractive. A simple generic shell program that allows me to add shortcuts at my leisure would do the trick already, I think. I imagine it shouldn't be too hard to program such a tool so I can't believe such a thing doesn't exist ... Am I the only one who isn't satisfied with the options Windows has to offer? (Not necessarily because they're too simple but actually because they're too complicate and messy and don't leave me enough freedom to customize ...)

I've used RocketDock and TTMenu in the past.

RocketDock looks like it could work for me, thanks! I'm going to play around with it for a bit. :)

I am using fastmenu. With this i see my folders as popupmenu when i click the quicklaunch button.

But language is german only. http://www.jk-online.net/software/fastmenu/

Have you considered not organizing your game library on your harddrive at all and using something like backloggery instead? You could identify the few games you are actively playing and make easy access shortcuts just for them.

I'm still running XP but I too hate a cluttered desktop. I create a folder somewhere on my drive, usually in My Documents, that contains shortcuts to all my installed games. Then I add a toolbar on my windows taskbar labelled "games" that points to this folder. I keep this toolbar as small as possible so all that appears on the taskbar is the word "games" and none of the individual icons. Thus when I click to expand the bar I get a pop up list that displays all my games. This has been a simple solution that I have used for years.

Games go into /usr/local/games and then I start them with:

Win + p, type the unique part of the games name, enter

Which is generally how you start things in wmii anyway :) I have some custom launcher scripts that use UnionFS so /usr/local/games can be fully read-only.