Tutorials:Adding Games
LANCommander does not provide or distribute any copyright protected works. This tutorial will only guide you through running the game using your own licensed copy of the game using legitimate CD keys
At the core of LANCommander, games are distributed to clients as ZIP files with optional PowerShell scripts. An authenticated Playnite extension upon installation of a game will download the archive, extract it, and then run any post-install script. Currently the extension runs install, key change, and name change scripts post-extraction. This tutorial will walk through how to add the game Call of Duty (2003) as it requires almost all features of LANCommander for a proper installation.
Adding Metadata
Before continuing, it is strongly recommended that you link LANCommander to an IGDB account for automatic metadata retrieval. See Tutorials:Settings for more details.
Within LANCommander, navigate to Games in the top navigation bar. Then click ```Add Game``` at the top of the page.
A blank form will now appear. Enter the name Call of Duty into the Title field and click Lookup. A modal will appear with a list of games matching the title. Select the entry for Call of Duty, 10/29/2003, Infinity Ward and click the Select button.
The general form will now be populated with metadata pulled from IGDB. Click Save at the top of the page and you will be presented with the full editing form for the game.
General
The "General" panel of the game editor contains most of the metadata fields for a game. These are fields that can be used in the client extension to sort and filter games as well as providing a richer display of information for the game.
| Field | Description | Data Type |
|---|---|---|
| Title | The display name of the game | String |
| Sort Title | Optional title to change the sorting of games. Useful for games in a collection e.g. Call of Duty 1 | String |
| Icon | The .exe or .ico that exists in the archive to use as the game's icon | String |
| Description | A description about the game | String |
| Released On | The release date for the game | DateTime |
| Singleplayer | Denotes the game has a singleplayer mode | Checkbox |
| Developers | The list of developers that worked on the game | Tag List |
| Publishers | The list of publishers for the game | Tag List |
| Genres | The list of genres for the game | Tag List |
| Tags | A list of tags for the game | Tag List |
Actions
This is a table-based form for defining actions for a game. Actions are the entry points to your game. For example, for Call of Duty we can specify two actions: singleplayer and multiplayer. The game has two separate executables (CoDSP.exe and CoDMP.exe respectively) for launching the game. By adding two separate actions, we can allow the user to choose either of these when launching the game from Playnite. Add two actions and populate them with the following information:
| Name | Path | Arguments | Working Directory | Primary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Call of Duty (Multiplayer) | CoDMP.exe | {InstallDir} | True | |
| Call of Duty (Singleplayer) | CoDSP.exe | {InstallDir} | True |
Multiplayer
The multiplayer panel is used to denote the types of multiplayer available for the game. This is purely additional metadata. Defining these can make it extremely useful in LAN scenarios where you can find the right game for your session's player count. Enter the following modes for Call of Duty:
| Name | Path | Arguments | Working Directory | Primary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Call of Duty (Multiplayer) | CoDMP.exe | {InstallDir} | True | |
| Call of Duty (Singleplayer) | CoDSP.exe | {InstallDir} | True |
Saves
LANCommander has the ability to store save games similar to how cloud saves work in other launchers. These saves are compressed into a ZIP file and stored into the logged in user's profile on the server after the game has been closed. They will be restored on every game launch, if accessible. Save paths can point to either the registry or a file path on disk. Enter the following save paths for Call of Duty:
| Type | Path |
|---|---|
| Registry | HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Activision\Call of Duty |
| File | {InstallDir}/Main/config_mp.cfg |
Keys
One of the biggest pains of setting up games in a LAN party (besides running through installers) is the management of CD keys. With this in mind, LANCommander has the ability to store and allocate keys without requiring the user to see or enter the key. The keys panel of the game editor is used to define and store a list of keys that will be available to your players. In the next section, Scripts, you will see an example of how we can populate the key using a Key Change Script.