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Comment by coldpie | Hacker News Reader

> My only complaints are that steam uses arbitrary numbers instead of human readable labels for emulated AppData folders.

Yeah, it's a chore. Sadly there really isn't a better option. The only option I can think of is to use the game's localizable name, but that gets pretty ugly very quickly (consider the ".HACK" series). Another option would be to re-use the game's data folder name, but that gets hairy with stuff like DLC and shared depots.

It's not really intended for users to be digging around in there, so... it is what it is.

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>> to use the game's localizable name

Please no. I am glad that steam uses only numbers. That avoids capitalization issues when moving stuff between linux and windows.

They could use a scheme like `AppID-name` where `name` is the sanitized lower-cased title, e.g. `50631-hack`. From Steam's perspective it doesn't really make any difference, it could just ignore everything after the dash, but at least it gives the human an idea of what's in there.

This was what I was going to suggest. This is what the Nix package manager does where folders are hashes of the build dependencies. In v2 they suffixed the package name and version number.

I've noticed that people tend to build systems like these using only hashes and it's only later in the project they realize it sure would be nice not to have to look this up all the time.

They could just add a open save game folder in file browser. Would solve most of the cases.

Inside of steam, you can click on a game to browse local files. It works on Linux anyway, just opens my file browser to the right place.

I agree it should be rare, though I have had to do it for stuff that I wouldn't consider to be too advanced (using mods) but it's fair to say that it's still uncommon in the grand scheme of things since most games have a decent UI for handling mods already.

I maybe need to get to a game folder... three times a year? The only time it was more than that was when a modder I really liked stopped publishing releases outside of github so you had to copy them to the right place manually.

> Inside of steam, you can click on a game to browse local files.

This gets you to the game's install directory, not to the corresponding Proton prefix which contains the Windows user profile directory with the save file.

I don't have a filebrowser. For me it'd be enough if they had the number visible and hopefully allow me to highlight it too

The ideal for me would be to keep everything pertaining to a game - the game itself, Wine prefixen, Workshop items, screenshots, etc. - in one folder for each game. Like, how hard is it to put everything for, say, Kenshi into "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Games\Kenshi" or "~/.local/share/steam/games/Kenshi" (with "compat", "workshop", and of course "game" subfolders for the Wine data, Workshop items, and game data, respectively)?

Like, even if it ain't meant for users to go rooting around in Steam's folders (yet that's a very common occurence anyway), you'd think it'd be the sanest approach for developers, too (both of Steam and its games), no?

Do games ever have the same name?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(1993_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(2016_video_game)

Yes, though Steam may go to lengths to prevent games on their platform from having the same name.

Edit: this apparently happened with Prey 2007/2016, and resulted in two games installing to the same folder.

Often. Prey is another example.

THey could just use the numbers as a suffix to a sanitized version of the name and everybody wins, but that would require them to think seriously about usability.

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