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Featured Tutorial | | | How to Add Steam Games to Windows 7 Games Explorer Folder
There is already an excellent tutorial showing how to add games to Win 7's game Explorer.
Found here:
Games Explorer Folder - Add Games To
Many Steam games will automatically put shorcuts in the Game Explorer upon install, or for older ones can be done manually using the tutorial above.
Most Source games however, such as Half Life, Portal etc work slightly different.
For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be adding Portal to my Games Explorer, but it works the same for all other Source Games.
--So heres what you need to do:
--> The first thing you need to do is get the Steam ID number for your game you wish to add.
A. Getting the Steam Application ID
The simplest way to do this is:
1. Open Steam.
2. Go to the library tab and right click the game you wish to add.
3. Choose create Desktop Icon.
4. Next, right click the icon you created on your desktop and choose properties.
In the "WEB DOCUMENT" tab, you will see a URL that looks something like:
" steam://rungameid/ ????? "
For Portal, it looks like "steam://rungameid/400"
->the number itself (in this case 400) is the ID we need to keep in mind. Make a Note.<<--
B. Create A Working Shortcut for Game Explorer
Now that you have the Steam ID for your game, Browse to your Steam installation Directory.
1. Right Click on the STEAM.EXE and choose copy.
2. Next, Browse to the location of the game.
it should be [ Steam/steamapps/ <your steam acct name> / <name of game> ]
In this case I am adding Portal, so I browse to that folder.
3.Inside the games folder, right click and choose "Paste Shortcut"
(Yes, we are creating a shortcut of the Steam.EXE)
4. Next right click the steam.exe shorcut you just created.
Rename it however you choose.
(in this case I rename it Portal Shortcut)
5. After you rename, right click the steam.exe again, choose properties, and go to the shortcut tab.
6. In the section "TARGET" you will see the current location of the shortcut.
It should look like: [C:\Steam\steam.exe]
After the location, add the line (( -applaunch <ID number you got earlier>> ))
Portal had a ID # of 400. So my shortcut should be modified to look like this:
[ C:\Steam\steam.exe -applaunch 400 ]
NOTE; there is a space between the steam.exe and -applaunch
C. Adding the Game to Windows Game Explorer
--> Now, Drag and drop that shortcut (The Steam.exe shortcut we just modified) into the Windows Game Explorer.
Then follow the procedure outlined in the Add Games To Tutorial here:
Games Explorer Folder - Add Games To
Many of the Source Games may not have a listing for them. In this case, I just use the Game Definition for Half Life. After it is updated, then manually alter the information in Regedit, to match them game added, as well as create matching box art.
This should work for all Source Powered Steam Games.
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