---

🎬 Demo Video

A quick guided tour of GameIndex — the launcher, unified library, game pages, and more:

▶️ Watch the presentation on YouTube

---

📑 Table of Contents

• ✨ Features
• 🐧 Linux, Wine & Proton
• 📸 Screenshots
• 🎬 Demo Video
• 💡 Inspiration
• 🛠️ Tech Stack
• 🚀 Getting Started
• 📁 Project Structure
• 🗺️ Roadmap
• 📌 Status
• 🤝 Contributing
• ⚖️ Disclaimer
• 📄 License
• 🙏 Acknowledgments

---

✨ Features

🚧 Planned / in progress: per-game performance profiles and user tags · community theme browser · broader plugin hooks and marketplace.

---

🐧 Linux, Wine & Proton

GameIndex is built for Linux gaming, not ported to it. The compatibility layer is configurable globally and per game, with no external helper scripts required:

• Runners — detect Steam/System Wine, CachyOS, Lutris, Heroic and community builds; download GE-Proton, CachyOS, Proton-EM, Wine-GE, Kron4ek and Soda releases in-app; install local archives; uninstall what GameIndex manages.
• Prefixes — shared default prefix or one per game, compatdata reuse for Steam titles, prefix inspection (arch, validity, version, size, linked games), clone/reset/delete, Wine tools and one-click winetricks packages.
• Launch pipeline — [gamescope] [gamemoderun] [mangohud] [umu-run | runner] game.exe, with DXVK/VKD3D, esync/fsync/ntsync, Wayland, WoW64, large-address-aware, DLL overrides, per-game env vars and exclusion lists.
• Display & performance — Gamescope (FSR/NIS, HDR, VRR, resolution/FPS/refresh controls), MangoHud logging, GameMode, PRIME/GPU pinning and FPS readback into Activity.
• Steam integration — reversible Wine/Proton launch-option merging in localconfig.vdf (skipped while Steam runs, one-time backup), Steam launch routes and the native launch-options picker.
• Logs & diagnostics — per-game Wine/Proton logs with a live viewer, Linux system diagnostics, anti-cheat runtime installs and runner maintenance.
• Packaging — AppImage and .deb builds with matching in-app updates.

📖 Read the full feature guide: docs/linux-wine-proton.md

---

📸 Screenshots

_{Dark-first UI, captured on Windows and Linux at 1920×1080. The same interface adapts to light mode and desktop use.}

🏠 Library

🎮 Game Page

🛒 Store

📰 News

💰 Deals

📊 Stats

🎯 Activity

👥 Friends

🧩 Mods & 🕹️ Emulators

📥 Downloads

💾 Storage

🏆 Achievements & 💜 Wishlist

📝 Game Notes

🐧 Linux & Steam Deck — Proton / Wine

_{The global Proton/Wine settings, per-game compatibility overrides, and the live Wine/Proton log viewer. Full walkthrough in the Linux, Wine & Proton feature guide.}

📁 Full sets live in Screenshots/ — including Game page (13), Linux & Proton/Wine (15), Activity (10), Friends (9), Stats (8), Deals (4), and Notes (3) shots.

---

💡 Inspiration

GameIndex is built with — not just inspired by — excellent projects in the launcher space:

• Hydra Launcher — the clean, modern approach to game distribution.
• Playnite — the extensible, library-aggregation philosophy and customization depth.
• LaunchBox — rich metadata, media, and emulation-focused cataloging.
• Steam + GOG Galaxy — unified-library UX patterns.

We borrow the best ideas from each and aim to combine them into a single, lightweight native app.

---

🛠️ Tech Stack

---

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js (≥ 18) + npm
• Rust (stable toolchain)
• Platform deps: see Tauri prerequisites

Development

npm install
npm run tauri dev      # launches the native window with hot reload

Frontend-only iteration (no native shell):

npm run dev            # Vite at http://localhost:1420

Build

npm run tauri build    # tsc + vite build + native bundles

❄️ Nix & NixOS

If you use Nix or NixOS, a flake.nix is included providing all Tauri v2 runtime libraries (WebKitGTK 4.1, GTK3, D-Bus, Clang for bindgen) and toolchains:

# Enter the isolated development shell
nix develop

# Or with direnv:
direnv allow

Inside the shell, run the standard npm install and npm run tauri dev.

🔎 VirusTotal scans

Independent antivirus scans of the latest release artifacts:

• Standalone binary: virus total
• Installer: virus total

Why does VirusTotal flag GameIndex? The detections you may see (e.g. Trapmine's Malicious.moderate.ml.score or Acronis's Static ML) are machine-learning heuristics, not malware signatures — there is no malicious behavior being matched. GameIndex is a Tauri (Rust) app, and Rust-compiled binaries are routinely flagged for these characteristics:

• Unsigned binaries. Release builds are not code-signed, so antivirus engines have no publisher identity to anchor on and treat the file as an "unknown new binary."
• Rust binary traits. Static Rust executables have high entropy and an import table atypical of native apps — a classic ML trigger.
• Self-contained packaging. The standalone/portable build embeds its WebView2 bootstrap, which heuristic engines find suspicious.

This is a known false-positive pattern affecting many legitimate Tauri and Rust projects. Nothing in the source code matches malware behavior — it's fully open source, so you can verify the code yourself and build from source (npm run tauri build). The files are intentionally unsigned because code-signing certificates cost money; the ML flags typically disappear once a release is signed.

Typecheck

npx tsc --noEmit

---

📁 Project Structure

.
├── src/                 React + TypeScript frontend
│   ├── pages/           Top-level route components (Home, Library, Store, Deals,
│   │                   News, Wishlist, Emulators, Mods, Activity, Achievements,
│   │                   Storage, Downloads, Community, Friends, Settings, Docs)
│   ├── components/      Feature-scoped UI (game/, library/, store/, downloads/,
│   │                   news/, activity/, reviews/, sidebar/, charts/, bigscreen/, ui/)
│   ├── context/         Cross-cutting providers (Game, Activity, Theme, Language, ...)
│   ├── hooks/           Reusable stateful helpers
│   ├── types/           Mirrors of Rust serde models
│   └── styles/          Themed CSS
└── src-tauri/           Rust backend
    ├── src/             Tauri commands, DB DAOs, integrations
    │   ├── steam|gog|epic|rockstar|uplay|humble/   Per-store sync + auth
    │   ├── downloads/        Concurrent direct, debrid, torrent & browser-resolver downloads
    │   ├── compatibility.rs  Proton/Wine runners, prefixes, GameScope, GPU pinning
    │   ├── db/               Per-domain SQLite pools + schema (incl. compatibility.db)
    │   └── ...
    └── tauri.conf.json  Frameless window + bundle config

For deeper architectural notes and conventions, see knowledge.md.

---

🗺️ Roadmap

Track progress, ideas, and priorities in todo.md. Highlights:

• ✅ Steam, GOG, Epic, Rockstar, Ubisoft, Humble library sync
• ✅ Steam achievements, HowLongToBeat, Crackwatch, live + historical player counts
• ✅ Activity dashboard with FPS + frametime charts
• ✅ Downloads engine rewrite (concurrent downloads, seeding, direct/debrid/torrent sources, browser resolver)
• ✅ Storage manager + emulator & mod footprint breakdown
• ✅ News page with RSS feeds
• ✅ IGDB-powered storefront (search, filters, rails, price badges, comparisons)
• ✅ Community & Friends social layer
• ✅ Big Picture Mode (controller-first 10-foot UI with rail navigation)
• ✅ Emulators manager & ROM library tools
• ✅ Mod manager (Steam Workshop & Nexus Mods integration)
• ✅ Discord Rich Presence (playing + browsing presence, dynamic poster, launcher toggle)
• ✅ Internationalization (i18n) & language switcher
• ✅ Privacy & Data management in Settings
• ✅ Theme gallery + custom accent picker
• ✅ Steam reviews & multi-source ratings
• ✅ Sandboxed plugin system for search/download sources
• ✅ Deals hub — real-time store deals, Xbox Game Pass catalog, giveaways, and playtester listings
• ✅ Multi-source Achievements dashboard with analytics
• ✅ Wishlist tab with release countdowns and notes
• ✅ Backup & restore with merge/replace NDJSON modes (incl. compatibility profiles)
• ✅ Command palette, adaptive game-art theming, and now-playing HUD
• ✅ Linux + Steam Deck support — Proton/Wine runner manager, shared prefixes, DXVK/VKD3D, MangoHud/GameMode/GameScope, GPU pinning, Wine logs, system diagnostics (full guide)
• ✅ Per-game environment variables & compatibility profiles
• ✅ Per-game GPU selection, controller support, and anti-cheat runtime installs
• ✅ Store side-by-side compare mode
• ✅ Game version detection & newer-release badges
• ✅ Game notes workspace — Markdown notes, templates, tags, search & export
• ✅ Theme creator with live preview, presets and JSON import/export
• ✅ Release history + per-install update channels (NSIS, AppImage, .deb, portable)
• ✅ Right-click context menus across library, downloads, store, mods, news, emulators and storage
• ✅ Native Linux emulator installs (AppImage/tarball) & Flatpak/Snap discovery
• ✅ Standalone always-on-top launch splash window that survives minimize-on-launch
• ✅ Reorderable nav tabs, collapsible icon-rail sidebar & handheld/Deck layout pass
• ✅ Animated Big Picture backdrops, focus memory & fluid rail navigation
• 🚧 Per-game performance profiles and user tags
• 🚧 Theme creator shipped; community theme browser planned
• ⏳ Broader plugin hooks and marketplace

---

📌 Status

🛠️ Personal project, vibe-coded — built in my free time as a learning exercise and a love-letter to PC gaming. Expect rough edges, breaking changes, and rapid iteration. Contributions and ideas are welcome.

---

🤝 Contributing

1. Read the conventions in knowledge.md (theme tokens, routing, schema migrations, etc.).
2. Fork the repo and create a feature branch.
3. Keep PRs focused and documented.
4. Run npx tsc --noEmit and cargo check before submitting.

Please open an issue before starting large changes so we can discuss direction.

---

⚖️ Disclaimer

• If you like a game, support its developers — buy it from official stores (Steam, GOG, Epic, etc.) where the money actually reaches the people who made it.

We believe in the open-source community, the games we love, and the developers who make them. Please use GameIndex responsibly and in accordance with the laws of your country.

---

📄 License

GameIndex is released under the MIT License — free to use, modify, and distribute, including for contributing back to the project. Attribution appreciated.

See the full text in the LICENSE file.

---

🙏 Acknowledgments

• The Tauri, React, and Rust communities for the excellent tooling.
• IGDB, HowLongToBeat, Steam, GOG, Epic, and IsThereAnyDeal for the data.
• Hydra Launcher, Playnite, and LaunchBox for the inspiration.