Vista Game Explorer - urgent help needed

[ggambett]

We're trying to get our game to register itself with Vista's game explorer, but we're failing miserably. We're using NSIS and a 3rd-party plugin downloaded from that page.

Everything seems to work OK except registering the game - it doesn't show up in the Game Explorer. No error messages. At this point anything is possible, from an incomplete GDF XML to a failure to embed it correctly in the EXE. The documentation and examples are terrible.

Any ideas? Suggestions? A working example we can modify?

[Dan MacDonald]

I thought you had to have an ESRB rating to show up in the game explorer. Now I have no practical experience, so my perspective is suspect. However I was pretty sure you couldn't just have your game show up in the game explorer without jumping a number of hoops with microsoft, one of those being an ESRB rating...

[Pallav Nawani]

There is also a Nsh script on the NSIS website to do the same thing:
http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Game_explorer
If the dll plugin does not work, you could try that.

You don't need to have an ESRB rating to show up in game explorer. Your game will simply show up as unrated.

Microsoft has a tool to generate GDF files, but I suspect you are already using that. That tool allows you to input an ESRB rating, but the rating will not be believed unless you have a signed executable.
Here is a link to the tool anyways:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb173435.aspx

[bvanevery]

You don't need to have an ESRB rating to show up in game explorer. Your game will simply show up as unrated.

Ok, and now I recall Alex St. John's beef with that. Parents are going to turn on the ratings blocker and kids won't see the game, even when it's a harmless game. So now the indie has an added burden of time and expense to secure an ESRB rating, if they want to avoid that problem. On the other hand, shortcuts on the desktop, the quick launch bar, and in the All Programs menu still work, so it remains to be seen how much this special Vista Games folder matters in practice.

I've also wondered, if the player installs zillions of games to the Games folder, if it's going to become cumbersome and difficult to differentiate people's products. My Mom has probably 30+ casual games in her All Programs menu on Windows XP. When I go to click on a program, the menus fill up the entire screen. In Windows 2000 I used to only see the menus I'd actually used recently. Was that discontinued in XP and Vista as too confusing? Was it some power tool I installed a long time ago and forgot about?

[James C. Smith]

I thought you had to have an ESRB rating to show up in the game explorer.

That is a common misconception. Every time you say things like that you let Alex St. John win. It’s amazing how well his hype works on people who are otherwise rational.

[ChrisP]

In Windows 2000 I used to only see the menus I'd actually used recently. Was that discontinued in XP and Vista as too confusing? Was it some power tool I installed a long time ago and forgot about?

It's called Personalized Menus. There's an option in the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog to turn it on/off.

[bvanevery]

I don't see any such option in Vista. I'm looking at Taskbar and Start Menu Properties.. Start Menu.. Customize..

[ChrisP]

Ah. Well, maybe they did remove it at some point. I've been keeping away from Vista as much as possible, to be honest. I'm told my game works on it, and that's all I care about.

[ilya2]

I don't see any such option in Vista. I'm looking at Taskbar and Start Menu Properties.. Start Menu.. Customize..

I think you need to be able to use the Windows Classic start menu to be able to use it, not sure if that's in Vista. It's not present in the XP menu's customize settings on XP.

For XP, Right Click on the Taskbar -> Properties -> Start Menu -> Select Classic Start Menu -> Customize... -> Scroll down to the bottom of the list. It's on by default on my settings.