readme.txt

Depressurizer
for v0.7.4.2

SUMMARY

	Depressurizer is a program aimed at making it a bit easier to manage large
	Steam game libraries. It can auto-categorize your games for you. Currently,
	it does so based on data from that games' Steam store pages. It can use genres,
	Steam flags (like "Single-Player" and "Steam Cloud"), Steam tags, Developer & 
	Publisher info, How Long to Beat times, year, and/or Steam review user scores.
	Auto-categorizing can be done manually or automatically via shortcut.

	In addition to providing a way to quickly and easily modify games' assigned categories,
	it also lets you mark them as Favorites or as Hidden.

	It also saves your configuration information independently of Steam,
	providing an automatic backup in the event that Steam loses your
	configuration.

REQUIREMENTS

	Depressurizer requires the .NET Framework 4.7.

	It must be run on the same computer on which you use Steam, or one one of
	the computers on which you use Steam.

USAGE GUIDE

	GETTING STARTED

		Download the latest version of Depressurizer from the project's release
		page: https://github.com/Theo47/depressurizer/releases

		The first time you run Depressurizer, it will ask you for your Steam
		directory. If it is not automatically and correctly detected, fill this
		in.

		Next, it will ask you to set up a profile. The easiest thing to do here
		is to simply select your profile from the "Select User" list and click
		OK.

		After a moment, you should see the game list fill up with all your
		games. You can now categorize them as you wish.

		When you are ready to save your changes, you MUST FIRST COMPLETELY CLOSE
		STEAM. You can this by clicking on Steam > Exit in the client, or by
		right clicking the Steam icon in your system tray and clicking Exit.

		Once Steam is closed, all you need to do is click on File > Save in
		Depressurizer. This will save your profile and, if you haven't changed
		any settings, will also automatically update your Steam config files
		with your changes. When you re-open Steam, your games should be
		organized.

		By default, Depressurizer will automatically load and update your
		profile the next time you launch the program.

	MANUAL CATEGORIZATION

		There are several ways to manually modify your games within
		Depressurizer.

		1) The Game Panel

		Changes made to the checkboxes at the bottom of the screen will
		automatically apply to ALL selected games. The checkboxes will update to
		reflect the current categories of the selected games.

		2) Drag and Drop

		If you select games in the list, and drag them to a category in the list
		on the left, you can add them to the selected category. You can drag
		them to "favorites" to set them as favorites, or to Uncategorized to
		clear their categories. 

		If you hold Ctrl when you drag items, you can remove them from the
		selected category instead of adding them.

		3) Context menu

		If you right click on the game list, there are options to add
		categories, remove categories, or alter the Favorite setting for the
		selected games.

	GAME FILTERING

		There are a few ways to filter your game list.

		You can use simple category filtering, which lets you select a category
		and view all games in that category. You can also view all games, all
		"favorited" games, or all games not assigned to any category.
		
		You can right click on any of the columns titles on the gamelist to 
		filter games based on the data displayed on the selected column.

		You can also use advanced filtering, which lets you view games based on
		combinations of categories. In order for a game to be displayed, it must
		match the criteria that you specify.
		
			ALLOWED is indicated by a green checkmark. If any categories are
			Allowed, then only games that are in at least one of these
			categories will be displayed. It's not necessary to allow categories
			all the time: if no categories are set to allowed, then the
			filtering ignores this criteria.
			
			REQUIRED is indicated by a blue circle. Only games that are in all 
			Required categories are displayed.
 
			EXCLUDED is indicated by a red X. Only games that are in no	Excluded
			categories are displayed.
 
		This advanced filtering can be useful to find games that are not
		categorized the way that you want. You can use it to find games that are
		in two categories that should be mutually exclusive by setting them both
		to Required. If you have a set of categories where all your games should
		be in at least one, you can set all of them to Excluded to find games
		that are in none of them.

		New with v.0.7.0, you can now save Filters and apply them as needed.
		Filters can now also be applied to AutoCats to greater control the
		auto-categorization process.

		Finally, you can always type into the Search box to find games with
		particular names. It will filter your current view to only games which
		have names that contain your search term.
		
	AUTOCATEGORIZATION

		Autocategorization in Depressurizer is based around different schemes
		that determine what categories to add to (or remove from) each game.
		These schemes are configurable, and are referred to as "AutoCats".

		You can auto-categorize your games by clicking the Auto-categorize button
		below the game list. This will apply any AutoCats selected in the list
		above the button, to the displayed list of games.  AutoCats are applied
		in the order listed.

		You can autocategorize all games by using the "Autocat All" item in the
		Tools menu.

		To modify, delete or create new AutoCats, click the "Edit AutoCats..."
		item in the Profile menu.  You can also double-click on any AutoCat, 
		or use the context menu.

		There are currently nine types of AutoCat:

		Genre: This type autocategorizes games based on the genres it is
		assigned in the Steam store. It has several configuration options.

			Prefix (optional): This is just a text prefix added to the beginning
			of all category names assigned by this scheme.

			Max Categories: This is the maximum number of categories that will
			be assigned to each game. If a particular game has more categories,
			they will be ignored. 0 indicates no maximum.

			Remove Existing Genre Categories: This will remove other categories
			ONLY if they could potentially be added by this scheme. If a game
			already belongs to a category that has the name of a genre, with the
			Prefix, it will be removed before new categories are added to it.
			
			Use Tags if no genres are set: Some games in the Steam store do not
			have any actual genres set, but they do generally still have tags.
			This will use those tags if no genres exist. It will only assign
			categories that match the names of Steam store genres.

			Ignored Genres: If you don't want a particular genre to be added as
			a category, select it here.

		Flags: This refers to the items on the right-hand side of the Steam
		Store pages that indicate certain features. For example, all games with
		the "Local Co-op" feature listed will be placed into a "Local Co-op"
		category.

			Prefix (optional): This is just a text prefix added to the beginning
			of all category names assigned by this scheme.

			Included Flags: Only the items selected in this list will be used.

		Tags: This refers to the user-created tags. There are many more tags
		than there are genres or flags, so there are some options here to limit
		the ones you have to deal with.

			Prefix (optional): This is just a text prefix added to the beginning
			of all category names assigned by this scheme.

			Max categories per game: This is the maximum number of categories
			that will be assigned to each game. 0 indicates no maximum.

			Included tags: These are the tags you can have added to your games
			as categories. Only the checked tags will be used. These tags are
			obtained by scanning the built-in game database. Each tag has a
			popularity score, shown in brackets after the name.  Click the ">"
			button to slide out a panel showing all selected tags.

			List options: These options affect the tags that show up in the
			list, and the order that they show up in. Click "Rebuild" to update
			the list with the new settings. These settings will not affect which
			categories are actually added to games when the autocategorization
			is performed, but they may limit the tags that you have to choose
			from. They aim to mitigate the difficulty of dealing with a huge
			list of tags.

				Minimum tag score: Any tags with a lower score than this value
				will not appear in the list. Each tag's score may depend on the
				other options in this section.

				Weighting factor: This determines how the tags' popularity
				scores are calculated. With this set to 1.0, each tag's score is
				simply the number of times the tag appears across your library.
				With higher weighting factor values, tags that appear earlier in
				games' tag list will be given higher scores. There is a detailed
				example of exactly how this works in the FAQ at the bottom of
				this readme.

				Tags per game: The number of tags to scan in per game. 0 tells
				the program to scan all tags for each game. Limiting this can
				hide some infrequently-applied tags.

				Exclude genres: Remove Steam genre names (Action, Indie,
				Strategy, etc.) from the tag list.

				Owned Only: Only scan the games that you own. Recommended. With
				this turned off, you will see all tags for every game in the
				database.
				
		Release Year

			This lets you assign categories to games based on their release
			date. You can assign categories for individual years, decades, or
			half-decades.
		
		User Score
			
			This lets you categorize games based on user recommendations on the
			Steam store.
			
			To use this method, you must create a set of categories to assign,
			and define the criteria for a game to be placed in that category.
			Each game will only be assigned to the category for the first rule
			that matches it. If a game does not match any rules, it will not be
			assigned to a category.
			
		HLTB

			This lets you categorize games based on the times from 
			http://howlongtobeat.com/ which indicate how long it takes to beat a 
			game.

			To use this method, you must create a set of categories to assign,
			and define the criteria for a game to be placed in that category.
			Each game will only be assigned to the category for the first rule
			that matches it. If a game does not match any rules, it will not be
			assigned to a category.
			
		DevPub

			Categorize games based on their Developers and/or Publishers.

		Manual

			Manual manipulation of categories.  For example, use a Filter to gather
			the subset of games in categories Pool, Football, Baseball & Golf.
			Add all of those categories to the Remove list, and then add Sports
			to the Add list.  Running the AutoCat will remove the individual sports
			categories and place them all in a generic Sports category.

		Group

			Place and order multiple AutoCats into a single AutoCat.  Any Filter
			applied to a group will take precedence over a Filter applied to an
			AutoCat.	


	AUTOMATIC MODE

			Automatic mode lets you run a predetermined set of autocat operations 
			on your game library through the command line or by running a shortcut, 
			without having to use the full Depressurizer interface. You still have 
			to use the full interface to manage the autocat rules themselves. 
			For more information check Tools->Auto Mode Helper.


	DEFINITIONS OF TERMS AND PROCEDURES

		When you UPDATE your game list, the program is updating your library of
		owned games. It will do this either by accessing local Steam config
		files or by going to your Steam Community profile site, depending on
		your settings. This does not alter any categories, it only adds games to
		your list.

		When you IMPORT from Steam, the program is loading category and other
		information from your Steam config file. This is not guaranteed to have
		entries for all your games, but it includes data for any game that is
		currently categorized, favorited, or hidden. Note that if Steam is
		running, the imported data may not be up to date. This step is also
		where your non-Steam games are loaded, if you have them enabled.

		When you SAVE, you are saving your Depressurizer profile data. By
		default, this also exports to Steam, but this can be disabled in your
		profile settings.

		When you EXPORT, you are manually pushing your data to Steam. You should
		close Steam before doing this.

FAQ / TROUBLESHOOTING

	Will this mess up my Steam / get me VAC banned?

		No. The only things that Depressurizer does is to write to your
		configuration files, and it doesn't do anything that you couldn't do
		using the client itself.

	Why does my profile need to be public?

		If you are using the local update option in the profile settings, it
		does not. If you are only using the web update, the program needs your
		profile to be public in order to access your game list.

	Why are some of my games missing, even after I updated my game list?

		It is difficult to precisely determine the exact set of games that show
		up in the Steam client. The program does the best job I've been able to
		get it to do so far. If a game is (for some reason) in your game list
		without your account having a relevant license assigned to it, the local
		update will not pick it up. If the game does not show up on your
		community profile page, the web update will not pick it up. If a game is
		marked as DLC (or anything non-game-like) in the database, it will not
		get picked up by either of these methods. 

		To get unlisted games to show up in the program, you can add them
		manually by clicking the "Add Game" button.

		You can also add them to any category within Steam, then close Steam,
		then do an Import in Depressurizer. Depending on the problem, this may
		only work if the "Bypass auto-ignore..." option in the profile options
		screen is enabled.

	Why do I have extra things like DLC in my game list?

		The program relies on its database to filter out non-game entries. If
		that database is wrong, extra items might show up. You might also have
		"Don't ignore unknown apps" in the profile settings "Ignored Games" tab
		checked, which can let in a lot of extra stuff.

		The program trusts that any game that it finds in your Steam config file
		should be there, so if something gets in there (this can easily happen
		with games that are only in your library temporarily for any reason) it
		will show up in Depressurizer after an import.

		To remove a specific item, just select it and click "Delete Game". This
		will remove it from your list and (by default) ignore it going forward.

	Why do some of my games not autocategorize at all?

		The program database might be out of date. Also, the program relies on
		the Steam Store data for autocategorization info. Sometimes, a game that
		is on your account might not HAVE a Store page any more, so the database
		won't have any data on it.

	How do I update the database myself?

		Click on Tools > Database Editor. Click "Update App Info" to pull the
		latest information from the local Steam cache file (by default this is
		done on program start anyway). Click "Fetch List" to get a list of all
		Steam apps. Then, click "Scrape Unscraped". This might take some time.
		If you click Stop (NOT CANCEL) it will save what you've gotten so far
		and you can come back later. Click File > Save to save your changes.

	What exactly does the weighting factor on the tags autocat dialog do?

		Okay. The tag scanner runs through all of your games, and for each game
		it runs through all of your tags. As it goes, it makes a list of the
		tags it finds, and for each one, it keeps track of its "popularity
		score." Each time it sees a tag, it adds a value to its popularity
		score. If the weighting factor is set to 1.0, this value is always 1, so
		the score is just the number of times the scan encountered that tag.

		However, the first tags assigned to a game are the more popular ones, so
		you might want to give them more weight by increasing the weighting
		factor. The first tag for each game will always add the weighting factor
		to that tag's popularity score, and the last tag will always add 1. The
		tags in the middle add scores that linearly decrease before those
		values. For example, if a game has five tags (A, B, C, D, E), and the
		weight factor is set to 3, the scores added to each of those five tags
		will be: 3.0, 2.5, 2.0, 1.5, 1.0.