Help:Using games tab
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This help page belongs to Help category Games
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Using games tab
Overview
This document is a short guide to show how the games tab in Options works. The first part shows how to manually make Xfire detect your installed games. If your game is installed normally and you have not moved the game folder or reinstalled Windows then usually Xfire is able to automatically detect the game on your computer based on the registry keys the game installer creates. The automatic detection will fail, however, if the game has not created registry keys or you have manually moved the game folder to different place so that the registry keys point to wrong path.
Applying a game manually
To access the game manager in Xfire, open Xfire's main window and select Tools menu, and choose Options... from it. In the Options dialog, switch to Games tab.
When you first go to the tab, Xfire will show you a progress bar with Detecting Installed Games. While the progress bar goes on, Xfire tries to automatically find the games installed on your computer based on the registry keys and default install locations of the games. Once the search is completed, you will see the list of games Xfire already knows that are installed on your computer.
If the game you are trying to make Xfire detect is not listed in the Installed category, then double-click on Not Installed to expand the list of games Xfire supports but has not detected on your computer. Scroll down and find the game you want to add, the list is sorted alphabetically. Once you have found the game, click on it to make it selected. See the screen shot on right side how it should look like (the game Oblivion is only used as an example in the screen shot).
Once the game is selected, click on radio button Manual Setup to tell Xfire that you want to add the game manually. Then type in the path where the game is installed to. You can also use the Browse button to navigate to the folder. The location you type in is not always self-explanatory, there are some games that you must pay special attention to:
- Steam games
- All games run through Steam program are installed by typing in the path where Steam is installed. Typically it is C:\Program Files\Steam. Take a note that in order to add a Steam game to the list you must have launched it at least once since the last time it was updated as Steam will not create all the game files unless you play the game after it has been updated.
- Unreal powered games
- Games using Unreal engine (Unreal, Unreal Tournament, America's Army, Tactical Ops, etc.) have the game executable in system folder inside the game folder. Still, Xfire wants to have the path where the game is installed, so you do not include the system in the path. For example a valid path would be C:\Unreal technology\Unreal and an invalid path would be C:\Unreal technology\Unreal\system.
- LaunchPad games
- You need to use Browse for games using LaunchPad (Planetside, Star Wars Galaxies) by first browsing to the folder containing LaunchPad.exe (typically C:\Program Files\Sony\Station\LaunchPad) and after clicking OK browsing to the folder where you have the actual game installed to. You cannot add these games by just typing in the path, you need to use Browse button.
Note: The path typed in must not end with backslash. For example C:\Game is correct whereas C:\Game\ is incorrect path.
After you have chosen the correct installation location, click Apply and the game should move up to the Installed category, as shown in the second screen shot. If you get an error message when clicking the Apply button, then the message will tell you which files Xfire expects to find and it couldn't find. Use some sense there to think what could be wrong with the path you gave. If you can't figure out the error message, then ask it in Technical Support forums and tell there the problem and the exact error message you get.
Making Xfire ignore a game
If Xfire detects a game but you want it not to detect it for some reason, then you can also make Xfire to ignore the game so you will not be shown playing the game, you will not be able to use In-Game messaging and your playing hours are not recorded.
To do this, simply open the games tab as described in the Applying a game manually section, select the game in Installed section and select Never Detect radio button. Then press Apply and the game will go back to Not Installed category and will stay there unless you select Automatically Detect or Manual Setup again for the game in question.
Advanced options
You can assign some advanced options for each game Xfire supports. The advanced options can be set below the installation path selection area. On the right side you can see a sample of what you can do with the options.
The options are:
- Extra Command Line Parameters
- These are the command line parameters Xfire will send to the game executable every time you launch it from Xfire or one-click join to that game. In the example I have used a parameter +cl_restrict_server_commands 0 to be sent to the game.
- Disable Xfire In-Game
- Selecting this option will disable Xfire In-Game system completely for the selected game (other games are unaffected) so that you will not be able to receive messages in game and are unable to take screen shots using Xfire. This option is mainly provided for troubleshooting game crashes caused by Xfire's In-Game hooking. This can also be used for personal preference.
- Disable Kill/Death tracking
- This option is available only for the game for which this feature is supported for. Selecting this option will disable the advanced stats tracking for the selected game so you will not gain statistics of kills and deaths to your profile page. This is mainly provided for troubleshooting game crashes caused by Xfire's method of acquiring the stats. This can also be used for personal preference.
- In-Game Renderer
- Some games support more than one rendering mode in which Xfire In-Game works. With this drop-down box you can change the rendering mode used for the game in case you are not using the default rendering mode but Xfire supports the other mode you use. This option is only available on games that can be played on multiple rendering modes in which Xfire In-Game has been seen to work.
Notes
These are more of technical notes about the games tab:
- The Xfire_games.ini and dev_games.ini files are reloaded when accessing the Games tab, before the Detecting Installed Games progress starts.
