Playnite: Add in-game overlay

[PopeRigby]

To have an overlay in a non-Steam (or another launcher with an overlay) game, you have to add every single game as a shortcut to get the overlay. This makes it frustrating for people who want an overlay in every game, but don't want to fiddle with another launcher's overlay. So a built-in Playnite overlay with the time, a web browser and #1264 integrated would be super useful.

[PopeRigby]

I think using Firefox (or a version of it) would be a good idea for the browser. Gecko is very fast.

[kvdrrrrr]

@PopeRigby Playnite already uses CefSharp, why introduce GeckoFX as second dependency for the same tasks? Also, CefSharp claims to have superior performance.

[PopeRigby]

Why help the Chromium monopoly? Also, you could probably used a very stripped down version of Gecko for better performance?

[JosefNemec]

CefSharp is by far more mature project with superior WPF integration (at least it was when I was integrating it into Playnite), which is critical for Playnite.

Overall don't expect in-game overlay any time soon since it's quite complex feature and I don't have necessary OpenGL, DirectX and Vulkan knowledge to implement it reliably and efficiently (and currently I don't have enough time learn it, although I would like to). Somebody else would have to do it.

[kvdrrrrr]

@PopeRigby That's opinionated. I'm not necessarily saying that CefSharp is faster than GeckoFX. It would just take a tremendous amount of work to use it, because Playnite already uses CefSharp. If anything, this should be made a seperate issue, since it's not much related with in-game overlays.

[PopeRigby]

I'll admit I don't know much about web rendering engines. I was suggesting Gecko because it seems to be very fast and Chromium has a monopoly on the engine market.

[trymeouteh]

If you do go down the Chromium path, please use ungoogled-chromium since it removes the tracking and all the google spyware

[darklinkpower]

The best way to go for this in my opinion would be to implement a way to use the steam overlay for all games in a similar approach to this https://forums.launchbox-app.com/topic/43142-steamlauncher/

Mantaining, bug fixing and developing for all the different Graphics APIs would be a nightmare, why not just use something that already exists and is developed by another party and has all the features people want? An exclusive Overlay, while a good idea, would be a waste of resources considering Crow is almost the sole developer of Playnite.

[JosefNemec]

Launching all games via Steam would come with some serious disadvantages (mainly in terms of play time tracking). I also don't like an idea of some Playnite feature being directly tied to another launcher (unless it's a game import).

[PopeRigby]

I also don't like an idea of some Playnite feature being directly tied to another launcher (unless it's a game import).

Yeah. Also, Steam's overlay isn't that good. An open source overlay would be better. How difficult would this be to develop? I'm working on learning some Python and I could take a crack at it at one point.

[darklinkpower]

Yeah I agree, an exclusive overlay would be the best option. I was just thinking that developing a new one from scratch would be fairly difficult, maybe you would need a dedicated developer focused exclusively at least for a while in the overlay and with enough knowledge of Graphics API to make one and mantaining it. I mean, games can run in vulkan, the different DirectX versions, OpenGL and that means a whole lot of issues. I don't know anything about coding but that's just my guess.

[kvdrrrrr]

@darklinkpower It might be worth to take a look at existing projects which already utilize multiple Graphics API hooking.

ImGUI contains a bunch of examples, excluding the actual hooking

ReShade's code contains pretty much everything what's needed

I'm not exactly sure how would hooking work in a managed process. Would a library such as EasyHook be enough to accomplish this or it would be needed to implement a native helper binary?

[PopeRigby]

Mumble has an open source overlay. I haven't ever taken a look at it, but could it be used for reference?

[gagrecco]

It would be cool to have the ability to close the game when you launch the overlay. Also have the ability to load/save state