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VGStash - meaningful game collection tracker

VGStash is a video game collection tracker that gives the user a number of fields to track their games with, including ownership, progress, and notes. It also comes with a set of filters that give users the ability to make meaningful inquiries to their collection.

For the nerds, VGStash is written in Python 3 and is mostly powered by SQLite via internal VIEWs. It's available under the AGPL-3.0-only license.

Installation

There is a VGStash PyPI page, and it is available via pip:

pip install [--user] vgstash

If you are a developer, the source can be cloned via Git:

git clone https://git.zlg.space/vgstash
# or, if the above isn't online...
git clone https://notabug.org/zlg/vgstash

Concept

The core data structure of VGStash is the Game. Every Game in a player's collection has a few important attributes, all of which are obvious to the player:

  • Title
  • System
  • Ownership – in what form do you possess it?
  • Progress – how far are you in it?

Think of any game that you have a history with. Let's say it was a game you bought as part of a Humble Bundle, but haven't started playing yet. Internally, VGStash tracks it somewhat like this:

.--------------------------------------------------------.
| Title                  | System | Ownership | Progress |
|------------------------+--------+-----------+----------|
| FTL: Faster Than Light | Steam  | digital   | new      |
'--------------------------------------------------------'

This is the bare minimum information you need to meaningfully track a video game in your collection. With it, you can begin to ask and answer questions you may have about your collection.

Python Usage

Importing the vgstash module is enough to get started!

Here's a basic script that imports VGStash, initializes a database, records a single game, and lists its contents:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# a minimalist vgstash client
import vgstash

# Create a DB in RAM, just for fun.
mydb = vgstash.DB(path=":memory:")

# Make sure our database schema is in place.
mydb.create_schema()

# Define and add our game. Note that you can reference the internal numbers via
# pre-defined dictionaries. Use the integers directly at your own risk!
mygame = vgstash.Game("Golden Sun", "GBA", vgstash.OWNERSHIP["physical"], vgstash.PROGRESS["beaten"])
mydb.add_game(mygame)

# list out the games we have! vgstash.list_games returns an iterable, so for
# best results you'll want to output in a loop of some sort.
for game in mydb.list_games():
    print(game['title'], "for", game['system'])

If the output from the above is Golden Sun for GBA, everything works and you're ready to start hacking a game collection into your code!

Command Line Usage

VGStash comes with a command line client of the same name, which gives you high level commands to manipulate the database with.

If you wanted to add the example game from earlier to your collection, you'd do it like this:

$ vgstash add 'FTL: Faster Than Light' Steam d n "Bought-From: Humble Bundle\n\nThis game is cool."
Added FTL: Faster Than Light for Steam. You digitally own it and you have not
started it. It also has notes.

Pretty easy, huh? Each title and system added to VGStash is free-form and can be tuned to match the user's preferences. This allows one to specify between different platforms within another platform, such as Steam or Origin instead of just PC. Some may want to differentiate Virtual Console games from regular games on those systems. In either case, both are text fields.

In the above command, the digital ownership was abbreviated to just d, and the new progress was shortened to n. This is allowed when specifying values for these fields! It cuts down on typos and excessive repetition. Consideration is made for any new values in these fields, so each option should start with a different letter and abbreviations should be forward-compatible.

It looks like we added notes to that game, too...?

$ vgstash notes 'FTL: Faster Than Light' Steam
Notes for FTL: Faster Than Light on Steam:

Bought-From: Humble Bundle

This game is cool.

Nice!

Commands

VGStash has a fairly small set of commands. For each command's description, arguments in brackets are optional

add

add TITLE SYSTEM [OWNERSHIP] [PROGRESS] [NOTES]

Adds a game to the database.

OWNERSHIP may be one of: physical, digital, both, member

PROGRESS may be one of: unbeatable, new, playing, beaten, complete

NOTES should be a fully-quoted string, with newlines escaped

Adding a game is trickier than it seems; the OWNERSHIP and PROGRESS fields are important to get right if you want the game tracked correctly. Here are some game archetypes:

  • Normal releases can be physical, digital, or both, and any progress
  • Collections can be physical, digital, or both, but must be unbeatable
  • Members of a collection should be stored under the original release system, with an ownership of 'member', and tracked progress where applicable

In short, don't count a collection as part of your progress! Add the individual games in that collection, then mark the collection game as unbeatable.

Internally, members do not get listed for ownership filters, because the collection is the item the user owns. Here's an example straight from ZLG's VGStash:

Title                                |  System  | Own | Progress
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Mega Man ZX                          |    DS    |  M  |       C
Mega Man ZX Advent                   |    DS    |  M  |       C
Mega Man Zero                        |   GBA    |  M  |       C
Mega Man Zero 2                      |   GBA    |  M  |       C
Mega Man Zero 3                      |   GBA    |  M  |       C
Mega Man Zero 4                      |   GBA    |  M  |       C
Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection   |  Switch  | P   |

As seen above, the collection game is marked physical, but all of its members are marked member, and are listed under the release that's made available on the collection. This is the correct representation of a collection and its members.

delete

delete TITLE SYSTEM

Removes a game from the database.

export

export [-f FORMAT] [PATH]

Exports the entire VGStash database to PATH in FORMAT format. FORMAT may be either YAML or JSON. If FORMAT is omitted, it defaults to YAML. If PATH is omitted, it will write to standard output (stdout).

import

import [-f FORMAT] [-u] [PATH]

Imports games from PATH in FORMAT format, optionally updating games that already exist in the database. If PATH is omitted, it will read from standard input (stdin).

list

list [FILTER] [-w WIDTH] [-r]

List games in the database, optionally using a FILTER or restricting the output to WIDTH characters. Optionally set raw mode, outputting each row as pipe-delimited lines instead of a table.

Most of VGStash's power is in the list command. It comes with a set of default filters that allow you to reason about your game collection. For example, this command will show you every game marked "playing" that you also own in some way:

$ vgstash list -w 40 playlog
Title       |  System  | Own | Progress
----------------------------------------
Crashmo     |   3DS    |   D |   P
Ever Oasis  |   3DS    | P   |   P
Fire Emblem |   3DS    | P   |   P
Monster Hun |   3DS    |   D |   P
Box Pusher  |   DSi    |   D |   P
Glow Artisa |   DSi    |   D |   P
Dark Souls  |   PS3    | P   |   P

The list command is where you can best ask probing questions about your collection, which can help you manage inventory, track how long a game has been in your collection unbeaten, how many versions of a game you own, how many games you've beaten, and so on. Here's how!

How many games have I beaten?

This one's easy! First, ask yourself if you want to target just the beaten ones, or any that've been beaten or completed! Let's assume you want both beaten and completed:

$ vgstash list done

"Done" is a filter name that targets all games in your collection that are marked 'beaten' or 'completed'.

Counting this list needs a little massaging. VGStash outputs a 2-line header for its tables, so we need the raw (-r) flag and pass it to a line counter:

$ vgstash list -r done | wc -l

Awesome! Mine says 378. How many have you beaten?

Which games do I own?

VGStash has a few filters for this:

  • physical tracks games whose ownership is marked physical
  • digital tracks games whose ownership is marked digital
  • owned tracks games marked physical, digital, or both

So, let's say you're adding your digital games to your collection and you want to double check everything's good. Easy!

$ vgstash list digital

There are also extra ownership filters:

  • members tracks games marked as being a member of a collection
  • unowned tracks games you've added that you don't own (usually because you've beaten or completed them)

Which games need to be beaten or completed?

VGStash has filters for this, too:

  • playlog tracks games whose progress is marked playing, that you own
  • backlog tracks games whose progress is playing or new, that you own
  • incomplete tracks games whose progress is beaten, but not completed
  • complete tracks games whose progress is marked completed

Check vgstash list --help for more.

notes

notes [-e] TITLE SYSTEM

Read (or edit, with the -e flag) notes for TITLE on SYSTEM.

update

update TITLE SYSTEM FIELD VALUE

Update the FIELD with VALUE for TITLE on SYSTEM.

If you beat a game, for example:

$ vgstash update 'Super Mario Bros.' NES progress b

Quoting Game Titles

A note on characters: some shells treat certain characters differently. The most common ones you'll run into are punctuation, like single quotes ('), double quotes (") and exclamation points (!). You'll need to search your shell's manual for "character escaping" to get the details.

Let's take a few game titles that might be problematic for a shell, and add them to VGStash. These examples assume you're using bash (the Bourne Again SHell) or something comparable.

First: a title with single quotes and exclamation points:

$ vgstash add "Eek! It's a Bomb!" Android d n

Double quotes are useful for quoting just about any game title.

Next is a little more insidious: a title with two (or more) exclamation points:

$ vgstash add 'Mario Kart: Double Dash!!' GCN p n

Note that we're using single quotes; if we used double quotes, then the !! would expand to the last command entered into the shell, creating Mario Kart: Double Dash<your last command here>. Quite different from what you'd expect!

But what if we, somehow, had both single quotes and sequential exclamation points? Single-quoted strings cannot escape a single quote character. Double quotes won't stop the !! expansion. Escaping the exclamation points retains the backslash; what is one to do? There are a few ways to tackle this one:

# The easy way
$ vgstash add $'Some title\'s crazy!!' PC d n

# The hard way
$ vgstash add Some\ title\'s\ crazy\!\! PC d n

# The exotic way
$ vgstash add "Some title"\''s crazy!!' PC d n

The $'text' form is handy when you need to use double and/or single quotes alongside exclamation points, or you can just escape every special character (including space) as needed.

The "exotic" one takes advantage of the shell's built-in string concatenation and the ability to mix quoting styles. First we have Some title in double quotes; then an escaped single quote for literal output; then s crazy!! in single quotes to avoid the !! expansion.

The last option is to disable the feature (history expansion) altogether, though you'll miss out on nice stuff like sudo !!. In bash, it's disabled with set +H or set +o histexpand. Change + to - to turn it back on when you're done.

These tips may not work in all shells, so try using echo to print the title you want before trying to add it in VGStash! If you accidentally add a game this way, copy the title that's output in the success message and paste it into your delete command:

# Let's say I used 'ls' last
$ vgstash add "my game!!" PC d n
Added my gamels for PC. You own it digitally and it's new.
$ vgstash delete "my gamels" PC
Removed my gamels for PC from your collection.

That's it! This is something that the shell does before VGStash begins processing its arguments, so please don't report any bugs dealing with quoting.

Roadmap

These are planned for the full 0.3 release:

  • command line interface finished
  • Match feature-set with master

Goals planned for the 0.4 release:

  • import and export with JSON
  • Iron out any initial bugs on Windows and Mac (testers welcome!)

Goals planned for the 0.5 release:

  • some sort of GUI (Tk and Qt are current candidates)

Goals planned for the 1.0 release:

  • Kivy-based interface (to release on Android via F-Droid)

Contributing

If this interests you, please e-mail me.

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