Issue with Openplanet overlay on Steam

[pjw]

TL;DR: Openplanet functionality is dependent on which Steam titlepack shortcut is used.

Some background:
When I purchased Maniaplanet on Steam, I bought Canyon first, and then purchased the other titles later. Because of that, my Maniaplanet directory is:

Steam\steamapps\common\ManiaPlanet_TMCanyon

...even though all the titlepacks, Maniaplanet.exe, etc. are in that folder, not just Canyon.

All the titles are listed separately in my Steam library:

Trackmania2 Canyon
Trackmania2 Stadium
etc...

I'm able to access any of the titlepacks via any of the listings (they all just open up the same Maniaplanet frontend/UI). As far as I can tell, the only difference is the "hours played" tracking, which tracks all of them separately, and increases depending on which title I opened (example: several hundred hours played for Canyon, 65 for Lagoon).

The point: If I start up Trackmania 2 Canyon via Steam, the Openplanet overlay shows up, and Openplanet functions. If I start up Maniaplanet via any of the other library titles, then Openplanet doesn't function. Nothing happens. No log update, no anything.

This initially made me think Openplanet wasn't working at all, until I started Maniaplanet via the Canyon shortcut by chance, and...oh, there it is.

I'm not sure if this is something that's fixable on your end (and it's certainly not a problem to work around), but I could see it leading to a lot of confusion (like it did with me), so I thought you might want to know about it.

Edit: There could be something else going on--my install seems to be sorta broken. See here.

[Miss]

Yep, this is because Openplanet installs to the game folder, rather than somewhere globally. Each of those folders are indeed their own installations so it really depends on which one you installed it to.

I would like to support Steam fully, but it’s quite difficult as I am not able to properly detect when you install a new game from Steam. There’s no installer then that can take care of installing it automatically into that new folder. If you know what I mean.

Automatic updates also get harder if you install Openplanet into multiple folders.

[pjw]

I think you're misunderstanding me.

You said that Openplanet installs to the game folder...well, yeah.
But there's only one game folder for it to install to. Even though the titles are listed separately in the Steam library menu, all the games use the same folder structure and the same Maniaplanet.exe.

I'm assuming that Steam creates/names an initial folder based on which pack is purchased first, and then downloads and somehow flags successive packs as playable with future purchases.

But there's only one folder, and only one installation (in the sense of folder location and structure). My guess is that there are some sort of registry changes or runtime flags/switches or something that occur with successive purchases and the different start-up commands that are created.

I understand that whatever screwiness Steam is doing re: the different titles is difficult or impossible for you to detect and deal with (and that's fine--I can work around it now that I know which start-up command (Canyon) I need to use), but I wanted to make sure you understood what I was saying re: the installation, just in case you get other users who are confused or having the same problem.

It's not a matter of installing Openplanet to the right location; there's only one location. The user just has to start Maniaplanet.exe via the correct titlepack (I assume whichever one was installed first).

[Miss]

I don't know what your folder structure looks like, but each game creates a new folder in your Steamapps folder: https://steamdb.info/app/232910/config/ (take a look at the "installdir" field.)

This is the problem; there's generally no single .exe for the multiple games on Steam. Are you saying you only have 1 single folder even though you have multiple of the games installed on Steam?

It's possible to switch between titlepacks once you've launched the game of course, which is using your packs cache in order to load them, which means you can use that same exe. But launching Stadium instead of Canyon will launch a different .exe, even if you can switch back to Canyon afterwards.