OmLx Atlas
A desktop game library designed to bring games from multiple fragmented PC platforms into one unified, console-style interface.
THE IDEA
PC gaming is fractured across half a dozen separate store launchers: Steam, Epic Games, Xbox / Game Pass, EA App, Ubisoft Connect, and GOG Galaxy. Launching or discovering your own purchased titles requires juggling multiple heavy background clients, each consuming memory and running telemetry.
oLmZ wanted a clean, lightweight personal command center with a cinematic TV/console interface that automatically detects every installed game on local drives without manual configuration or tedious folder hunting.
WHAT I BUILT
Built an Electron desktop application featuring an asynchronous multi-platform game scanner (gameScanner.js), local JSON/SQLite persistence (database.js), Discord Rich Presence integration, and an automated box art scraping pipeline fetching high-resolution covers from the IGDB API.
Key capabilities include:
- Universal Game Detection: Multi-threaded background crawlers inspecting Steam manifests, Epic manifests, Xbox UWP manifests, EA App, Ubisoft Connect, and GOG directories.
- Cinematic Console Grid: High-density game tiles with custom favoriting, category tagging, and search.
- Playtime Tracker & Statistics: Tracking active runtime sessions and computing total playtime per title.
- One-Click Launcher: Direct execution via platform protocol handlers or direct binary hooks without opening launcher bloat.
TECHNOLOGY
THE HARD PART
Parsing diverse launcher manifests and Windows registry entries reliably across disparate drive partitions and permission levels. In particular:
- Xbox Game Pass stores installations in encrypted WindowsApps containers with restricted Access Control Lists (ACLs).
- Steam uses a custom Valve KeyValue format (
appmanifest_*.acf) spread across arbitrary library folders defined inlibraryfolders.vdf. - EA and Ubisoft store state in encrypted XML and binary registry keys rather than simple JSON.
- Running heavy filesystem crawls during initial boot threatened to freeze Electron's UI thread.
HOW I SOLVED IT
Decoupled filesystem scanning entirely into asynchronous background worker processes. Developed custom parser routines for Valve's VDF format and query helpers for Windows registry keys (reg query). Built an incremental scanning cache that only re-indexes modified manifest timestamps, reducing secondary startup times from seconds to sub-50 milliseconds.
RESULT
OmLx Atlas v1.2.2 is actively running in production on local desktop with 78+ recognized titles, instant category filtering, real-time Discord presence showing currently played games, and zero UI stuttering.
WHAT'S NEXT
Currently developing the Save Game Sentinel roadmap: an automated daemon that monitors local game save folders (AppData/Local, Documents/My Games) and backs up versioned snapshots to cloud storage for legacy DRM-free games.
MEDIA
