v0.1.12 Alpha 1

Hey there! It's been a little while 😅

If you're on the discord, you may have seen a quick update I sent a few weeks ago about a complete rewrite of the app. If you're not on the discord, here's the TLDR:

The current codebase is very buggy and is super frustrating/difficult to work with. Because of this, I (@Shock9616) am completely rewriting the app from scratch to hopefully be easier to work with in the future.

This rewrite will eventually become release 0.1.12, but it's still a fair ways off from being feature-complete compared to v0.1.11. As of today though it is technically usable, so I've decided to upload a build so that if you want to give it a try and give me feedback, you can!

Feature-wise, this build is basically the equivalent of the very first alpha build from 3 years ago, but with a much nicer coat of paint. That being said, there are a couple new things about this release:

• This is the first release that supports the new Liquid Glass design language in macOS Tahoe! (Don't worry if you haven't updated yet though, I've tried to keep it looking good on older versions as well 🙂)

• I've also taken the opportunity to completely rework how games are launched:

  • I've moved to hard-coding the launch commands for each platform rather than forcing users to deal with terminal commands. This means that now you can just select the app/rom/etc. for your game and as long as you've selected the right platform it should just work! This is very strict right now (i.e. if your emulator isn't installed in /Applications then it won't work) but I plan to improve this in the future. I have still included the option to set your own custom command (under the "Advanced" dropdown at the bottom of the add/edit game page) so you can still use the app if you don't have the exact emulator you need in the exact location (or if you want to use a non-supported platform)

  • Another benefit of this approach is that I've been able to implement another feature that has come up a few times: being able to kill a game from Phoenix! This should work with all games except for steam games because of how Steam's custom URL scheme works. It's too bad, but I'm really glad that I've been able to get it working for everything else!

I totally get it if this build isn't in a usable state right now because of the lack of automation, but if you're interested in trying it out, I'd really appreciate feedback if you find any bugs or have suggestions! The best way to reach me is definitely our discord server, but I'll be keeping an eye on issues here on github as well!

One final note is that until the rewrite is finished and I'm ready to release v0.1.12, all code changes will be happening only in the rewrite branch on my personal fork, so that is the place to look for the most up-to-date code until the final release of v0.1.12, not here on the main repository.

I hope everyone is doing well and enjoys this release!

Happy Gaming!

Release 0.1.11

Hey everyone! Time for another update!

Firstly, with this release we have updated the app icon and branding on GitHub! Since the beginning we've been using an AI generated icon which we really liked, but we wanted to clean up some of the AI artifacts and make it look a bit nicer, so @Shock9616 (me) redid the icon manually!

We hope you like this new version of the icon as much as we do!

Besides the new icon, this update contains a few bugfixes. Changes by @jmshgs include:

• Fixed a bug where users without any games in their library would be unable to add any because the "Save Game" button was missing (Discord thread)
• Fixed an issue where the star rating wouldn't be saved when changed (#177)
• Fixed an issue where the star ratings would appear to change for each game as they were clicked through (#178)

There is one more bug that we are aware of, but are still figuring out how best to address it. If you are still on macOS Sonoma, you may encounter the issue in #176 where you'll see "Multiple games selected" when you did not in fact select multiple games. This issue seems to have fixed itself on macOS Sequoia, giving us cause to think that it may have been an issue with macOS itself, making this a much more difficult bug to fix. We'll be looking into what we can do to fix it, but it will likely take a while and we wanted to get these other changes out ASAP, so if you're still on Sonoma, please bear with us while we figure out how to address this issue 🙂

That's it for now! As always, we hope you enjoy this update! Happy gaming!

Release 0.1.10

WARNING: This update is bugged and won't let you add games. Please use v0.1.9 and update once you've added at least one game

Hey everyone! Time for a new update!

Changes from @jxhug in this update include:

• Rougher game searching. This means that Phoenix is more likely to find metadata for your games, even if the names don't match exactly
• Games in the sidebar are now sorted so that numbers come after letters.
• You can now multi-select games in the list, allowing you to batch hide/delete/etc.
• You will now get a warning if you try to add /Applications as an auto-import directory in the "Platforms" settings.
• Some miscellaneous bug fixes

And there is a new Chinese Simplified translation thanks to @Andypsl8

We hope you continue to enjoy using Phoenix! Happy gaming!

Release 0.1.9

Hey there everyone! We've got a new update today with some much-needed features!

• @jxhug has moved the setting to set custom directories to search for games into the "Platforms" tab now so that you can set custom directories for each platform individually. He has also made it a list so that you can set multiple directories per platform!
• There is also now an indicator for when Phoenix is scanning for games, making it easier to tell if the autodetection is currently running.

• The efficiency of autodetection has been greatly improved, so now you don't have to wait as long for your games to show up.
• There is now a "What's new" popup when you open the app for the first time, giving you a quick rundown of new features.
• Finally, thanks to Discord user "mertpinkman" we now have a Turkish translation for Phoenix!

We hope you enjoy this new update! Happy gaming!

Release 0.1.8

Hey everyone! It's been a while! For this release @jxhug has cleaned up some of the inner workings of the app, and has added the ability to create and manage custom platforms! This means that you can now create specific platforms for different emulators and platforms we might not have thought to include by default!

Along with the new platforms comes a big improvement to how you tell Phoenix how to launch your games! Platforms now come with a "command template" field which allows you to set a default command to launch all games for that platform so that you only need to type the command once!

This is a huge improvement, especially for emulators, which now give you the ability to just select the emulator app rather than having to enter the path to its executable.

This cuts down a bunch on time spent typing terminal commands, and also means that we can provide true copy/paste templates on the launcher commands wiki page, making onboarding for less tech-savvy users much easier!

Finally, jxhug has made it so that when importing games under the "Mac" platform, you can leave the icon field blank and Phoenix will import the app's current icon by default!

We hope you enjoy this update! Happy gaming!

Release 0.1.7

Hey everyone! Pretty big release today! Here are the changes:

• Most noticeably, we've got a couple big updates to the game detail view:
  • We've added a screenshot carousel below the game description. Screenshots are automatically fetched if possible, but can be added to/deleted manually in Edit Game > Advanced > Screenshots. It makes the app look a lot better in our opinion with a lot less empty space. With this update, #107 is now completed!
  • We've added an option to use a gradient to smooth the transition between the header image and the rest of the detail view
• @jxhug has also revamped our localization to use Crowdin to make adding/editing/shipping translations easier. Feel free to check out our Crowdin project to help us make Phoenix more accessible, and join us on Discord if you have any questions!
• Also some small improvements to the game editing view.

I hope you all like the changes added in this update! Happy gaming!

Release 0.1.6

Hey everyone! We've got a new release for you this morning! Here are the changes:

• @jxhug has made the game descriptions collapsable if they're long enough. This goes along with the plan we have to add more substance to the detail view as per #107
• @jxhug has also fixed the issue where Phoenix would update games.json in the background at launch, causing lag spikes that were especially painful when scrolling (noted in #138)
• @benammiswift has added the ability to drag-and-drop the apps for games in the Mac and PC categories! (More coming soon)

You can download this update here, or if you already have Phoenix installed, just "Check for Updates" from the menu bar!

We hope you enjoy this update! Happy gaming!

Release 0.1.5

Hey all! Just a small bugfix update today, thx to @yabo-san for the fix. v0.1.4 had an issue with the games database that has been fixed now.

Happy gaming!

Release 0.1.4

Hey everyone! We've got a new release for you today with a few small changes and some new contributors!

The biggest new features are the new Albanian and German translations thanks to @NotAriRay and @akeschmidi respectively! If anyone else speaks multiple languages and is willing to help, we'd love your help in adding more supported languages to Phoenix! No programming knowledge required!

We also added a new view for when there are no games detected. It's a shame that it's only visible when there are no games because @jxhug came up with a really beautiful design for it 😅

We've also fixed a few bugs, but nothing too major. I hope you all enjoy this release! Happy gaming!

Release 0.1.3

Hey all! Another small release today which fixes a fairly major bug with managing games in the sidebar. It also adds a couple small things, namely an "Edit name" button in the right-click menu for games in the sidebar, and the ability to click anywhere on the "Play" and "Edit" buttons rather than just on the text/icons (finally 😅)

Happy gaming!

P.S. Apparently we still have a couple kinks to work out with the in-app updater, so you'll have to download from here if you want the update now. We apologize for the inconvenience