Patreon 0.24.0.9 - Library, UX & Much more

Dear patreons, we've come a long way since August 6, 2024, when Casper first suggested we implement a library manager into Handheld Companion. In today's post, I'll be disclosing some of the recent additions to the application and efforts we've put in the overall user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). I'm also happy to report that we're now supporting a few more devices, including the MSI Claw 7 AI+ and ONEXPLAYER X1Pro.

The Library Manager

HC now features a new landing page, the Library. There, you'll be able to manage all your profiles and easily sort and launch your games and applications. The Library page is extending HCs existing profile capacities, allowing you to browse and download beautiful images from Steam Grid Database (SGDB), while we work on implementing Internet Game Database (IGDB). Upon upgrading from older versions of HC, you'll be prompted to download art for existing profiles automatically.

Please note, we've not yet implemented game discovery. You'll have to manually create profiles for your games and applications for them to appear in the library.

Lastly, we've also implemented Shortcuts (*.lnk) file support over the Profiles page target picker. This allows you to create profiles or subprofiles with the shortcut arguments imported along the way. A convenient way to speed up emulators' roms/isos import.

Improved UI/UX and Gamepad navigation

While working on the Library manager, we've going through several attempts to integrate game visuals in an elegant and non-intrusive way. This researches lead to a new UI signature, making HC visually more appealing. Showcasing below the controller faded background image. We've also reworked some of the gamepad navigation logic to give you a smoother navigation experience, reducing the UI CPU usage in the meantime. There is still room for improvement but we're heading the right direction. Also a huge kudo to community members Sanhei and Reg-Chen for their support over the translation and language support improvements.

Internal notifications

Now that Library is the new landing/home page of HC, we figured that users would be potentially missing notifications that were usually displayed in the previous landing page, the Controller page. There, as you may know, our Controller Manager is doing dark magic to manage your physical and virtual controllers and usually display a few messages. We've therefore implement a new Internal notification logic to pass any messages from one page to the whole application. You'll never miss a note from us anymore !

MSI Claw and the Half-Baked Controller

"You have an MSI Harry !" said Rubeus Hagrid before handing the device... Officially introduced with Patreon build 0.23.3.0, support over the MSI Claw 8 AI+ has been a troublesome adventure. We've been working hard to improve the overall experience for MSI owners by implementing a series of new features, this includes: battery charge limit support, M1 and M2 management, controller mode switch (XInput, DInput) and a few bugfixes. I'm also glad to report that all MSI Claw 8 discoveries were also backported to the MSI Claw 1 and MSI Claw 7 AI+. On top of the every improving Intel GPU drivers, you're now up for at least another year of fun on the initial Claw.

Windows Management (WIP)

Some of you may have been using the Applications menu from our Quicktools to manipulate windows position and making them borderless on demand. With this new build, we're now storing windows informations within your game profiles so they can be automatically applied the next time the same window is detected. This should be useful for games without native fullscreen borderless support or multi-screen devices like the AYANEO Flip DS.

Miscellaneous

We've been fixing as many known bugs as possible and spent time optimizing the application. You should expect reduced CPU and memory usage and improved stability.

• Hotfix 0.24.0.7: Fixes an issue related to the creation of new hotkeys.

• Hotfix 0.24.0.8: Fixes an issue related to the management of performance profiles.

• Hotfix 0.24.0.9: Reduced CPU usage when drawing UI elements.