The square covers thread

[SeeDborg]

Hello everyone.
It's been several months that I've been using and loving Playnite.
First of all, I want to thanks the developer for this wonderful software.

I've always been loving to have my own covers for my games. So I started making them, more than a year ago.
Then I decided that they were more beautiful when they were squares. So I remade them.

Now, I have made more than 600 covers and I'd like to share it, but I want it to be a great project.

Here is a little sample of what I did : https://imgur.com/a/EYAzgHW

I originally planned to upload them on steamgriddb but they do not support square covers.
So why not create a website with only square covers ? I have html, php and css knowledge, but I do not want to do this alone, and I want to make it great, so I'm looking for the help of maybe someone(s) here.

Tell me if you're interested !

[GrayMess]

Count me in, my man. Been looking for someone to get this project started. I have zero experience with web development, but I do enjoy PhotoShop and have a strange obsession with organizing my games library. All these neato Playnite themes and the trend from consoles using square art have me convinced to start conforming covers for this aspect ratio. And it's well past time for SteamGrid Db to start supporting it. Until then, I'm glad others are interested in getting this off the ground.

Just searching Google for the console art doesn't cover my use cases. I've got a bunch of PC-exclusive indie games and PS2 games that were never sold digitally, so I know I'll need to make a lot of these myself. I see you've gotten started on a white logo series. I'm probably going to try to keep the original designs of the logos and tall cover art as best I can, but I'll keep my PhotoShop files in case you ever want some white logo versions of the covers I make for yourself. If I have time later, maybe I can make a few variations, including blurred backgrounds that some people prefer.

So yeah, I don't know if the web development side is something you'd like to get started on, but keep me posted. If this takes off, I'll try to be a top contributor.

[CriticalComposer]

I don't know if this is going to dissuade you or not, but I've asked the SGDB guys about square cover support and they said it'll come with the icons update. I have no idea when that will be though (it's in the To-Do list of their Trello roadmap). With that said, I have 250 square grids that I would love to dump somewhere other than my Google Drive and would be happy to contribute to a website like you're describing. I've mostly made grids for older games and console titles so I'd love a place where I could find some more modern PC covers. Unfortunately, my plate is quite full without trying to help with a website (which I don't know how much I could help anyways) but if you get this off the ground you'll have another square cover maker enthusiastically contributing.

[GrayMess]

Actually, that's really good to hear. I have virtually zero web development experience and thinking about taking on the task of building and maintaining a website like that is a lot. I'd much rather an established platform like SGDB start supporting the aspect ratio. All I had read about it was that people requested it a while back and the devs just didn't seem interested. I guess something changed, so I'll look forward to that. In the meantime, I'll keep making my own and hopefully we'll both get to contribute a bunch of covers when it's implemented. Thanks for looking into it.

[Swaf]

As i got somes times (that is to say i'm doing them at work) I wanna create a lot of retro system square cover, did someone start doing this maybe ?

[GrayMess]

@Swaf, I think the idea has been shelved since SteamGridDB has confirmed they'll be implementing square covers in an upcoming update. But keep at it, dude. When the update goes live, we'll need a lot of folks submitting cover art, especially for retro games that don't have any 1:1 designs to pull from the store pages of recent console generations.

[Swaf]

Ok, so I start this project with Sega 32x (34 square covers did I miss somes ?)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16JnO9ix...sp=sharing

They are all in 600x600 and yeah I know somes are a bit pixelated but Playnite don't display them in this size.

If u use them don't hesite to show me

next is Gamecube.

[CriticalComposer]

For anyone wonder, SteamGridDB is so close to accepting square grids. Out of curiosity I tried to up load a square grid and got an error back -- "Not quite ready, keep waiting." If I go to the Dark Messiah (the game I was trying to add the cover for) and filter dimensions I now see this (my cover was 1000x1000)



It doesn't show any images in that filter but it looks like the systems are in place and probably being tested out to ensure it all works well and looks nice with the current visual layout. Pretty soon we can flood their servers with our 1:1 covers!

[GrayMess]

Nice! I've been watching the Discord for SGDb and checking to see if the changelog has been updated. Definitely looks like it's happening soon. I recently reinstalled Windows and have been holding off on adding everything back to Playnite because I just want to switch to a 1:1 grid setup and do it all at once.

[GrayMess]

Yooo, square grids are live! Get in there!

[CriticalComposer]

I've never been this excited about a website update lol Thanks for the heads-up

edit: Just so people know, you can only upload 512 or 1024 square grids. Mine are all over the place so I have to do a mass resize.

[SeeDborg]

I have to do a mass resize too, so I upload them gradually on steamgridDB, here is my profile link : https://www.steamgriddb.com/profile/76561197964005260 (you can give a +1 vote on the covers you like )

If you have some requests, tell me here. If I did the cover, I'll upload it

[GrayMess]

Nice! I really like that Mario series. I'll probably use those.

[SeeDborg]

I made many series and tried to do them look in the same way.
Man, I really got to take some time to upload them.

[Madcore]

I started to do some squared covers for retrogames, and upload them to steamgriddb.

I only had made four, but I'm testing some variable covers with the system logos and icons. You can see them here:

https://www.steamgriddb.com/profile/76561198027953919

[Duece]

Thank you to everybody doing square covers, especially those of you who do alternate and custom square covers.

I personally love the way the square covers look and they really make your playnite setups look super modern but there are some really cool DVD covers on steamgriddb and it's hard to pass them up sometimes.

[Maury]

I think it's great idea to create a web app or a website with square covers. There are lots  of people who are interested in it!

[GrayMess]

Hey, Maury. Now that Steam Grid Db accepts square covers, that's where you'll find the largest collection of them online. At this point, I would say a site or web app for 1:1 cover art is not necessary anymore.

[KillianSmith]

I also have the same case. Thanks for the example. Here get to know our exercises whom I can go to paper help . This is the issue. Would i be able to utilize data from your blog to compose an investigation at live paper help? Much obliged.

[SeeDborg]

Just for information, I have uploaded A LOT of my square covers now !
You can find them here : https://www.steamgriddb.com/profile/7656...60/grids/1