I've been trying to mimics the functionality of Steam with open source projects. For example using Playnite as my game library manager. One thing I'm having a bit of a hard time with is finding a substitute for achievement tracking. I know achievements aren't for everyone but I find it helps motivate me to power through lulls in longer games and try out side quests.

The closest alternative I have come across is xan105's Achievement Watcher. It started in 2019, got a fair amount of attention 2020 after being posted on /r/CrackWatch by the creator, was added to various piracy megathreads, and stopped development in 2022.

It was a bit of a challenge to setup.

Some steps were:

• Grab my own Steam API so it could fetch data for the achievements.

• Alter Windows 11's notification settings so I could get the achievement unlocked notification.

• Go through the steam_emu.ini files so I could find the correct directories (ex. \Users\Public\Documents\CODEX)

• Using Achievement Watcher to generate the achievements.json and image files and placing them in the steam_settings folder of each game.

Even then I haven't been able to get it working smoothly. For Cities: Skylines for example I can unlock achievements but I don't receive a notification and they only appear after I refresh Achievement Watcher (Control + R). Most modern guides suggest using a Steam Auto Cracker but doing so appears to stop the game from working. I don't know if this is because I am utilizing repacks or if there are multiple forms of DRM at work. I could easily be missing something.

I've read there are compatibility issues with Achievement Watcher and cracks from groups/people like TENOKE.

Considering I own the games I want to play without DRM I may just try to use Goldberg myself.

Some games like Fallout New Vegas allow you to view completed challenges in-game and I imagine there are mods out there that add some form of achievement/trophy/challenge system.

There's also RetroAchievements for older games.

For me it has to be Gnarly's Tale of Two Wastelands repack. For those that don't know Tale of Two Wastelands combines the two games allowing you to travel between the two through a metro line. Before Bethesda removed the dated GFWL DRM from Fallout 3 (on Steam) it's what a lot of people recommended instead of GWFL remover mods. Even though I own multiple copies of both Fallout 3 and NV on multiple platforms it's significantly easier and faster to use the repack. Probably saving hours of time especially if you are attempting to play the game on the Steam Deck.

Some follow ups would be FitGirl's Sims 3 repack which contains the Overwatch & ErrorTrap mods and FPS Limiter/3Booter utilities and MagiPack's Sims 2 repack that contains the Sims2RPC launcher and 4GB patch. Both contain mods that improve the games' performance and stability.

I would like to encourage people to check out MagiPack's repacks by the way. They do some fantastic work and specialize in making sure older games (largely pre-2009) work on newer OSs but they aren't really discussed in a lot circles.

It's hard looking for giveaways, and usually the games given away on Steam aren't that good. So, I'm back to pirating after a bit of a hiatus.