The new GNOME Games application is coming along, and it looks like we're in for a treat when the GNOME 3.20 is released.
GNOME Games is a newcomer in the GNOME stack, even if you say that you've seen it before. This application is a new one, and it has nothing to do with the old package. More to the point, GNOME Games is actually a gaming hub for this desktop environment and it aims to do something that hasn't been tried before.
The 3.20 version of GNOME Games is going to be the second iteration of this application and developer Adrien Plazas says that it's going to get quite a few improvements.
The gaming hub that is being built for the GNOME stack is really impressive because it aims to gather all the games in an operating system, and that includes titles from the repositories, from Steam, video game consoles and retro computers games are handled as ROM files, web-based games, and many others.
GNOME Games 3.20 has some interesting changes
The developer has explained that the various classes of games that are controlled by the hub are now controlled with the help of plugins, which should make the code a lot cleaner. It also helps the future of the project because it's possible to add new classes with a simple plugin.
"A third party can create a plugin to support a new game format, put it in the right directory and bam, Games will magically support it! Another advantage is that you could disable support for systems you don't care about to make the application lighter. Also, some extra data that the plugins may need could be shipped directly with the plugin itself and not the application as a whole," Adrien Plazas explained.
Another cool feature that is landing is the ability to bind gamepad buttons to the keyboard, so that people can play old games without having to own a gamepad.
GNOME 3.20 is expected to land on March 23.
