Games on Whales / Wolf image for Drop OSS

[traek]

I just started a new Games on Whales (GoW) and Wolf instance for my kids who are struggling with gaming hardware. As I've seen the power of their project, it occurred to me that Drop seems like an excellent fit for the way Wolf is designed to deliver games for self-hosters.

Wolf already offers first-party application modes such as Steam, Heroic Games Launcher, Lutris, Prism Launcher, RetroArch, and others. Rather than exposing a desktop, users launch one of these applications directly through Moonlight and use it to browse, install, and launch games. I started looking into what it would take to add Drop OSS as an option inside GoW/Wolf, here: https://games-on-whales.github.io/wildlife/dev/manual-build/

A dedicated Drop application would allow users to:

• Launch Drop directly from Moonlight
• Browse their self-hosted game library
• Install games from their Drop server right into their Wolf server
• Launch those games immediately within the same session

It think it would work for the goals of both projects, as well:

For Drop, it would provide a polished "living room" experience for self-hosted game libraries, making them accessible from thin clients, handhelds, TVs, and other Moonlight-capable devices without requiring a traditional desktop environment.

For GoW/Wolf, it would add another first-class game launcher alongside Steam, Heroic, and Lutris—one centered on self-hosted libraries rather than commercial storefronts.

Before I went any further with the idea, I wanted to ask you guys a few questions:

• Has this already been discussed or considered?
• Is an official Games on Whales / Wolf application something other people are interested in?
• Would it make more sense as a Drop-maintained image, a Games on Whales community contribution, or some collaboration between the two projects?

I'd also be interested to hear whether anyone in the community has already experimented with this or has even made their own first attempt at the idea. It seems like a natural extension of what both projects are trying to accomplish, but I may be overlooking technical or architectural considerations, as I haven't delved into this much at all.

Thanks for your amazing work with Drop OSS!

[DecDuck]

I'm not 100% what it would involve, but yeah I'm not opposed to having this added to the project. Feel free to create an issue detailing how you'd like it to work, and the community can take a look.