A game index that updates itself, a new downloads page and automatic releases

Version 11.4.0 is one of the biggest overhauls Ascendara has had, and most of it happens where you will never have to think about it. The game index now keeps itself up to date, downloads are faster and easier to follow, and every release is now built, checked and published automatically.

An index that keeps itself current

Keeping your index fresh used to mean downloading a community archive of more than 300 MB, or scraping the source yourself and pasting in a Cloudflare cookie when it asked for one. Both are gone. Ascendara's servers now check the source on a schedule and pick up only the games that changed, and the app quietly downloads the updated list in the background. A refresh is now well under a megabyte, and it no longer requires Ascend.

Game covers load as you browse instead of arriving all at once, and the most popular and most recently updated games are fetched ahead of time so the pages you open first are ready. Existing installs clean up the old archive on their own, and first-time setup no longer has an index step: the index is ready by the time you finish setting up.

If the game source ever blocks Ascendara's servers, the app can ask for a hand. With one click, Ascendara fetches the latest changes from your own connection and passes them on, and everyone gets the update. No cookies to copy and nothing to configure.

• The index updates itself in the background, for everyone
• A refresh is under a megabyte instead of a 300 MB archive
• Covers load as you browse, with popular ones ready in advance
• No more manual scraping, cookies or refresh schedules
• Help refresh from your own connection if the source blocks the servers

A downloads page you can read at a glance

The downloads page has been redesigned around a live speed graph that follows each download through extraction, including disk activity, with clearer queue, pause and log controls. Downloads can now use several connections at once, game pages show HowLongToBeat completion times, and downloads sent from your browser are recognised by name, version and online status.

Releases that build themselves

Every Ascendara release is now built by GitHub Actions straight from the tagged source code, for Windows, macOS on Apple Silicon and Intel, and Linux. Each build is checked before it is published, and the release page is written from the changelog, with a download table and checksums for every file. Releases come from one consistent, auditable process instead of being put together by hand on a single machine.

Ascendara on WinGet

Ascendara has been submitted to the Windows Package Manager as tagoWorks.Ascendara. Once Microsoft's reviewers approve it, you will be able to install it with winget install tagoWorks.Ascendara, and new versions will be submitted automatically as they are released.

Changes

28

Index refresh

300 MB to under 1 MB