40 replies to this topic

[CJ]

Dauth, on 5 Sep 2009, 14:15, said:

Zeke, on 5 Sep 2009, 13:59, said:

Well my only real complaint about the launcher is it takes a while to load.

When you use the launcher it changes the name and location of several files, more files = longer load. Fastest load will be for single small file being changed.

And you can even make it faster if you don't use copy method

[Zeke]

yeh I don't really understand the difference between move and copy

[JJ]

A suggestion, maybe make it less prone to bad shut downs, like the Shockwave launcher? Because currently, they give errors as the files are not reverted back to their original names.

[Kris]

CodeCat, on 2 Sep 2009, 1:03, said:

I am currently working on rebuilding the mod launcher. This may take some work as I originally built it with VC++, which I no longer have or use. The new build will be done with MinGW instead, so some adjustments are needed. Not to mention I have to rebuild the libraries I used from scratch. The good news however is that I will be releasing it under the GPL so everyone can mess around with it now.

I am not planning to add any new features, as I can't really think of any to add. If you have any feature requests, please post them!

Features that I will NOT add:
- a GUI (this defeats the purpose I intended with it)

Personally, it would be still neat if there's a gui. What about...Include a basic GUI where you can assign your own textures? That way, mods can personalize the launcher for their mod.

Edited by Yayo01, 05 September 2009 - 16:28.

[CodeCat]

Zeke, on 5 Sep 2009, 16:27, said:

yeh I don't really understand the difference between move and copy

One moves the files, the other copies. Moving is often quicker than copying because it doesn't have to physically move the file, but only change a bit of information in the file/directory table. However, the problem with moving is that possible errors mean that your original setup is compromised. This could mean that some files are left in the game dir and are therefore missing from the original dir if anything goes seriously wrong. Copying avoids that problem, at the cost of speed.

JJ, on 5 Sep 2009, 16:37, said:

A suggestion, maybe make it less prone to bad shut downs, like the Shockwave launcher? Because currently, they give errors as the files are not reverted back to their original names.

Can you tell me when exactly this occurs? I tried to set it up so that it reverts whenever the game exits, whether it exits normally or crashes.

[Kris]

Ermm, Doesn't Shockwave use a GUI based launcher that was coded by TankMaster?

[JJ]

CodeCat, on 6 Sep 2009, 2:53, said:

Zeke, on 5 Sep 2009, 16:27, said:

yeh I don't really understand the difference between move and copy

One moves the files, the other copies. Moving is often quicker than copying because it doesn't have to physically move the file, but only change a bit of information in the file/directory table. However, the problem with moving is that possible errors mean that your original setup is compromised. This could mean that some files are left in the game dir and are therefore missing from the original dir if anything goes seriously wrong. Copying avoids that problem, at the cost of speed.

JJ, on 5 Sep 2009, 16:37, said:

A suggestion, maybe make it less prone to bad shut downs, like the Shockwave launcher? Because currently, they give errors as the files are not reverted back to their original names.

Can you tell me when exactly this occurs? I tried to set it up so that it reverts whenever the game exits, whether it exits normally or crashes.

Improper shutdowns. They give no change to revert back from big to whatever extension you give them.

[CodeCat]

I'm not really sure what you mean. Can you give an example?

[Libains]

JJ means if you close it through something like the Task Manager PRIOR to shutting down the game itself. With one of these shut downs, the Launcher is just killed off and has no chance to move the files back, because they're being used in their BIG states. Therefore, the next time that the Launcher tries to run, it'll cock up as it has no files to move, and sometimes ends up overwriting the actual BIG files with blanks.

[CodeCat]

Then don't kill it with the task manager.

[JJ]

You don't have to, when an improper shutdown happens (electrical outage, accidentally hitting the off button, etc), you'll get this problem when you restart.

[CodeCat]

It would be very hard to solve that reliably, since a sudden power outage may well wreck a file altogether. I suppose a possible way to solve it is this way:

- When the launcher starts, look at the destination files.
- If any of those already exists, leave it there.
- When the launcher exits, revert it all back to the source files again, including those that were forgotten last time.

The danger with this approach is that when you have two different launcher scripts that have different source files but the same destination files, it might end up reverting the forgotten files to the wrong source files. This may cause a mixup of files two completely different mods. So a requirement would be that after a crash you ALWAYS use the last-used launcher script so that it can properly revert the files.

Edited by CodeCat, 06 September 2009 - 11:58.

[JJ]

Maybe two different versions, one like the old one, the other the way you suggested, so you can easily create a repair function, or just let the user choose.

[CodeCat]

Development is currently on hold as there is a bug in the XML library the launcher uses. See here for more info.

[Zocom7]

Will someone please re-upload the mod launcher? The file link is gone. It's been two years and I was hoping for an update here.

[Slightly Wonky Robob]

Link updated.