Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 5

Author Topic: Manila Dwarf Fortress Launcher  (Read 49019 times)

hermes

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Manila Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« on: February 23, 2012, 06:36:25 am »

Manila Dwarf Fortress Launcher
v1.11

This is an unofficial, simple launcher application written in Java Swing and runnable on Windows, Mac or Linux. This is the launcher I've always wanted to have; something which manages the installation and prevents DF folder clutter around releases and allows easy access to common text-file features...

  • Edit common startup options
  • Set font and tileset easily
  • Choose from a variety of dazzling colour schemes
  • Automatically download a new install or update to the latest version of DF
  • Works with your existing install, just copy it into the Launcher's DF folder
  • Automatically copies settings, saves and embark profiles to updated version
  • Automatically packs exported legends files and maps into a folder for each region
  • Check out the devlog before you play
  • Apply mods easily and get an idea of their compatibility
Spoiler: Screenshots (click to show/hide)

Feedback on appearance, features and functionality is most welcome.

Thanks, and enjoy!



Spoiler: Changes (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Known Issues (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: July 08, 2014, 10:30:17 am by hermes »
Logged
We can only guess at the longing of the creator. Someone who would need to create one such as you. - A Computer
I've been working on this type of thing...

klingon13524

  • Bay Watcher
  • The Mongols are cool!
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #1 on: February 23, 2012, 07:22:48 am »

PTF
Logged
By creating a gobstopper that never loses its flavor he broke thermodynamics
Maybe it's parasitic. It never loses its flavor because you eventually die from having your nutrients stolen by it.

Sowelu

  • Bay Watcher
  • I am offishially a penguin.
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2012, 05:18:58 pm »

This is relevant to my interests...
Logged
Some things were made for one thing, for me / that one thing is the sea~
His servers are going to be powered by goat blood and moonlight.
Oh, a biomass/24 hour solar facility. How green!

Scarpa

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #3 on: February 23, 2012, 11:27:32 pm »

Very nice. Simple and covers everything I need it to. Especially nice was it picking up my init settings automatically, or at least your defaults match mine.  8)

An 'import existing install' type feature that preserves init and art settings would be cool, but now that I have it setup I'll probably never 'import' again. ;)

Logged

Jalapeņo Cheesepuffs

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #4 on: February 23, 2012, 11:40:16 pm »

Trying it out on Mac OS X 10.6.8 straightaway, will update if things start exploding, or else work.  ;)

Status Update v1: .jar opened without conflict, am attempting a fresh install for DF (from the launcher). DL speed is ticking along slowly, but it seems to be making progress

Status Update v2: Worldgen tab doesn't display anything, but other tabs are fully functional. Tried "Launch DF" and VL closed, but no visible script ran and DF did not open. Poop. Will try running the download from the DF site, because honestly I have yet to do that.

Status Update v3: The df.osx file from the DF site works fine, and it seems that the df.osx from the VL is getting changed in some way. Will look into it a bit more before I head off to bed.

Status Update v4: No luck on getting the VL to launch DF, but the raw editor aspect of it works marvelously (replaced the faulty df_osx folder with the one from the site, so I can make changes with the VL and just boot up DF manually, which rocks in itself). Did I mention this is awesome?
« Last Edit: February 24, 2012, 12:08:55 am by Jalapeņo Cheesepuffs »
Logged
"The eyes are open, the mouth moves, but Mr. Brain has long since departed"

-Edmund Blackadder

Sowelu

  • Bay Watcher
  • I am offishially a penguin.
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2012, 04:17:47 am »

If you're going to release a Windows version of something, please convert your text files to use Windows newlines.  Yeah Windows is dumb like that, but otherwise when you open it in Notepad (ie, simple double-click the file), everything shows up on the same line...

Other than that, it works great!  Very impressed.

I'd like to suggest a little more intelligence about window size.  I set it to use graphical tiles, and it wound up wider than my screen (and very short).  Is it possible in Java to detect the screen size?  One way or another, it would be nice to at least have standard options like "Make this an 800x600 window" and have it auto-size to something sane.

Oh wait...It seems to reset the window dimensions and the sound volume every time I run it.  Do not like that part.
« Last Edit: February 24, 2012, 04:25:36 am by Sowelu »
Logged
Some things were made for one thing, for me / that one thing is the sea~
His servers are going to be powered by goat blood and moonlight.
Oh, a biomass/24 hour solar facility. How green!

Scarpa

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2012, 01:20:02 pm »

If you're going to release a Windows version of something, please convert your text files to use Windows newlines.  Yeah Windows is dumb like that, but otherwise when you open it in Notepad (ie, simple double-click the file), everything shows up on the same line...

I work with Unix files a ton on Windows and a nice trick is to open in Wordpad. Usually if you use 'Open With...' on a txt file and select Wordpad it will be in the context menu after that. Alternatively you could use Notepad++ which pretty much rocks.
Logged

hermes

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #7 on: February 25, 2012, 10:00:33 am »

Very nice. Simple and covers everything I need it to. Especially nice was it picking up my init settings automatically, or at least your defaults match mine.  8)
An 'import existing install' type feature that preserves init and art settings would be cool, but now that I have it setup I'll probably never 'import' again. ;)

Thanks for the feedback....  It imports the settings it can change automatically, and should leave everything else as is.  It didn't add tilesets already present before, but I made it do that now.  It'll copy in any new tileset referenced in init.txt and present in the /data/art/ folder (but of course no raw-changing-graphics pack support).  Good idea!

Status Update v2: Worldgen tab doesn't display anything, but other tabs are fully functional.

Yes, I was planning to implement a worldgen tab mainly because I thought it might be easy to copy and paste seeds.  But now I'm thinking this is kind of redundant because the command line world gen is paltry compared to what you can do in game.... Can you specify all the seeds at command line?  What do you think?

Quote
Tried "Launch DF" and VL closed, but no visible script ran and DF did not open. Poop. Will try running the download from the DF site, because honestly I have yet to do that.
Status Update v3: The df.osx file from the DF site works fine, and it seems that the df.osx from the VL is getting changed in some way. Will look into it a bit more before I head off to bed.
Status Update v4: No luck on getting the VL to launch DF, but the raw editor aspect of it works marvelously (replaced the faulty df_osx folder with the one from the site, so I can make changes with the VL and just boot up DF manually, which rocks in itself). Did I mention this is awesome?

Thank you so much for these tests  :D.  I've done the googling I should have done before, and perhaps the right OSX command is "open dwarfort.exe"?  So I'll try that for the next release.

If you're going to release a Windows version of something, please convert your text files to use Windows newlines.  Yeah Windows is dumb like that, but otherwise when you open it in Notepad (ie, simple double-click the file), everything shows up on the same line...

Learn something new every day.  Thanks, you know I actually saw the text files like that when I tested on windows, but for some reason I totally ignored it, hehe.  Should be ok now.

Quote
I'd like to suggest a little more intelligence about window size.  I set it to use graphical tiles, and it wound up wider than my screen (and very short).  Is it possible in Java to detect the screen size?  One way or another, it would be nice to at least have standard options like "Make this an 800x600 window" and have it auto-size to something sane.

Oh wait...It seems to reset the window dimensions and the sound volume every time I run it.  Do not like that part.

Oh my, I didn't even think about the window size, I thought those values determined the tile dimensions, guess that changed with SDL years ago... man I'm slow.  Good idea, made it autoset to 80% screen width and height.

Sound is funny, it shouldn't touch that value (I assumed nobody ever changes that) and in my tests the launcher never alters the sound value.

Oh, does anyone know if the BLACK_SPACE tag does anything anymore?
« Last Edit: February 25, 2012, 10:52:57 pm by hermes »
Logged
We can only guess at the longing of the creator. Someone who would need to create one such as you. - A Computer
I've been working on this type of thing...

Symmetry

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #8 on: February 25, 2012, 11:26:17 am »

Please use NotePad++, it's much better.
Easily available online.
Logged

Scarpa

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #9 on: February 28, 2012, 10:00:05 pm »

Unfortunately the update function deleted the df directory and everything in it. I had neglected to use the backup save feature prior to that as well. Personally not a big deal as I'm still messing around but FYI for anyone else I guess.

I will test out some scenarios and post up a real 'bug report' for you later, hermes.
Logged

nwr1_cronus

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #10 on: February 28, 2012, 10:24:06 pm »

This is a wonderful utility. I had been wondering for quite awhile why an easy update feature hadn't been added to common packs, notably the LNP.  The only addition that this utility really needs is a toggle for aquifers, as I know that is a make or break for many players.  Keep up the good work!
Logged

hermes

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #11 on: February 28, 2012, 10:41:21 pm »

Unfortunately the update function deleted the df directory and everything in it. I had neglected to use the backup save feature prior to that as well. Personally not a big deal as I'm still messing around but FYI for anyone else I guess.

I will test out some scenarios and post up a real 'bug report' for you later, hermes.

Thanks for the report, and sorry about that.  This is exactly what I feared!  My test on linux went so-so, may I ask what OS you are using and if there were any error messages?  Any files in the temp directory?  It could be that unpacking didn't go as planned... more graceful degredation in the next version.

This is a wonderful utility. I had been wondering for quite awhile why an easy update feature hadn't been added to common packs, notably the LNP.  The only addition that this utility really needs is a toggle for aquifers, as I know that is a make or break for many players.  Keep up the good work!

Thanks, I am stubborn and refuse to turn them off, so good to hear what others like: aquifer button in.  I am thinking about taking out temperature and weather because the fortress mode speedup renders fps saving for normal users unnecessary.
Logged
We can only guess at the longing of the creator. Someone who would need to create one such as you. - A Computer
I've been working on this type of thing...

Scarpa

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #12 on: February 28, 2012, 11:23:06 pm »

Thanks for the report, and sorry about that.  This is exactly what I feared!  My test on linux went so-so, may I ask what OS you are using and if there were any error messages?  Any files in the temp directory?  It could be that unpacking didn't go as planned... more graceful degredation in the next version.

This is Windows 7 x64. I retried and this is what happened:
- Detected imported install and new version, chose upgrade.
- Download went fine and unpack apparently worked but the path went by too fast for me to note, somewhere in vlData, though.
- Finished with last step being 'Delete old install'. UI showed 'No df install found' and df folder was gone. There was one file 'vlData\temp\latestDF.zip' and an empty log file.
- 'Get Latest' button was still enabled so tried that, but errored on unpack step because the df directory was missing.
- Re-created empty df folder and was able to download and create a new install.

I also used the 'backup save' function before the initial upgrade and while it did backup the saves in vlData the restore button was never enabled.
Logged

hermes

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #13 on: February 29, 2012, 01:06:14 am »

Thank you, Scarpa.  Was your install (the exe file) in the df dir?  I think I've fixed this, the launcher is designed to handle multiple installs so I had only accounted for each install to be in its own subdirectory of the df folder.  Thus, if you upgraded with the install in the df dir it would delete that dir and then have no place to unpack to.  Doh  :-[.  Spotted this yesterday, will upload tonight.

Anybody run successfully on a mac?
Logged
We can only guess at the longing of the creator. Someone who would need to create one such as you. - A Computer
I've been working on this type of thing...

aldantefax

  • Escaped Lunatic
    • View Profile
Re: Vanilla Dwarf Fortress Launcher
« Reply #14 on: March 06, 2012, 02:16:30 pm »

Great idea, glad to see that something like this exists, especially with lots of DF bugfix incremental releases recently. A couple of things:

* Is there a way to have it automatically version check on launch to see if a new version of DF is available?
* When's auto-update for the Vanilla DF Launcher itself coming? I didn't even notice there was a new version until I went hunting for it.

Thanks for all the great work, though! It's been very appreciated.
Logged
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 5