Launch Base Beta Test

[gordon-creAtive]

LOL. I also own the original version but I don't know if they made the same mistake...

[Marshall]

You're certainly scraping the bottom of the barrel for LB bugs, which is a good thing of course.
For those that may not be aware, the double ampersand of Westwood is an understandable mistake (a single ampersand is sometimes used as a so-called 'accelerator key') so may not have been intended by them.

[gordon-creAtive]

I tried to run FA-YR plain but LB hung himself:

• Complete list of RA2 folder content
  
• LB.log

[Marshall]

It just froze? I'll take a look asap.
Does verbose log give any more info - it should say how far it got with the files.

A quick glance says that it's probably those movie MIX files just taking a long time to move - LB shouldn't treat those as residual but I suspect it is.

[gordon-creAtive]

Does verbose log give any more info

No, verbose logging didn't reveal more information. LaunchBase had ~99% CPU usage and I waited ~ 5 minutes until I killed it.
I also produced another error but not closing LB and shutting down the computer with Start->Exit->Shutdown, more information to come.

[DCoder]

You could get SysInternals and run FileMon to see what files a program is trying to access.

[Marshall]

Oh that's hideously embarassing. There's an infinite loop in there. Fixing it now...

EDIT:
Upload version 0.99.114

Note that I've also streamlined the installer code, hopefully there shouldn't be any bugs there.

[gordon-creAtive]

I (finally) updated my skin.

[Marshall]

Thanks gordon, I'll include it in the next release. Although, if you could possibly change "Install" and "Uninstall" for "Activate" and "Deactivate" it would be appreciated - just trying to clear up the ambiguity between 'installed in LB' and 'installed in the game'.

[gordon-creAtive]

Will fix in a week, leaving for holidays today

___________________________________________

LaunchBase SkinBrowser v0.1


Features:

• Browse all skins
  
• Apply selected skin
  

App was written with VB9 so maybe some dlls are missing, try http://www.dll-files.com and tell me about that.
It can be run from anywhere, just make sure that LaunchBase is installed. You have to restart LB in order to view the applied skin, I propose to close LB before using this program.
Have fun & tell me if there are any bugs. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Features that will be added in future versions:

• Complete Preview
  
• Sound "skins"
  
• Setup
  
• Download Skins
  
• LB Integration
  
• Own Logo
  

[Marshall]

I am considering how best to support RP2 in Launch Base.

Anticipating the size of the DLL files to be quite small, I can foresee mods wishing to simply include the neccessary files in the mod's distribution. The only exception to this is pd's Syringe program itself, which at the moment weighs in at 181 KB.

The simplest solution all round is to have mods include the Syringe program itself - this would do away with the need for an RP2 plugin. To ensure the safety of this, I would ask pd to maintain an online list of Syringe checksums, which Launch Base can download to make sure that the program being run is official.

I am also considering removing support for RockPatch 1.

If the above were done then there would not really be any need to support multiple versions of the same plugin, and the only plugin that would ever need to be deactivated would be the TX - as such I would probably simplify the plugins interface and force all plugins other than the TX to activate on Launch Base start.

I'd appreciate input on any and all of the above proposals.

[pd]

Hm, people seem to forget the fact that Syringe is made to attach DLLs to any exe file, YR is just the first I'm working with.

I was planning to release it as a standalone tool, which would include the VC++ redistributable packages from Microsoft (they're required for Syringe and the DLLs).
If it wasn't for the VC++ redist I'd say include it in mods, no problem, but they really do have to be installed in order to get things running.

The DLLs will be very small in size indeed, the first RP2 DLL will be around 40 to 80 KB I guess.

[Marshall]

Given that the VC++ pack won't change over time, is an official MS 'thing', is relatively large, only needs to be installed once, and may or may not already be installed/needed for other apps on a user's system, I think this should be independant of Launch Base.

Syringe, on the other hand, may change over time, is tiny, and isn't [yet] a big public 'thing' so I think including Syringe in every Launch Base mod's distribution is the way to go, at least from a Launch Base perspective.

Thinking about the VC++ pack, I might add that to the mod catalogue as a 'user tool', so as to ease distribution of that pack to Launch Base users who need it.
If there's an easy way to check if it's installed, then LB could perform that check before running Syringe (which it will know to do automatically if the mod being launched includes it) and alert the user if they are missing it.

[pd]

Well, the reasons for updates of DLLs and Syringe are different.

DLLs will be updated because there are new features and some things may not always be backward compatible. So you include the DLL version you need in your mod.

Syringe however will not change that way.
I can say that Syringe is pretty much done.
If updates happen to it, they will most likely be critical bugfixes that everyone should get.

[Marshall]

In which case I would probably have Launch Base include the latest Syringe and download the most up-to-date version whenever LB was connected to the Internet (instead of having mods distribute it). I assume the same applies to gamemd.syr?