Multiple non-conflicting mods

[Renegade]

Attached one should be fixed...

[Marshall]

Looking good. Attached is a shot of it in action.

[Marshall]

New feature:
I have added a status bar to the bottom of the main Launch Base window. I plan on using this in a similar manner to the broadcast message, except this will be for community announcements.
If someone has a message they want to display to the community then they can send it to me and I'll add it to the list of messages to be randomly displayed (if it's appropriate). For example: "RockPatch super deluxe ultimate edition is now available for download!"

This status bar can be disabled from the options menu if you don't want to see it.

[Bobingabout]

can i say stuff like "R:ROTC 0.4.2.1 is released, Download it now!"

can it contain links?

[Marshall]

Yes that is the kind of thing I had in mind.
The text cannot contain working hyperlinks, but it would be possible to say 'click here to learn more!', and clicking anywhere on the status bar could open a browser to a url - I would have to insist on web page urls only though, not direct download links.

In fact, I have just implemented it. You won't be allowed commas in your messages though, as I'm using this to separate message from url in the message file.

[Bobingabout]

cool

you know that R:ROTC 0.4.2.1 isn't actually released yet.

[Marshall]

Indeed, the above is just an example

[Marshall]

Launch Base Mod Creator is nearly finished - just need DCoder's dll for mix file writing. Update-only installer generation is finished, apart from testing.
I have started a new thread for LBMC:
http://forums.renegadeprojects.com/showt...hp?tid=681

[Blade]

Just a thought on handling overwritten plugins (such as TX I assume), why not have the program calculate some kind of checksum for the file that is currently in the directory and check it against the known checksum for an un-tampered file?

[Marshall]

That is a good idea and possible without too much work. However, this would potentially increase Launch Base load time by anywhere from a few seconds to over a minute, depending on the number and size of plugins.

If any problems were encountered then LB would simply advise the user which plugins need reinstalling.

This could also be done for any persistant mod.

If this check does increase load time then I suppose it could be optional...


EDIT:
I have just implemented this. It seems to work quite fast, but we won't know for sure the performance hit until we test it with some larger mods/plugins. I have added a new option 'Validate Checksums' but if this option works super fast even with large/many files then it may be wise to make this check compulsory.

The check occurs on Launch Base startup and checks for modified or deleted files. See attached for what happened when I manually restored a backup of gamemd.exe before starting Launch Base.

[Blade]

Good stuff Have you tried our checksum function on the TX mix file as that will be one of the larger plugins people might require.

[Marshall]

The function (which actually executes a third party CLT, btw) gets the MD5 checksum of expandmd06.mix in approximately 1.5 seconds on my machine. That's 1.5 seconds to record the checksum on install, and then 1.5 seconds to check the file every time Launch Base loads.

However, I don't think the overall performance hit is only affected by the volume of data - I think that a large number of small files will take longer to check than a small number of large files. Won't be able to test this until I get some mods/plugins finalised.

[Blade]

Were you planning on having it check every file with a mod or just ones related to plugins that might need to be a certain version? Also, why have it check everytime if some mods won't need the likes of the TX? Wouldn't it be better to check at mod launch only if the mod requires a certain plugin?

[Marshall]

When a mod is launched, ANY file that is not a Launch Base-installed plugin is temporarily removed. That way, it doesn't matter what crap you have in your Red Alert 2 folder before running Launch Base.
The exception to this is map files, rmg seeds, ecachetheme* or thememd.ini (iff it is a yrpm thememd.ini) - these are all left untouched.

The checksum check occurs on Launch Base start and checks all active plugins (as well as the active mod if persistant mods is turned on) to make sure that no third party program or person has messed around with the installed files.

Yeah, a mod may not require the TX, but if the user has made the TX active then it is important that Launch Base makes sure that expandmd06.mix really is the TX, and not some other file that may interfere with the mod.

I want users to feel confident that by using Launch Base they know exactly what is installed and what isn't.

[Marshall]

Change to plugin authentication:
Plugins are now only authenticated on install, rather than on Launch Base load. This means that you will see a plugin in the list of available plugins even if it turns out not to be installable, but this will significantly reduce load time. Probably no one will notice any issues.

Installed mods/plugins are still checked for signs of tampering on Launch Base load.