[1.5] WMD - Wad Manager for Doom

[lesher]

I greatly enjoyed using this wad manager. Finally a manager that creates separate profile and save file for each configuration!

That being said, I have some small feature requests:
1. Maybe make it a bit easier for us to modify existing mod collection? I believe right now the only way to do this is by creating a new wad collection with the exact same name to modify currently existing one.
2. Checkboxes of sourceport perhaps? Not necessary, but just a thought.
3. Maybe some sort of way to categorize wads on the list. I'm kinda expecting this one will be a bitch to implement though.

Since you have the code on github, is it okay if I tried to fork your code and maybe try to implement some of the suggestions I made myself?

Again, thanks for the awesome wad manager man!

[Coffee Imp]

Thanks, glad you like it.

1. You can technically edit the xml by hand. xD But yeah, an edit button and something to tell the user that a wad is missing would be good.
2. You means a list of source ports, yeah. I didn't really put any thoughs on sourceport management.
3. There is a ghetto way to categorise your wads, if you put them in folders in your wad directory, they will be sorted by folders. I personnally have a specific folder for the levels, for example. what could be cool would be a way to drag and drop wads directly in those folders or even filter them by folder... (that's not a bad idea at all).

If you want to do anything on the code, go on, it's completely open ( to be frank, the code is not very well structured or commented, don't hesitate to ask if you find weird stuff in it).

[lesher]

Gotcha, I'll just ask questions and such through PM then

[Lime]

Quick and Easy to use! This Program makes managing mods better! Hurrah!

[Silentdarkness12]

Any chance of multiplayer support in here? Or at least a help box with optional launch parameters?

[Coffee Imp]

@Silentdarkness12
I considered it, but I don't really play online so I don't really know what could be needed to improve the online scenario. I might look into it.

@Lime
Thanks I'm glad you like it. I really want to keep it as simple to use as possible.

[reaven]

Hey, this is looking great. If I could make a little suggestion though: Put a checkbox so you can filter only by the currently marked wads, this way after you have chosen everything you can easily see what you're loading and set the order more easily.
What do you think?

[Coffee Imp]

Hey, this is looking great. If I could make a little suggestion though: Put a checkbox so you can filter only by the currently marked wads, this way after you have chosen everything you can easily see what you're loading and set the order more easily.
What do you think?

Cool idea. I liked it and I immediatly tried to implement something.

Here a little update with a feature that does almost what you described. It's a bit rough right now but it's usable.

You can filter mods through the context menu (right click). Click on the option again to cancel the filtering.

https://github.com/EricReichenbach/WMD/releases/latest

[DarkkOne]

I love WMD. Generally speaking it's worked better for me than all of the other launchers I've tried, but I do find a few things missing (for my use cases). None of these are feature requests, really. Especially since I realize some of these are very kinda... edge-case. Just the things that, when I'm using it, I think "man, I wish it did this.

1) Ability to separate levels and mods. Right now, I have them in folders, and that works well enough. What I'd *love* is to be able to pick a "Wadpack", and then have the right only show me things I've categorized as "levels" (either by folder or something else) so that I can mix and match "mods" and "levels" easily.

2) Ability to add folders as whole folders. Right now I like playing with Doom RPG, which is distributed as folders. I just wrap them up as PK3s myself, because that's not hard, but if I accidentally add them as a folder, I get a billion files in the list instead. I'm not sure how you'd add folders without losing the ability to add a folder full of subfolders full of PK3s and have that also work, but just something I keep wishing I could do.

3) Command Line Parameters. Right now I don't see any way to add command line parameters other than using a batch file instead of gzdoom.exe? I could be missing this.

4) I use 3 different versions of gzdoom right now. The latest stable, a bleeding edge, and one that's currently treated as "you should use this one with DRPG." It'd be nice if there was an easier way to see which executable you had selected beyond just the individual filename (maybe the parent directory? Not necessarily the whole tree, maybe just one level up?) because I often accidentally create a new collection with the wrong .exe, then have to re-create it.

5) A way to modify a collection without just creating a new collection and overwriting it. Perhaps an "update collection" button? Right now it seems if I "create new collection" with the same name, it creates a new .ini file that overwrites any changes I've made, which doesn't seem ideal to me.

Anyway, these are the things I run into while using it. None are really major, but they're the things that are like... the occasional minor thing I think "I wish this was different."

[Silentdarkness12]

....Still no support for treating a folder as a PK3?....

sigh.....alright....

[Coffee Imp]

@Silentdarkness12 sorry mate, that last week was batshit insane, I had no time.

@DarkkOne
1) Cool idea, but I might make the UI a bit too complex.

2) I need to look into that, I'd have to analyse the content of the folder, it might not be a titanic work but it could generate a ton of bugs to fiddle with. I'll look into it when I have time.

3) There is a small textbox to add command line parameters (labelled "Optional launch parameters"), but you have to type it every time you launch the app. I don't have any user stories for it so I don't really know what to do with it.

4) I also ran into that kind of issue, I have a few idea that I need to test to fix it.

5) It's also something I'd like to improve in the future.

Thanks for the feedbacks, I really appreciate.

[Silentdarkness12]

Could you at least consider trying to figure that stuff out sometime?.....

personally, I think this thing is almost perfect. That's the only thing I can think of that's missing.

edit: darkkone agrees with me. if you get this to work, it'd be AWESOME : D

[DarkkOne]

3) There is a small textbox to add command line parameters (labelled "Optional launch parameters"), but you have to type it every time you launch the app. I don't have any user stories for it so I don't really know what to do with it.

Man, I can't believe I didn't see that. It's just entirely not where I expected it to be, so I didn't see it at all. Honestly I'd expect it to be a field above or below the "Launch the Game" option. Honestly the only thing I'd really need/want from it is saving those parameters in the Wad Collection like you save the executable. I'm pretty sure that'd address most needs.

As for the UI for levels vs mods, perhaps just allowing another filter option for the list? Since WMD copies things to the \WMD folder, and preserves subfolders if you've organized them in such a way, perhaps just an option to pick which folder within WMD it displays?

So I could have X:\Doomstuff\WMD\Levels and X:\Doomstuff\WMD\Mods (assuming WMD.exe was in X:\Doomstuff). I'd say no real need to allow any filter on folders-within-folders, but just that first level of folders? So I would then have the choices to see "all", "selected", "Mods", and "Levels" as my choices in this hypothetical? So not a hugely complex UI change, it's based on file structure and is basically optional, and doesn't generate clutter, but builds off of an existing UI metaphor you're already adding, so it should be relatively easy for a user to 'understand' it?

[reaven]

Hey, this is looking great. If I could make a little suggestion though: Put a checkbox so you can filter only by the currently marked wads, this way after you have chosen everything you can easily see what you're loading and set the order more easily.
What do you think?

Cool idea. I liked it and I immediatly tried to implement something.

Here a little update with a feature that does almost what you described. It's a bit rough right now but it's usable.

You can filter mods through the context menu (right click). Click on the option again to cancel the filtering.

https://github.com/EricReichenbach/WMD/releases/latest

Awesome!!

[iVoid]

This is fantastic!

It's got all the features that were still missing from current launchers, some years ago I started trying to make something like this but eventually got lazy I'm glad someone did this

I've got 2 problems so far though:

1) Since the config files are placed in different folders from the original ones, if I have set relative paths in my config file, they will stop making sense. For example, if I set the path for timidity as ./timidity4zdoom2/timidity.exe, when the config file is moved zdoom won't find timidity. To avoid this, when the config file is moved the path should be changed to either an absolute path such as C:/games/zdoom/timidity4zdoom2/timidity.exe, or the relative path should be adapted to something like ../../zdoom/timidity4zdoom2/timidity.exe, assuming the launcher is at the folder C:/games/launcher.

2) The default config file used by WMD is a copy of the one contained in the source port folder, but there seems to be no way of updating that file. If I make a change to the config file contained in the source port folder and delete all WMD files that I can find, it will still use the original config file from when I first ran WMD.