Icons + graphical launcher?

Discuss anything ZDoom-related that doesn't fall into one of the other categories.
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Kaucukovnik
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2019 2:30 pm

Icons + graphical launcher?

Post by Kaucukovnik »

Hello everyone!

I have found out that having graphical representation helps me distinguish between different mods and wads. With all those hellish and/or sci-fi names, it's easy to get confused. Here are the icons for unofficial Doom stuff I have been making. I try to include some artwork from the mods and maps themselves, ideally their official logo and title motive too. Sometimes there is very little of my own work, but some of them took a lot of messing around.
Display resolution is 128x128 for most, the larger images in the ico files are only there to force Windows to load bigger than 64x64 icons, as 128x128 ones seem to be ignored on my machine.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/aifgipioc ... s.png/file
http://www.mediafire.com/file/s3q89k4xd ... ng.7z/file
http://www.mediafire.com/file/kl7yc3z2l ... co.7z/file

For quite some time I have been thinking of a graphical launcher. I have an html-based prototype of my own, but it's clumsy, windows-only and cannot do much, just lets you pick mod + wad + music + hud.
Is there some gzdoom compatible launcher I could use my icons in? If someone was interested in coding one, I have a nice concept, but I'm incapable of real programming.

In case my search is fruitless, I'll just be making more icons and improving existing ones over time and maybe if the situation doesn't change for some time I'll finish my silly launcher after all. I'm also taking icon requests. Can't promise when they're done, but I'll try.
gramps
Posts: 300
Joined: Thu Oct 18, 2018 2:16 pm

Re: Icons + graphical launcher?

Post by gramps »

Hah, those icons are great! That shotgun-weilding Yoda made me laugh.

I'd be interested in seeing your mockup/prototype for the launcher.

You might be interested in checking out Electron; it's one of those webpage-as-a-desktop-app platforms in the same vein as Mozilla's Prism and Microsoft's HTA. If you can get a web page version working, you can probably get a desktop version working in a platform like that.
Kaucukovnik
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2019 2:30 pm

Re: Icons + graphical launcher?

Post by Kaucukovnik »

Glad you like them, and yeah, hoped master Yoda would produce a chuckle. :)

I use heavily gutted UGUI for the launcher, it turns a html page into a desktop program that can assemble console commands from radio buttons selection and execute them. The downside is that adding or removing stuff is fairly complex, which is kind of a problem for launcher platform. Still good enough to organize my personal collection if nothing else comes along.

So far it looks like this:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/frs9z0hne ... r.jpg/file

I have only a bit of each category working, just as a proof of concept. As I said, adding content is tedious, things must be defined at multiple places in the file. I'd hate to go through the chore, present the result, and then see someone go "let me show how it's done" and whip up a nice real launcher program with easy setup. So I'm testing the waters first.

Here is my idea of a pretty, easy to use launcher:
Spoiler:
gramps
Posts: 300
Joined: Thu Oct 18, 2018 2:16 pm

Re: Icons + graphical launcher?

Post by gramps »

Hmm, the way I see it you have three or four parts to this thing:

- Metadata you provide about each mod, including icon, description, etc.
- The IWADs and mods you're providing metadata for (somewhere on the user's machine, or not).
- The launcher program (and its configuration, like where to find mods on user's machine).

Ideally, you'll have the metadata in a format that's easy for you to work with, and easy for the launcher to work with. Maybe JSON would be a good choice. And you shouldn't have to change the launcher at all when you add support for a new mod, you would just add the metadata, and the launcher would show whatever's there.

The metadata, the launcher configuration, and the mods themselves should not be "mixed." The user should be able to put the mods anywhere, and the launcher config should be the bridge between the metadata and the mod itself... Config tracks metadata item X is installed at path Y. User would manage this by listing a directory or two where they dump everything, and the launcher would recursively scan those and match things up by checksum, probably, and update the config accordingly.

Maybe a downloader can even be included for stuff the user doesn't have yet.

Anyway, just some quick thoughts.
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