GameLauncher

Easy to configure game launcher/updater template

Content

There are two projects in this repository, the main GameLauncher project and the ManifestGenerator which builds the XML file needed by the launcher to patch your game.

Setup

To get the launcher up and running you need the following things set up beforehand:

• A ftp server with a seperate user with readonly access
• All required gamefiles
• A changelog (or other plain text or html file to display in the launcher)

The LauncherSetup class

The first step in setting up the launcher project would be to set up all needed information in the LauncherSetup class inside the Program.cs

It contains almost all settings needed for the launcher. The settings are broken down into three segments. While everything is commented in the code I'll break all of them down here.

UI Settings

Setting	Description
LAUNCHER_UI_TITLE	The title bar of the launcher window
LauncherLinks	A collection of links to be displayed in the sidebar of the launcher
IS_CHANGELOG_HTML	A switch to determine whether the provvided changelog is a html file or plain text
TEXT_CHANGELOG_STYLE	A html style for the changelog when in plain text mode and the error message displayed when the changelog could not be loaded
ADDITIONAL_HTML_REPLACEMENTS	Enables very basic formatting for plaintext files using a syntax vaguely simmilar to markdown

FTP Settings

Setting	Description
FTP_READONLY_USER_NAME	Username of the readonly ftp user used to download the launcher and game files
FTP_READONLY_USER_PASS	Password of the readonly ftp user used to download the launcher and game files
FTP_BASE_URL	Base URL of your ftp server + base directory of your game update files. Must contain tailing '/'
FTP_GAME_FILE_UPDATE_FOLDER	Folder in which the game files defined in the content manifest are located on the server
FTP_GAME_CONTENT_FILE	Name of the content manifest files
FTP_GAME_VERSION_FILE	Name of the game version file
FTP_GAME_CHANGES_FILE	Name of the changelog file
FTP_LAUNCHER_VERSION_FILE	Name of the launcher version file

Launch Settings

Setting	Description
GAME_EXE_FILE_NAME	Name of your game's executeable file
GAME_EXE_ARGUMENTS	Command line arguments to launch your game with (if any)

Setting up the required files using the ManifestGenerator project

Simply compile the ManifestGenerator project and run the application with the following command line arguments:

ManifestGenerator <game-dir> <output-dir>\content.xml <game.exe> <overwrite-manifest:true|false>

:: for example like this:
ManifestGenerator D:\projects\MyGame\bin D:\projects\MyGame\content.xml MyGame.exe true

This will generate two nessecary files, content.xml (or what you named it) and content.version. If the generator was not able to determine the game version you'll get the error message Could not determine game version. Please enter yourself.. If that happens you need to manually enter it in the content.version file

GameVersion=0.1.0

This information is currently only used for display in the launcher as to what the current version of your game is as the updater checks for file size, last write and the file hash to determine if the file still is up to date.

You now have three of the nessecary four files, the two content manifest files and your previously prepared changelog. The last nessecary file is the launcher.version file. There is an example prepared inside the AncillaryFiles directory. The file contains the current version of the launcher as well as the URL where the new launcher can be downloaded.

VERSION=0.1.0
FILENAME=ftp://your.ftp.server/GameLauncher.exe

Further setup and customization

With these settings in place the launcher is up and running, patching your files and itself if you choose to update the launcher itself.

While that is all you need to do for a working launcher you can change a few things more.

One thing you absolutely should do is changing the launchers window and executeable icon. The executeable icon is easily changed in the project properties. The window icon can be changed using the forms designer as a setting on the FormLauncher form itself. There you could also change the form design, colors and layout.

If you want your launcher to support more languages (or have localized sidebar links and link titles) you can change the localization.xml. The layout is quite simple, every language has a language block (with one language nessecarily marked as isFallback="true") that contains multiple nodes for each available text.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<localization>
  <lang key="en-US" isFallback="true">
    <entry key="Key.Of.This.Entry">Text of this entry</entry>
  </lang>
  <lang key="de-DE">
    <entry key="Key.Of.This.Entry">Text dieses Eintrags</entry>
  </lang>
  <lang key="es-ES">
    <entry key="Key.Of.This.Entry">Texto de esta entrada</entry>
  </lang>
  <lang key="fr-FR">
    <entry key="Key.Of.This.Entry">Texte de cette entrée</entry>
  </lang>
  <lang key="zh-CN">
    <entry key="Key.Of.This.Entry">該條目的文字</entry>
  </lang>
  <lang key="ru-RU">
    <entry key="Key.Of.This.Entry">Текст этой записи</entry>
  </lang>
</localization>

Finishing the setup

After all that is done, build the game launcher and upload the update information files, the game files and the launcher to your ftp server and give it a testing run in your IDE. if anything is configured wrong the application should run into exceptions telling you what went wrong.

Have Questions?

If you have any questions, feel free to message me at der_wisch ( at ) outlook.com or send me a message on reddit (/u/der_wisch)

Want to contribute?

Found a bug? Want your language in the default translations/texts? Just create a pull request with your changes to the localization.xml

ToDo/Ideas/Future Vision

• Merge setup of settings and icons into one step/place
  • Move configuration/setup to xml(?) file and add custom build step generating the nessecary code before build
• Add missing default translations
• Abstract the update mechanism further to allow implementation into other launchers or games themselves
• Add the launcher update credentials to the launcher.version file to allow downloads from other servers (for example when the server moves to another domain)