Spring RTS Engine

Argh wrote:Coming...

Freaky. Could you post the image files you're using? I'm not doing any mangling to the files, just loading them. It shouldn't resize them at all. I know it's annoying, but try saving them in various file-formats maybe?

Sure thing. Lemme try JPG real quick, that seems to be at exact sizes for the backgrounds...

That's it- JPG solves the problem. All right... just need to finish hacking away at the graphics, tweaking the settings for the buttons, etc.

Man, you guys are not going to believe this, tbh. It's going to be sooooo nice, to have a professional-looking launcher app... you have no idea...

Is there a generic argument in Windows to launch the default browser, as opposed to iexplore.exe? I don't want to annoy people using FireFox, Opera, etc., if I can help it.

Depending on how it is being launched internally, you can often just pass it a normal URL and Windows will use the default browser.

Tried that, with http://, it choked. I'll just try www, see if that works.

There is now. The internal approach uses a full out process object, which doesn't support the simple "Start a file" logic. So I've added an alternate path if you leave out the metadata associated with the process object.

Leave out the "WorkingDirectory" and "Arguments" attributes and use only "Target" and it will use a different variant of the "Start" command - this variant of the "start" command will use the default action associated with the target URL or file.

The only difference I've noticed is that in this case, I don't get a process object back - that means that the WaitForExit functionality breaks. So if you use this to launch a web-page and you're using this feature, it won't hide while the child process is running - AppLauncher will stay open and visible when you launch the webpage.

Or at least it should work that way. As it stands, it doesn't break any of my tests, and it launches Google in FireFox using the behaviour I described.

New version attached, just the exe since I'm sick of zipping. Once we get through this RAD cycle I'll put together a proper project site and documentation for the damned thing.

edit: shiat, no exes allowed. Curse you, phpbb. It's a zip this time.

Ooh, stupid question. How do I assign an ICO file? Just change the Properties, after making it? And what size standards do I have to adhere to, for XP?

[EDIT]
Nevermind. The installer can associate the ICO to the Desktop shortcut. Phew!
[/EDIT]

I can't thank you enough, Pxtl. Seriously, this is like night and day, compared to the old presentation of P.U.R.E.

Argh wrote:Ooh, stupid question. How do I assign an ICO file? Just change the Properties, after making it? And what size standards do I have to adhere to, for XP?

How do you mean? As in the IconTarget attribute (or whatever I called it)? You can use an executable and it should filch the icon from that one, or an ico file (which is really the same format) - the icon will only be used in teh top corner of the screen adn the system tray.

If you mean the AppLauncher icon, you'll have to change by tweaking your shortcut file in the properties, like you said. I wanted to keep this app general-purpose and there's no generalist way to customize the icon of an executable.... but if it's a pain you can send me an icon file and I can build the exe with it.

And yeah, both of those mean windows-usable icon files (not plain images).

Don't worry about it- I'm fairly sure I've got that covered. And if not, meh, it's on me anyhow.

I guess I should test the installer now. I have two projects, one major, one minor, to complete... and 2.5 hours...

What happends when you don't have .net 2.0?

You mean, what does AppLauncher do? Or what does Argh do?

AppLauncher fails and gives you a cryptic error message. I should've done this in Python, really, where I could bundle the interpreter in the exe.

well, if people get pure and it doesnt work...

Install requirements: Windows XP SP2 or later. SP2 comes with .Net 1.1 and 2.0 iirc. It is windows only, and anyone going online without a fully updated windows probably has more problems than a lack of .Net...