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[hermes]

Manila Dwarf Fortress Launcher
v1.11

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This is an unofficial, simple launcher application written in Java Swing and runnable on Windows, Mac or Linux. This is the launcher I've always wanted to have; something which manages the installation and prevents DF folder clutter around releases and allows easy access to common text-file features...

• Edit common startup options
• Set font and tileset easily
• Choose from a variety of dazzling colour schemes
• Automatically download a new install or update to the latest version of DF
• Works with your existing install, just copy it into the Launcher's DF folder
• Automatically copies settings, saves and embark profiles to updated version
• Automatically packs exported legends files and maps into a folder for each region
• Check out the devlog before you play
• Apply mods easily and get an idea of their compatibility

Spoiler: Screenshots (click to show/hide)

No mods yet 

Feedback on appearance, features and functionality is most welcome.

Thanks, and enjoy!

Spoiler: How the mod loader works (click to show/hide)

Valdemar made an excellent Mod Manager (DFMM) but that program highlights several problems with trying to automate the modding process.  Check out the DFMM OP; long story short, it is impossible to combine or remove mods guaranteed-error-free without user oversight.  Since this runs counter to my usability mandate, I've decided to employ a less than perfect but reasonably functional system... you can select mods to install from a list of those in the Launcher's mods directory and jiggle around their load-order kind of like an Elder Scrolls game.  The Launcher will look at all the files in each mod and check for overwrites and highlight each mod; green if there are no overwrites, orange if some files are overwritten, and red if the whole mod is overwritten by another mod.  The last mod on the list is the last to be applied so will always be green.  It's much cruder than Valdemar's work, but provides a quick and easy guide as to which mods are compatible.

Further, the community doesn't seem to have developed a standard method for packing mods.  Some are just text files, some are zips, each contains the data in a different root directory.  Fine for human installation (perhaps), horrible for computers!  Thus, I'm going ahead and making the simplest system possible; the mod zip needs to have all the relevant files within a folder called "raw" that mimics the DF raw folder structure.  This way, the folder and its contents can be blindly copied over the DF raw folder and everything will be good to go.  Users will probably have to engage in minimal folder-work to make mod files acceptable.

The launcher will store a backup of the original raw folder, so mods will always be applied on a clean slate, and uninstallation is not an issue.

For example...

• In the launcher's "mods" directory each mod is in its own folder.  The folder name is how it is titled in the launcher.
• In the first level of that folder is a folder called "raw" which, as subsequent images show, replicates the structure of the DF raw folder.  Easy!
• There can be other folders or documents in the mod's folder, such as a readme file, but there must be a "raw" folder.

Spoiler: Links to Tilesets, Colour schemes and Mods... (click to show/hide)

Tilesets
Novelty tilesets by GoombaGeek
Taffer's tileset & colour scheme by (shock) Taffer

Colour schemes


Mods
Weapons
Broken Arrow - Archery rebalance by Joben

Farming
Seasonal Crops by RavingManiac

Adventure
Wanderer's Friend by Lofn
Adventure Useful Crafting by McFeel
Spellcrafts by Eric Blank

Total conversions
Dumbass of the Year edition by GoombaGeek
Rise of the False Gods by Spiderking50
Genesis Mod by Deon

Spoiler: Changes (click to show/hide)

1.11
Removed the Regions tab - only half implemented and not so useful
Removed clutter from the folder structure, including all mods for the time being since they shall be broken in the aftermath of DF2014
Tried to implement system .ttf file but ran into cross-platform issues retrieving font file locations, which are necessary since I want to copy the font file directly into the DF directory - on hold
Tried to implement utilities tab, but finding out DF Hack seamlessly installs over a DF install killed all my enthusiasm for this, hehe.  Doesn't seem to be worth the trouble.

1.10
Fixed launcher detecting when DF terminates in Windows
Fixed Region tab in Windows (very iffy folder renaming there)
Fixed scaled region map blockiness
Fixed aquifer toggle to work with mods

1.09 beta
Manila Dwarf Fortress Launcher
Skipping 1.01 release and going straight to the next iteration which will include a basic mod-loader (hence Vanilla is no more).
The Succession fort manager has been simplified and redesigned into a Region tab, allowing you to quickly browse your generated worlds, preview the map, and import or export from/to zip files for succession games etc.
Mod tab that allows a combination of mods to be applied quickly.  User can change order of application and has some gross feedback on mod compatibility.
Changed Launcher version checking site since DFFD seems to be blocking Java applications ()
Everything mostly working on Linux, but I know some things don't work on Windows yet... more testing 

1.01 - Not released
Minor UI tweaks
Added Taffer's tileset and a couple more colour schemes
Added varied ground tiles & engravings toggles
Succession game tab to help manage succession game settings, pack/unpack saves, track number of turns etc.
Vanilla Launcher stays open (can close with dialog close button) and automatically sorts stuff out when DF closes

1.00
Misc. tweaks
Economy checkbox removed... seems little used IMO... erk, seems it was totally removed and I didn't know, hehe
Fixed updating an install on a foreign OS
Fixed CP437 characters in world names (man that took ages to do)
Fixed the VL update checking in a slightly better way

0.97
Added the excellent Dwarfletter Classic tileset
Really added two more colour schemes rather than just saying so
VL updating should be ok on windows now (seems windows didnt release the txt file after scanner and printwriter were closed... a 5s timer "fixed" this, not sure why, could be an artefact of the slow memory stick used to test on windows, but at least it seems to work now.)

v0.96
Checks for updates properly(ish?)
More colour schemes included
All key variables moved to a text file so settings can be altered by user if necessary
Progress bar threaded

v0.95
On startup, copies all Legends mode exports for each region into a separate folder in the df directory (these also migrate with updates)
Loads colour schemes from a text file, same data format as df/wiki.  Default and Lee's scheme are still built in.
Automatically notifies you if a new version of the launcher is available, checks once a week
Keeps DF zip/bz2 files in the temp directory and will install from them preferably to save downloading

v0.9 beta
Hyperlinks in the devlog now open in your browser
Deletes old saves when restoring, instead of overwriting
Aquifer toggle added 
Copies embark profiles across to new installs (thanks to KingKaol's thread for that tip)
Shows a colour scheme sample
More colour schemes
Backup & restore fixed (were horribly broken), saves & backups follow their version through updates

v0.83 beta
Actually updates now - fixed (hopefully)
Update doesn't preserve old settings - fixed
Colour scheme chooser - added
Misc bug squashes
Changed version detection file to "release notes.txt" since "file changes.txt" didn't get updated for 34.04, another bad choice I had made there
Aquifer toggle possibly on the way... but it means raw fiddling 
Temperature, weather, graphics and black space checkboxes removed - deemed unnecessary clutter

Spoiler: Known Issues (click to show/hide)

Some functions, such as updating, may require a restart to refresh the region tab
Importing regions from more advanced versions of DF causes some mayhem, but who would do that?   Is there a way to check version number from the save file?
Having two installs of the same version will cause updating to go nuts
Kind of long startup time needs to be improved

[klingon13524]

PTF

[Sowelu]

This is relevant to my interests...

[Scarpa]

Very nice. Simple and covers everything I need it to. Especially nice was it picking up my init settings automatically, or at least your defaults match mine. 

An 'import existing install' type feature that preserves init and art settings would be cool, but now that I have it setup I'll probably never 'import' again.

[Jalapeņo Cheesepuffs]

Trying it out on Mac OS X 10.6.8 straightaway, will update if things start exploding, or else work. 

Status Update v1: .jar opened without conflict, am attempting a fresh install for DF (from the launcher). DL speed is ticking along slowly, but it seems to be making progress

Status Update v2: Worldgen tab doesn't display anything, but other tabs are fully functional. Tried "Launch DF" and VL closed, but no visible script ran and DF did not open. Poop. Will try running the download from the DF site, because honestly I have yet to do that.

Status Update v3: The df.osx file from the DF site works fine, and it seems that the df.osx from the VL is getting changed in some way. Will look into it a bit more before I head off to bed.

Status Update v4: No luck on getting the VL to launch DF, but the raw editor aspect of it works marvelously (replaced the faulty df_osx folder with the one from the site, so I can make changes with the VL and just boot up DF manually, which rocks in itself). Did I mention this is awesome?

[Sowelu]

If you're going to release a Windows version of something, please convert your text files to use Windows newlines.  Yeah Windows is dumb like that, but otherwise when you open it in Notepad (ie, simple double-click the file), everything shows up on the same line...

Other than that, it works great!  Very impressed.

I'd like to suggest a little more intelligence about window size.  I set it to use graphical tiles, and it wound up wider than my screen (and very short).  Is it possible in Java to detect the screen size?  One way or another, it would be nice to at least have standard options like "Make this an 800x600 window" and have it auto-size to something sane.

Oh wait...It seems to reset the window dimensions and the sound volume every time I run it.  Do not like that part.

[Scarpa]

If you're going to release a Windows version of something, please convert your text files to use Windows newlines.  Yeah Windows is dumb like that, but otherwise when you open it in Notepad (ie, simple double-click the file), everything shows up on the same line...

I work with Unix files a ton on Windows and a nice trick is to open in Wordpad. Usually if you use 'Open With...' on a txt file and select Wordpad it will be in the context menu after that. Alternatively you could use Notepad++ which pretty much rocks.

[hermes]

Very nice. Simple and covers everything I need it to. Especially nice was it picking up my init settings automatically, or at least your defaults match mine. 
An 'import existing install' type feature that preserves init and art settings would be cool, but now that I have it setup I'll probably never 'import' again.

Thanks for the feedback....  It imports the settings it can change automatically, and should leave everything else as is.  It didn't add tilesets already present before, but I made it do that now.  It'll copy in any new tileset referenced in init.txt and present in the /data/art/ folder (but of course no raw-changing-graphics pack support).  Good idea!

Status Update v2: Worldgen tab doesn't display anything, but other tabs are fully functional.

Yes, I was planning to implement a worldgen tab mainly because I thought it might be easy to copy and paste seeds.  But now I'm thinking this is kind of redundant because the command line world gen is paltry compared to what you can do in game.... Can you specify all the seeds at command line?  What do you think?

Tried "Launch DF" and VL closed, but no visible script ran and DF did not open. Poop. Will try running the download from the DF site, because honestly I have yet to do that.
Status Update v3: The df.osx file from the DF site works fine, and it seems that the df.osx from the VL is getting changed in some way. Will look into it a bit more before I head off to bed.
Status Update v4: No luck on getting the VL to launch DF, but the raw editor aspect of it works marvelously (replaced the faulty df_osx folder with the one from the site, so I can make changes with the VL and just boot up DF manually, which rocks in itself). Did I mention this is awesome?

Thank you so much for these tests  .  I've done the googling I should have done before, and perhaps the right OSX command is "open dwarfort.exe"?  So I'll try that for the next release.

If you're going to release a Windows version of something, please convert your text files to use Windows newlines.  Yeah Windows is dumb like that, but otherwise when you open it in Notepad (ie, simple double-click the file), everything shows up on the same line...

Learn something new every day.  Thanks, you know I actually saw the text files like that when I tested on windows, but for some reason I totally ignored it, hehe.  Should be ok now.

I'd like to suggest a little more intelligence about window size.  I set it to use graphical tiles, and it wound up wider than my screen (and very short).  Is it possible in Java to detect the screen size?  One way or another, it would be nice to at least have standard options like "Make this an 800x600 window" and have it auto-size to something sane.

Oh wait...It seems to reset the window dimensions and the sound volume every time I run it.  Do not like that part.

Oh my, I didn't even think about the window size, I thought those values determined the tile dimensions, guess that changed with SDL years ago... man I'm slow.  Good idea, made it autoset to 80% screen width and height.

Sound is funny, it shouldn't touch that value (I assumed nobody ever changes that) and in my tests the launcher never alters the sound value.

Oh, does anyone know if the BLACK_SPACE tag does anything anymore?

[Symmetry]

Please use NotePad++, it's much better.
Easily available online.

[Scarpa]

Unfortunately the update function deleted the df directory and everything in it. I had neglected to use the backup save feature prior to that as well. Personally not a big deal as I'm still messing around but FYI for anyone else I guess.

I will test out some scenarios and post up a real 'bug report' for you later, hermes.

[nwr1_cronus]

This is a wonderful utility. I had been wondering for quite awhile why an easy update feature hadn't been added to common packs, notably the LNP.  The only addition that this utility really needs is a toggle for aquifers, as I know that is a make or break for many players.  Keep up the good work!

[hermes]

Unfortunately the update function deleted the df directory and everything in it. I had neglected to use the backup save feature prior to that as well. Personally not a big deal as I'm still messing around but FYI for anyone else I guess.

I will test out some scenarios and post up a real 'bug report' for you later, hermes.

Thanks for the report, and sorry about that.  This is exactly what I feared!  My test on linux went so-so, may I ask what OS you are using and if there were any error messages?  Any files in the temp directory?  It could be that unpacking didn't go as planned... more graceful degredation in the next version.

This is a wonderful utility. I had been wondering for quite awhile why an easy update feature hadn't been added to common packs, notably the LNP.  The only addition that this utility really needs is a toggle for aquifers, as I know that is a make or break for many players.  Keep up the good work!

Thanks, I am stubborn and refuse to turn them off, so good to hear what others like: aquifer button in.  I am thinking about taking out temperature and weather because the fortress mode speedup renders fps saving for normal users unnecessary.

[Scarpa]

Thanks for the report, and sorry about that.  This is exactly what I feared!  My test on linux went so-so, may I ask what OS you are using and if there were any error messages?  Any files in the temp directory?  It could be that unpacking didn't go as planned... more graceful degredation in the next version.

This is Windows 7 x64. I retried and this is what happened:
- Detected imported install and new version, chose upgrade.
- Download went fine and unpack apparently worked but the path went by too fast for me to note, somewhere in vlData, though.
- Finished with last step being 'Delete old install'. UI showed 'No df install found' and df folder was gone. There was one file 'vlData\temp\latestDF.zip' and an empty log file.
- 'Get Latest' button was still enabled so tried that, but errored on unpack step because the df directory was missing.
- Re-created empty df folder and was able to download and create a new install.

I also used the 'backup save' function before the initial upgrade and while it did backup the saves in vlData the restore button was never enabled.

[hermes]

Thank you, Scarpa.  Was your install (the exe file) in the df dir?  I think I've fixed this, the launcher is designed to handle multiple installs so I had only accounted for each install to be in its own subdirectory of the df folder.  Thus, if you upgraded with the install in the df dir it would delete that dir and then have no place to unpack to.  Doh  .  Spotted this yesterday, will upload tonight.

Anybody run successfully on a mac?

[aldantefax]

Great idea, glad to see that something like this exists, especially with lots of DF bugfix incremental releases recently. A couple of things:

* Is there a way to have it automatically version check on launch to see if a new version of DF is available?
* When's auto-update for the Vanilla DF Launcher itself coming? I didn't even notice there was a new version until I went hunting for it.

Thanks for all the great work, though! It's been very appreciated.