Homecoming Launcher Public Beta

[Greycat]

Seemed to install all right, other than not creating a shortcut until I ended the task and relaunched it. Nice little reorganization to the files, too.

 

Edit: With this seeming to have portability as one of the goals... I know this isn't *tied* to the launcher, but somewhere in the stretch, is there any means of being aware of different resolutions and how they affect window placement? (I'm thinking of, say, someone having this on a USB drive and going between a home system and laptop. I know me jumping between my desktop - 2560x1440 - and either my mini or laptop (1920x1080) = "windows will be overlapping or really spaced out.") Obviously *not* a priority right now. Just a thought.

Edited October 14, 2020 by Greycat

[Blackfeather]

41 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Seemed to install all right, other than not creating a shortcut until I ended the task and relaunched it. Nice little reorganization to the files, too.

 

Edit: With this seeming to have portability as one of the goals... I know this isn't *tied* to the launcher, but somewhere in the stretch, is there any means of being aware of different resolutions and how they affect window placement? (I'm thinking of, say, someone having this on a USB drive and going between a home system and laptop. I know me jumping between my desktop - 2560x1440 - and either my mini or laptop (1920x1080) = "windows will be overlapping or really spaced out.") Obviously *not* a priority right now. Just a thought.

In the meantime, using the /wdw_save_file "custom_name" and /wdw_load_file "custom_name" commands is a nice way to work around this - for example, having a file arrangement for a smaller resolution, and then another for a larger one. Hope it helps out!

[Ura Hero]

Installs and runs just fine.  Couple of things to consider:

 

1. Play button is extremely small on a 4k monitor.

 

2. You broke all of the keybinds and macros that use files.   I understand the need for a clean break, but you caused a lot of people a lot of work to fix the pathing.

 

3. Support for Dual Boxing seems to be broken.  Or at least so far I cannot get ISBoxer to launch the game.  Not that I dual box a lot, but there are times that I want to content by myself that otherwise I would need a small group for,  Usually this is when I don't have time to do it all in one go and will only be able to do a few missions here and there between doing other things.

Edited October 14, 2020 by Ura Hero

[Greycat]

7 minutes ago, Ura Hero said:

2. You broke all of the keybinds and macros that use files.   I understand the need for a clean break, but you caused a lot of people a lot of work to fix the pathing.

Testing here, it works. But, I have all my binds in an external directory (c:\binds) and have since live, so they're not in the default directory. But relying on the defaults, I suppose that would break, given the file structure changes.

 

10 minutes ago, Ura Hero said:

3. Support for Dual Boxing seems to be broken.  Or at least so far I cannot get ISBoxer to launch the game.

Not sure what ISBoxer is, but I just fired up and ran both accounts at once - and can switch between them, still having control on both. What if you just use the client to launch both?

[GM Korvin]

15 minutes ago, Ura Hero said:

Support for Dual Boxing seems to be broken.  Or at least so far I cannot get ISBoxer to launch the game.  Not that I dual box a lot, but there are times that I want to content by myself that otherwise I would need a small group for,  Usually this is when I don't have time to do it all in one go and will only be able to do a few missions here and there between doing other things.

Open your launcher settings, and select the "Allow multiple instances" option underneath the General Settings section.

[WanderingAries]

7 hours ago, Number Six said:

The hotspot extends quite a distance above the dots which may help. You can also right click on the profile button to get that menu if it's easier. Can you clarify which popup buttons you're talking about in your second comment?

 

What OS are you running on? You might try running the launcher with -nowdl to force it to fall back to standard GDI drawing instead of using Direct2D.

I'll check it out, but the image tearing is consistent for some reason. I ran in on the Win7 x64 install.

[Number Six]

2 hours ago, Ura Hero said:

Installs and runs just fine.  Couple of things to consider:

 

1. Play button is extremely small on a 4k monitor.

 

2. You broke all of the keybinds and macros that use files.   I understand the need for a clean break, but you caused a lot of people a lot of work to fix the pathing.

 

3. Support for Dual Boxing seems to be broken.  Or at least so far I cannot get ISBoxer to launch the game.  Not that I dual box a lot, but there are times that I want to content by myself that otherwise I would need a small group for,  Usually this is when I don't have time to do it all in one go and will only be able to do a few missions here and there between doing other things.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

For 1, you don't have to hit the play button, you can just click on the profile itself instead. For play and update actions, the whole thing acts as a giant button. Install and cancel require hitting the smaller button since those are more invasive actions.

 

What's your windows display scaling set to? The launcher should be fully compliant with modern high-DPI displays, including multimonitor support, and increase its resolution on those screens, but I'm not sure how many of the early field testers were running 4k.

 

For 2, can you elaborate a little on your setup and how it broke? There's an automatic migration that tries to copy things that look like keybind files to the correct place, but it doesn't work on some complex setups (like mine) using nested subdirectories or unusual naming conventions. Depending on what is failing there it could possibly be improved.

[Archiviste]

Installed and run successfully.

 

* Avast ran several scans, 1 on install, 1 when I clicked "Accept", 1 when after that, until it offered to whitelist the game.

 

* Since I use Island Rum for Windows (for reasons) I did not get the prompt to transfer files from my existing install over the the new one. Joy.

 

What would useful is a simple "What goes where" guide between the old install directory format and the new install directory format, for those of us who will have to move things manually (I can guess most of it from the deep dive post).

 

Edited October 14, 2020 by Archiviste

[Number Six]

5 minutes ago, Archiviste said:

* Since I use Island Rum for Windows (for reasons) I did not get the prompt to transfer files from my existing install over the the new one. Joy.

Unfortunately Island Rum for Windows doesn't seem to have a convenient registry key that can be used to find out where it's installed. On Mac it's always installed in the same place under the wine root, but on Windows it could be anywhere. 😕

[Pouncy]

I installed and ran the game launcher.  Quite a few settings are missing, and I have a major issue with my mouse cursor disappearing if I alt tab out of game. This of course, makes the game unplayable.

 

Ill look for the file that seems to be skipped but the folder structure is VERY different as noted.

 

For now I am using Tequila till I have to switch.

Edited October 14, 2020 by Smeemergoggin

[Ura Hero]

6 hours ago, GM Korvin said:

Open your launcher settings, and select the "Allow multiple instances" option underneath the General Settings section.

Multiple instances =/= dual boxing. 

 

The new launcher doesn't let ISBoxer control the windowing and broadcast keystrokes to the correct screen(s).  ISBoxer creates windows within windows similar to how Linux handles windows.  Each game instance is in it's own little sandbox.  Keystrokes, mouse movements, etc can be configured to either go to one window or to all windows.  It is a very nice system and works well with the way Tequila handles things albeit with some amount of manual configuration to get it all running.  The new launcher and client seem to not be playing nice with ISBoxer now.

 

A link might help if you are not acquainted with dual boxing software:  https://isboxer.com/

Edited October 14, 2020 by Ura Hero

[Ura Hero]

4 hours ago, Number Six said:

Thanks for the feedback!

 

For 1, you don't have to hit the play button, you can just click on the profile itself instead. For play and update actions, the whole thing acts as a giant button. Install and cancel require hitting the smaller button since those are more invasive actions.

 

What's your windows display scaling set to? The launcher should be fully compliant with modern high-DPI displays, including multimonitor support, and increase its resolution on those screens, but I'm not sure how many of the early field testers were running 4k.

 

For 2, can you elaborate a little on your setup and how it broke? There's an automatic migration that tries to copy things that look like keybind files to the correct place, but it doesn't work on some complex setups (like mine) using nested subdirectories or unusual naming conventions. Depending on what is failing there it could possibly be improved.

 

1. Ok.  Not terribly intuitive since there is a "Play" button, but it does work.   The whole GUI window is just a bit small for my eyesight on 4k at 100% scaling.  About 30% larger would be nice.  My wife says I am blind.  As long as I can't hear her it doesn't bother me.

 

2.  I have several binds that rotate through different files to set up different power configurations depending on circumstances.  Technically they still work as long as I keep my old folder around.  Realistically I don't plan to have my C:\ drive littered with old folders that aren't used for much of anything.  So I will end up having to migrate a bunch of files and do some mass renaming to get it all working again. 

 

For example:

 

C:\CoH\Binds\Jump\Jump1.txt

V "powexec_name Combat Jumping$$bind_load_file_silent C:\CoH\Binds\Jump\Jump2.txt"

 

C:\CoH\Binds\Jump\Jump2.txt

V "powexec_name Super Jump$$bind_load_file_silent C:\CoH\Binds\Jump\Jump1.txt"

 

I don't think there is much you can do about this.  It is a minor annoyance and I am a crotchety old man who doesn't have much of a lawn anymore to yell at people to get off of.  <waves cane wildly>

Edited October 14, 2020 by Ura Hero

[Archiviste]

3 hours ago, Number Six said:

Unfortunately Island Rum for Windows doesn't seem to have a convenient registry key that can be used to find out where it's installed. On Mac it's always installed in the same place under the wine root, but on Windows it could be anywhere. 😕

Thank you for the answer.  Oh well.
Deleted the previous install of the new Launcher.
Switched to Tequila for this test, it installed and asked me if I wanted to move files.
It did move *most* of them - but that's on me: I have so many costumes, AE files, etc. that I keep "_storage" sub-folders for those I don't use normally. Those I moved myself.

Moved the "screenshots" folder as was mentioned earlier in the thread.

 

The relocation of bind load files from data/ to settings/live/ might take a while to get used to. Thankfully, just putting something like "/bind_load_file nomelee.txt" still work.

Oddly I could not find the "PlayerCreatedSouvenirClues.txt" file anywhere. I could copy it back, but I'm unsure where to put it.

[WanderingAries]

3 hours ago, Ura Hero said:

 

2.  I have several binds that rotate through different files to set up different power configurations depending on circumstances.  Technically they still work as long as I keep my old folder around.  Realistically I don't plan to have my C:\ drive littered with old folders that aren't used for much of anything.  So I will end up having to migrate a bunch of files and do some mass renaming to get it all working again. 

 

For example:

 

C:\CoH\Binds\Jump\Jump1.txt

V "powexec_name Combat Jumping$$bind_load_file_silent C:\CoH\Binds\Jump\Jump2.txt"

 

C:\CoH\Binds\Jump\Jump2.txt

V "powexec_name Super Jump$$bind_load_file_silent C:\CoH\Binds\Jump\Jump1.txt"

 

I don't think there is much you can do about this.  It is a minor annoyance and I am a crotchety old man who doesn't have much of a lawn anymore to yell at people to get off of.  <waves cane wildly>

What if you try a find/replace search in the files? Otherwise, you can keep the same file structure for the binds themselves unless they reference specific game files.

[WanderingAries]

3 hours ago, Archiviste said:

Oddly I could not find the "PlayerCreatedSouvenirClues.txt" file anywhere. I could copy it back, but I'm unsure where to put it.

What is that file for?

[WanderingAries]

3 hours ago, Ura Hero said:

Multiple instances =/= dual boxing. 

 

The new launcher doesn't let ISBoxer control the windowing and broadcast keystrokes to the correct screen(s).  ISBoxer creates windows within windows similar to how Linux handles windows.  Each game instance is in it's own little sandbox.  Keystrokes, mouse movements, etc can be configured to either go to one window or to all windows.  It is a very nice system and works well with the way Tequila handles things albeit with some amount of manual configuration to get it all running.  The new launcher and client seem to not be playing nice with ISBoxer now.

 

A link might help if you are not acquainted with dual boxing software:  https://isboxer.com/

In addition to this, I can't see a way to actually login with a different account as signing out and then back in loads the browser stored (?) login without giving the option to switch after the Very First Time you sign into the launcher. From my little bit of testing, it appears that this is not actually used for the Dual-Boxing however as it's not signing you into the game itself.

[WanderingAries]

7 hours ago, Number Six said:

Unfortunately Island Rum for Windows doesn't seem to have a convenient registry key that can be used to find out where it's installed. On Mac it's always installed in the same place under the wine root, but on Windows it could be anywhere. 😕

*Note: I've not tested on Mac yet*
While true, the basic file structure (off hand) is something like Applications\coh on the Mac as the app gets installed there by default. There's probably numerous things IDK about the file structure and APFS is a headache as well to sort through as it is. I wish Paragon would get their tools to work on that filesystem already!

[Number Six]

49 minutes ago, WanderingAries said:

What if you try a find/replace search in the files? Otherwise, you can keep the same file structure for the binds themselves unless they reference specific game files.

It’s better in the long run to use relative paths rather than absolute, but still requires some editing.

 

37 minutes ago, WanderingAries said:

In addition to this, I can't see a way to actually login with a different account as signing out and then back in loads the browser stored (?) login without giving the option to switch after the Very First Time you sign into the launcher. From my little bit of testing, it appears that this is not actually used for the Dual-Boxing however as it's not signing you into the game itself.

You would need to log out of the forums first in order to do that, since we’re currently using them as the IDP and the authentication is integrated. But there really isn’t any reason to switch accounts in the launcher at the moment.

 

34 minutes ago, WanderingAries said:

*Note: I've not tested on Mac yet*
While true, the basic file structure (off hand) is something like Applications\coh on the Mac as the app gets installed there by default. There's probably numerous things IDK about the file structure and APFS is a headache as well to sort through as it is. I wish Paragon would get their tools to work on that filesystem already!

The location on the Mac doesn’t matter at all, since the game is running under wine it sees the virtualized file system as c:\coh

[Ura Hero]

Relative pathing would have been the right choice, but when I made those last year I had forgotten all about it and didn't see it in any reference that I used to make the files and binds.  When I fix them I will take the time to do it right this time.

[Taffer]

Working great on Linux (Mint 20) here via WINE. A few notes:

 

• Launched the first time via: WINEARCH=win64 nvidia-optimus-offload-glx wine ./hcinstall.exe (not that it matters, but from my existing Homecoming installation directory). The nvidia-optimus bit there forces it to render OpenGL using my GPU rather than the integrated graphics.
• I was able to point it at the existing install and copy over the files.
• Something was missed; the recharge count-down on my powers was disabled (that's one of the Options under "Beta"). I have no idea where/how that setting is stored.
• Two shortcuts were dropped on my desktop (one a .desktop, one a .lnk); I didn't try launching from either, I just deleted them. I assume the .lnk was from leaving the "Create menu item" option checked while hcinstall.exe was running.
• I assume I'll be replacing hcinstall.exe with {install-directory}/bin/win64/launcher.exe next time I play.
• Much faster at launching, and I like that the manifest is (presumably, because I haven't seen the URL yet) being served up via TLS now.

It's good enough to push me to abandon Atlas Launcher... it's already got a GUI and looks like it's doing all the things I wanted to do.

 

[Greycat]

17 hours ago, WanderingAries said:

What is that file for?

For player created souvenir clues - from AE missions.

[Archiviste]

Fooled around setting up the HC Launcher in Linux on a VM (VirtualBox 6.1). I used a 32 bit Linux distribution (in case some currently XP users would want to try on an older machine): Linux Mint 19.3 "Tricia" with Xfce desktop

 

It works as intended. The game itself... might be slow as molasses depending on the host machine (I run a fairly decent desktop and it was kinda slow even after I upped the default settings in VirtualBox).

 

[EmmySky]

Downloaded the new launcher and so far all is well.  It copied my saved keybinds, options, wdw and chat files perfectly as well as loading them perfectly in game with my existing 'push one button to do all that stuff' key.  Managed to run two accounts at once even.  To check the time sink, I reverified the files, and it seems to take about the same amount of time as Tequila did.  Went ahead and downloaded prerelease and beta too, just to see how long they would be, and they were decently fast.  So far, so good.  Thanks for the hard work!

 

 

EDIT:  I had to turn back on the cooldown timers, somehow they got turned off although they were saved in my options.txt....but I cannot swear they hadn't managed to turn off before the transfer to the new launcher, I may have been playing for days, weeks even, with them off and not noticed because....well we won't get into my netflix habits but I sometimes play distracted 😄

Edited October 16, 2020 by EmmySky

[Sylph Knight]

On 10/14/2020 at 1:35 AM, Number Six said:

* Ironically, we had originally been planning to switch to Sunrise as the recommended launcher to replace Tequila, but there was a long period of time where it seemed to have stalled out and died. By the time there was news about it being revived, a significant amount of work had already gone into this project and yielded a lot of features that would be unlikely to be available elsewhere -- package signing, heavily multithreaded and efficient operation, a framework designed with delta patching in mind, automated deployments, etc.

I'm not sure where that assumption came from. We had active consultation with at least two members from SCORE.

Nonetheless, congratulations on the launcher release. :)

[Taffer]

From the sound of things, the new launcher is portable (or mostly portable)... have you got someone to do a native Linux port? 'cause porting software is one of my things (~30 years experience; I used to be part of the Info-ZIP group) and I'd be happy to poke at it.