agreed.  Could be very useful.

lol you will just open this instead of demigod... wait for it to update/check for updates, then the "Play" button will become enabled and you just click "Play" and it will start demigod... and if you choose to you can install/uninstall/disable/update mods before you start it...

and of course moderators on the forums / officials will have the access to update the news section of the launcher with tourney info/updates on demigod ect.....

good news I'll have beta version done here soon....pacov do i have your ok to make a new thread about this?

well ive been working on this non stop for 2 days now.. I've got it about 90% complete for a releasable version

I just need to finish the following:

Installed Mods Tab:
Check for updates

Available Mods Tab:
Display the type of mod i.e.,Multiplayer or UI

News Tab:
Display the news (haha sooooooooo simple just been working on  the above tabs)


heres a screenie of the available mods section so far:

The right side is to display the mod Discription/Updates(It process's a html file).

I'll give a detailed explanation to the modders on the limitation's of the html file later.

(May even make a tool to generate the file(to be newb friendly lol)not sure atm..)

anywyas im tired and in 5 hours ill of been up 24 hours... im going to head to bed now lol and try and get a releasable version of this done tomorrow

Hope you get some rest!

When you get a chance, more info on how all this works would be helpful.  Specifically, I assume this checks "Somewhere" for the latest file versions to download.  Where is that stuff going to be hosted/do we have options?

I decided to eliminate the use of html because I don't want people getting hacked (ie someone using a browser vulnerability to infect there pc) and decided to just make a lil GUI that will access text file with all the info..and display it like so:

above the "info" box you will be able to have a image for the mod displayed

that sounds like a good idea. 

I am sure pacov could get in touch with the frog man and perhaps we could get this thing rigged into a Stardock server. Stardock is willing to support DG so this shouldn't be that big of a deal.

If you can find a way to read downloads from a Google Code project page, that'd be a very convenient and safe way for mod authors to update their mods individually, without having to rely on a moderator to approve each update.

Either have it look at each mod project's download page for a specific label, or use a central project for the mod manager and give each mod author contributor rights to the project so they can upload files, labeled for their project.

All mods will be updated via FTP and every modder will have access to the FTP with only rights to the mods they have made...

That's fine in theory, but do you actually have an FTP server available for this purpose, and bandwidth to burn on it?

yup colocated server with a unmetered 100mbps connection

He gave me a brief overview of his system.  Sounds pretty viable.  You launch his program (consider it a front end for dg).  It checks for the latest mods and can display news etc (like tournament on X/X/XX or whatever news we deemed appropriate) and then you can launch demigod directly from the front end. 

Could be quite a useful tool... and I could "MAKE" it a required download if we only published mod updates through it (eg if you want uberfix 1.04, you must download it from this program). 

uberfix is going to be automaticly updated/downloaded and installed its a priority so there will be no need for demanding people to download it through my launcher they wont be able to stop it from being downloaded/installed unless they dont use my launcher and so will other important mods anything deamed necessary for demigod to function properly will automaticly be installed/update to the lastest version ..

well... please clarify - when you say "installed" do you mean that it will be enabled in the mod manager or just installed.  Its an important distinction.  I assume you mean just installed (which is what we want). 

it will be installed and enabled

I'm looking for 2 tester's!

One with :

Windows Vista 32bit/64bit (doesn't matter)

One with :

Windows 7 32bit/64bit (doesn't matter)

Credit will be given to those that help before I release the first version (today if nothing goes wrong its completely finished aside from the news section)

Can we make it so that it would not be enabled by default?  For instance, we wouldn't want favormod enabled 100% of the time as its a specialty game.  We wouldn't even want uberfix or the enhanced ai mod enabled 100% of the time either.  The reason is that folks without these mods won't be able to join games hosted by the folks with the mods enabled - and we won't have a 100% adoption rate using your launcher.  I can get us a 100% adoption rate for anyone that participates in the upcoming tournaments, but that's about it. 

Also, are you really sure that your program enables the mods by default?  A quick test would be to disable whatever mod your are talking about in the mod manager.  Then delete the mod.  Then run your launcher and verify that it is now showing up as enabled in the mod manager. 

If you actually have any flexibility, I'd say enable the enhanced ui mod by default and all other mods should be disabled by default.

I can test for you in windows 7 64.

You able to get on ventrilo?


@ the above quote:

I'll do that I guess till by some mirracle we can get stardock to impliment this into demigod..and by default all mods that are downloaded and installed by my launcher...are disabled.. as for mods previously installed on the system thats up to the  user's computers settings...but in my "Installed Mods" tab it shows if they are enabled/disabled and you can enable/disable them...

Well... the initial goal is not to have SD integrate your installer.  The goal is to make it a requirement such that anyone wanting access to the newest mods to use this program... and that goal is easily accomplished by only making the latest mods available only through your installer.  That, combined with the tournaments I'll be running, we'll see a decent adoption rate.  We've already seen a pretty large increase in folks using my combined install package as its required for the tournaments. 

I do not like the idea of only making the UberFix installable through a third party program, sorry.  That will not happen.  I'll happily support this program, but will not require it.

lol i so just noticed something i should of noticed a long time ago "enabled =" in the mod_info.lua does not change if the mod is enabled/disabled it only hides/shows it in the ingame mod manager.... lol ive looked all over my registry can't find where mods are  truely enabled/disabled...I'm tired and ill figure this out when i wake up...going to sleep now....I'd imagine somewhere the UID's for mods are stored somewhere  with a boolean value....

You'd be correct: they're at the bottom of My Documents\My Games\Gas Powered Games\Demigod\game.prefs in a table called active_mods, keyed by UID.

yea thanks cowbuttzex(on ventrilo with him and some other peopl) beat you to it though thanks :-p wooo I can almost gaurantee a public release by tomorrow ...