Arachnotron Doom Launcher 1.1.4

Arachnotron Doom Launcher 1.1.4
A responsive cross platform launcher for GZDoom and similar ports based on QT. I'm not sure if this is the best place on these forums to post launchers so forgive me if this is the wrong place!
Website and Downloads: http://nephrite.uk/arachnotron
Gitlab: https://gitlab.com/Lycanite/arachnotron

About
So I wanted to learn how to make a QT Quick App as well as the basics of C++ and decided that I would work on a new Doom Launcher to do this! Also Arachnotron are the best Doom monsters so naturally that was the launcher's name. Please report any problems on Gitlab.

JSON Configs
Arachnotron uses human readable json files to manage profiles and categories, these can be edited within the launcher or by hand with a text editor. My current WIP project makes use of this through git to keep the files I use in multiplayer with my friends in sync for example. Multiple jsons can also be imported together to make things much quicker and easier.

Relative Paths
Arachnotron can use paths relative to the location of the profile json file, this means that people wanting to package together several wads/pk3s can do so and include a category and profile jsons at the root of their project ready for others to import. All paths use forward slashes / even in Windows.

Profile Level and Launch Level Resources
A list of files/folders can be added to a profile in a specific load order in the profile edit page. Then on the launch page, more files or folders can be added, this is good if for example you are using several gun wads and but want to keep changing map wads, as the profile gun resources remain unchanged, but the launch map resources can be constantly changed. In the future I want to add Engine level and maybe even Iwad level resources for things such as brightmaps.pk3 and lights.pk3 for GZDoom, for now only configs can be set per Engine.

Profile Art
Category and Profile icons and backgrounds can be included to make things look fancy!

Categories
Profiles can have a comma separated list of category names that they are allowed to show up in (case sensitive currently), each category can then be viewed, this works almost like a tagging system and also allows for profiles to contain categories that don't exist without causing problems.


Profiles
Profiles provide a list of files or folders to load as well as commonly used cvars, you can also add any other arguments you want at the profile level.

The profile launch page.


The profile edit page.


An example of a profile for my project showing the cvars that are commonly used with their reset to profile default buttons as well as a custom background image. You can also see the launch command preview that I've generated which is use for copying into launch scripts or for testing the launch commands out.


A busier edit page of my project's main profile, many resources are loaded from paths that are relative to where the profile's json file is located, absolute paths can also be used but should be avoided if you plan on sharing the profile with others or bundling one with a project. This profile is quite large and all my other profiles inherit from it making managing them all at once incredibly easy.

Iwads
Iwad names and paths are set separately, this allows for profiles to be easily shared across multiple devices as there are no absolute paths needed, instead they just refer to an Iwad by name (currently case sensitive, but the edit profile page offers a drop down for selecting Iwads easily). The "Find Iwads In Folder" button can be used to be automatically find and add Iwads in a folder (based on their filenames).

Engines

Multiple engines can be added which are then set in profiles by name much like how Iwads work. The config path for an engine can also be set if needed as well.

I wonder, for IWADS, did you parse TITLEPIC from files, or have predefined pictures? Could it recognize user-made IWADs, or not?

On 4/1/2019 at 11:05 PM, Mere_Duke said:

I wonder, for IWADS, did you parse TITLEPIC from files, or have predefined pictures? Could it recognize user-made IWADs, or not?

Currently it uses predefined images, later on I want to look at reading wads and zips but this is quite a new thing for me so it'll be a while off.

From the title, I thought this was a weapon mod for a gun that fires arachnotrons. I am disappoint. :P

10 hours ago, Salt-Man Z said:

From the title, I thought this was a weapon mod for a gun that fires arachnotrons. I am disappoint. :P

Play @Darsycho's mods/addons, there are plenty of such crazy and cool stuff :D

On 4/11/2019 at 5:09 PM, Salt-Man Z said:

From the title, I thought this was a weapon mod for a gun that fires arachnotrons. I am disappoint. :P

Lol that does sound like a fun weapon. There is a mod I'm working on that fires green rats that can be ignited, dog-like demons, flying green snakes that spit out more rats, grues and big blue tentacle arachnotron-like things from rifts though.

I like this front end. I think I like it a lot.

It would be nice if you could set a folder location for "Additional Resource" wads. These wads would always be listed in the Additional Resource field for every game of its Category and would have a on/off toggle next to them.

Example:

If I click the Play button on Doom II I can then toggle Brutal Doom on before pressing Launch.

Or, I can toggle it off and turn on Russian Overkill + Colourful Hell + Bolognese instead, depending on what I want to play. This would be more streamlined that having to add and remove them each time I want to switch. 

I could create a profile for each combination of course but that would make the menu bloated and confusing. 

It would also be nice if there was an easier way to organize profiles without having to manually edit the profiles.json file with a text editor in order to rearrange them.

The Remove button seems to remove the entire Category. I'd change that for removing profiles instead, or get rid of it all together. With all due respect. 

On 8/18/2019 at 3:48 PM, Slybo said:

I like this front end. I think I like it a lot.

It would be nice if you could set a folder location for "Additional Resource" wads. These wads would always be listed in the Additional Resource field for every game of its Category and would have a on/off toggle next to them.

 

Example:

If I click the Play button on Doom II I can then toggle Brutal Doom on before pressing Launch.

Or, I can toggle it off and turn on Russian Overkill + Colourful Hell + Bolognese instead, depending on what I want to play. This would be more streamlined that having to add and remove them each time I want to switch. 

I could create a profile for each combination of course but that would make the menu bloated and confusing. 

 

It would also be nice if there was an easier way to organize profiles without having to manually edit the profiles.json file with a text editor in order to rearrange them.

 

The Remove button seems to remove the entire Category. I'd change that for removing profiles instead, or get rid of it all together. With all due respect. 

I'm glad to hear you like the launcher!

I'm going to look into showing the Profile Resources in the launch windows with toggles for each one, I've recently just overhauled a lot of the app's code and fixed a few issues, etc so now that that's out of the way I can look into adding more features like this.

The Remove button will remove either a category or profile depending on if you're in a category view or profile launch/edit view. You can add a new category by pressing the + on the category bar to better organise your profiles, I'll look into adding some form of sorting feature too.

I'm also going to look into adding Additional Resources for IWADs too when I get round to improving the IWAD management.

I've updated the Launcher to 1.1.0, you can find a download and update notes on the website.

What features does this have vs ZDL, Doom Launcher, and Rocket Launcher?

12 hours ago, Darkpixel said:

What features does this have vs ZDL, Doom Launcher, and Rocket Launcher?

It allows for advanced profiles, so for example you can create a profile that uses Doom 2 as an Iwad, has specific launch arguments set, has a list of cvars preloaded, a list of player classes added which can then be selected form a dropdown, etc.

You can then load additional files on top of a profile as well, so you could have a Project Brutality profile which has Doom 2 set as the Iwad and several gameplay wads including Project Brutality. Then from the launch view, you could load Back To Saturn X maps on top of that without having to edit the profile.

I'm going to look at expanding things even further as well such as having profiles on top of profiles.

The launcher is also built using Qt making it cross platform for Windows, Linux, (Mac though I don't have a Mac to build with) and in theory Android, though I'd have to explore that more.

I've updated the launcher to 1.1.1.

This adds automatic Iwad finding and mass profile/category importing.

This also fixes some file selection issues from 1.1.0 in the iwads and engines menu.

And another update (1.1.2), I've been working on this launcher a lot over the weekend. I've added Profile Inheritance one a profile can load Resources, Cvar, Players Classes and Additional Arguments from one or more other profiles! So you can have one large profile and then a few smaller ones that inherit from it and then add more files on top or use a different Iwad, etc.

Is there an instruction manual on how to install this launcher on Linux?

On 3/4/2019 at 3:22 AM, Lycanite said:

This may be a random question, but what is the IWad with the crystal? I really need to know. I like the launcher, even though I didn't try it yet, but I need to know what the IWad with the crystal is.

the only thing missing from this launcher is being able to see the demos of the maps