Let's make a good Doom Frontend together!

[Tormentor667]

Well, guys, I know there is ZDL (and several other frontends in development) and it is doing a fine job. Though, it isn't the best thing to organize and play our whole collection of wads in a nice, solid way with a beautiful GUI so I came up with an idea: What about a nice Windows/OS Frontend for your complete collection, that makes playing wads and original maps with various sourceports easy as hell and also displays various information about the project within the frontend?

Similar programs come to my mind here:
Emulation Control Center (for roms and emus)
D-Fend Reloaded (for DOS games and DOSBOX
Quake Injector (for Quake

The idea behind this is that people can keep track of their wads and addons for Doom, rate them, have some kind of preview for them (e.g. showing the TITLEPIC if there is one, recording movies and screenshots which where displayed in the Frontend as well, showing all the info from the text file in a nice and organized way (auto-import!) and stuff like that) and making it easy to play it with predefined sourceports and IWADs.

Feature ideas are as follows

• Complete list of all wads/addons with various columns to sort them (year, type, author, personal rating, etc)
  
• Autoloading information directly from the text file (shouldn't be easy to code)
  
• Displaying the TITLEPIC lump if presend (other than that, no image will be display)
  
• Recording videos and making screenshots for the frontend (check D-Fend Reloaded for this)
  
• A search function (search by various tags)
  
• Some kind of interchanging format (so people can share their database content, check ECC datfiles for this)
  
• Configuration for sourceports, IWADs and stuff just like in ZDL3
  
• An /idgames interface which can download stuff directly from the archive (search function and stuff)

These are ideas I am throwing out and maybe others do have some suggestions as well. The only thing that is missing I guess is someone volunteering to code/program this, maybe even opensource via Github or whatever so people can collaborate.

Well, I'd find this kinda useful, and it is already helping me a lot to keep track of my Oldgames (D-Fend Reloaded) and my Emulators/Roms (ECC, now that my SNES has finally passed a horrible death) maybe other people as well :) Just share your thoughts!

[duh]

[Phml]

The only thing that is missing I guess is someone volunteering to code/program this

Yep, because obviously coming up with ideas is the hard part. ;)

Cheap jabs aside, after trying QuakeInjector it'd be fantastic to have something similar for Doom.

[Pirx]

Phml said:

Yep, because obviously coming up with ideas is the hard part. ;)

it'd be fantastic to have something similar for Doom.[/B ]

quake injector was mentioned in a similar thread a few years ago. Doom is in the fortunate situation of having idgames as a central archive with many mirrors, which makes a doom injector quite feasible.

that should help (re-)introducing doom to gamers today. People don't like to fumble with command lines like many of us did, and such a frontend would make playing doom wads as easy as it gets.

[40oz]

This sounds like iTunes for doom. Sounds kinda cool as I can be a nut about categorizing my music by such details. It would be cool to have those same options for doom. Also some multiplayer doom connectors like IDE have GetWAD which scans wad databases for a specific filename. Something like that would be cool.

[Arjak]

This is a totally awesome idea. I currently use CDL as my frontend, which is extremely helpful, but I do have a few issues with it. For one, it tends to lump all of the wads into one list, with no sorting options. You can go into a folder list, but that's a little cumbersome. Being able to associate a wad with its deh files and a preferred source port would be great.

[schwerpunk]

Good ideas. Might I also suggest looking at the Foobar music player for some inspiration in how to make a good, modifiable UI.

Although I do think you should start small. A frontend like ZDL, but with ratings; extra tabs for titlepics, textfiles, etc, would already be revolutionary.

[Sqrrt121]

If you do this, hopefully a moderator/admin will put up a promotion campaign for it (just an idea) could you add blood, duke 3d and shadow warrior? On yang it is rare there are any rooms available and anyone online.

[Tormentor667]

40oz said:

Sounds kinda cool as I can be a nut about categorizing my music by such details.

That's what I do as well for movies, music, oldgames and roms - only my collection of Doom wads is horrible without having some kind of appealing frontend.

I am sure people would love a tool like that. I also added features suggestions and ideas to the first post.

Still, without someone being able to code/program this, we are lost :D

[Devalaous]

Sounds like a great idea. I am terrible at keeping wads organised, especially now that I bet test stuff and have like 6 revisions floating around the folder

[Tormentor667]

By the way... if there isn't someone who'd be willed to do it for free, what about finding someone who does it for money and we donate it in a pot? Like a Kickstarter project?

[schwerpunk]

Tormentor667 said:
By the way... if there isn't someone who'd be willed to do it for free, what about finding someone who does it for money and we donate it in a pot? Like a Kickstarter project?

Absolutely. In fact, I'm more surprised this doesn't happen more often in the Doom community. We've got a Hell of a lot of talent (for instance, I'd pay (or pay extra) for early access to GZDoom Builder svn builds). But I guess there are enough people that enjoy doing it for free.

Anyway, I guess this frontend would be free, but would require a certain amount of capital before it could be developed. I'm a poor student, but if we could get some real talent (with assurances that they wouldn't just split with our euros), I definitely wouldn't mind contributing a chunk.

Any volunteers? Maybe even talk to Biohazard (original creator of ZDL, I believe) or Hypnotoad (creator of Rocket Launcher).

[Krispy]

Features I want:
* Ability to erase duplicates (with safety checks for files with identical names)

* “Playlists" for wads I want to get out of the way or play in a series

* Some sort of FTP helper for uploading

* Ability to add whatever other info category I want to my wads (port info, comments, what kind of wine and/or cheese it goes best with, etc.)

[sirjuddington]

I have thought of doing something like this in the past, however I'm too busy with SLADE currently, and probably will be for a long while.

Either way, something like this would be quite nice to have.

[kmxexii]

Oh, another feature suggestion, though idk how feasible it would be - play music from IWADs / PWADs like the WADs are music albums themselves

[GreyGhost]

A bit like XMPlay does with its WAD plugin?

Tormentor667 said:

By the way... if there isn't someone who'd be willed to do it for free, what about finding someone who does it for money and we donate it in a pot? Like a Kickstarter project?

Not my preferred option, but so long as it's open source and not tied to any particular OS I can probably talk myself into donating.

[Ed]

A lot of emulators have the ability to load data from a .zip file. Being able to extract from a .zip to a temp directory and launch would be nice.

[Sokoro]

I am completly fine with my QZDL launcher, though some ideas here sound good. Would it be client only app or would it connect to some server?

[Gez]

A client app connects to a server; otherwise it's not a client app. :p

I see no reason why a launcher would need to work in client-server mode. At most it could incorporate some clients as optional, additional features, such as duplicating Doomseeker or IDE's features.

[Jimmy]

I would very much like something like this. :)

[fx02]

I always wondered why we don't have some kind of launcher to maintain (play/record/preview) demos, wads, megawads, txt files, etc... I found one nice launcher and made small modifications to it (Competition Doom launcher) so I'm using it now for playing and watching demos, but you can use only one engine from it right now.

[Tormentor667]

Gotta push this, so it doesn't get lost :P

[fraggle]

This seems like a great idea. I don't think I've ever found a launcher that I truly liked (well, I wrote my own once, but it wasn't how I'd design one nowadays)

Everyone seems to be asking for their favourite feature in this thread so I'll wish for mine: I'd like to see a simple interface that doesn't necessarily do everything and doesn't incorporate every feature requested in this thread. My beef with all the existing launchers is that they're too cluttered and overcomplicated.

[exl]

I'm somewhat interested in building something like this. But there's lots of features being mentioned here, some of which I feel don't belong in a Doom launcher type application. Things like recording video, uploading to /idgames or playing music would over-complicate things and just not fit within the realm of a database + launcher.

After thinking about it for a while, how does this sound as a rough feature outline?

Local WAD library
    ?? Index based on WAD file hash and remote\local synced hash library, linked with /idgames archive
    Parse info from text files, WAD files
    Categorized and\or filtered
    Thumbnail listing, thumbnaail + details listing or just details listing
    Display TITLEPIC as thumbnail if there is any
    ?? Store WADs inside original zip or extracted somewhere
    WADs can be played directly from this screen, with common Doom engine options available (warp, skill, sound)

    Local WAD detail view
        Metadata parsed from text file
        Relevant WAD graphics: titlepic, help, interpic, ...
        WAD can be played from this screen same as from local library screen

Remote WAD library (/idgames)
    Browse using /idgames API
    Download to local library (FTP, HTTP, keep in mind idgames mirrors)
    Remote WAD detail view with textfile info
    Search & filter results only

List current downloads from remote archive, and keep previously downloaded files

Configuration
    WAD setup
        WAD paths to include in local library
        One path is the default, in which remote archive downloads will be placed

    Engine setup
        Engine config files exist with options for each engine
            Which IWADs (games) are supported
            Special commandline options (compatlevel and such), that can be used when run
        User can configure each engine, by pointing to the executable
        Preferences set for each engine

    IWAD setup
      User points to the IWADs available to them
      Can auto-detect from common install paths and Steam paths

[DaniJ]

^ Write an /idgames plugin for Snowberry and you're done.

[Six]

If need be there could be two user options for the launcher.

Normal and Advanced mode.

For those who want nothing more than essential options (the bare minimum if you like) then normal mode is ideal. However for those who like to configure their game as much as possible, an advanced mode would give them this ability. At least this way a lot of suggestions can be potentially implemented.

[duh]

[MTrop]

I made this a while back: MyIdGames

Requires at least Java 6 to run, but it's wrapped in an EXE so it's pretty easy to run. Can be run from command line or whatever if you have an OS that isn't Windows.

Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2

• Organizes downloaded stuff (and not idGames stuff) by game.
  
• Table layout for display.
  
• Can filter stuff by different criteria.
  
• Parses text file info and displays other map data on the main screen.
  
• Separates stuff into "Maps" and "Mods" (Mods have no maps).
  
• Interfaces with idGames for searching and browsing.
  
• Attempts to figure out Game and Port of downloaded things automatically.
  
• Runs selected WADs in correct ports, including multiple ones at once.
  
• Can run in a PORTABLE MODE (stores data in local folders, not HOME) so you can take your Doom collection with you.
  
• Can be bound to an idGames:// protocol handler for easy addition of idGames files.
  

EDIT: added screenshots

[Tormentor667]

exl said:

After thinking about it for a while, how does this sound as a rough feature outline?

Just taken a quick look at it and it seems to be pretty complete. :) A lot of features in there are quite useful and I didn't think about these on my own. So, are you already working on this?

[hobomaster22]

I like this idea and I'm willing to work on it. While I've developed in most popular programming languages, I would write it in C#. From my experience the .NET library runs circles around anything else. I can start looking into the local database. I think SQLCE will give all the functionality we need and probably more. I think the db is limited to 4GB but I don't see that being an issue.