Doom Launcher - Doom frontend & database v3.7.4 (12/2023)

[robocop]

I tried drag and drop, and it said I already had the file there, asked if I wanted to overwrite. I didn't see doom.wad listed in IWads, and it wasn't selectable as an IWad when I went to play. Overwriting didn't fix it, so I just deleted doom.wad and readded it. That seems to have worked fine. Not sure what I did to give the launcher indigestion before, but now it's smooth sailing!

[hobomaster22]

Doom Launcher 3.5.0 release:

https://github.com/nstlaurent/DoomLauncher/releases/tag/3.5.0

 

This release has some awesome new features, including automatically pulling the TITLEPIC (finally) and directory support. See the full list of features and bug fixes below.

 

Automatically scans and pulls TITLEPIC for added files. Can be disabled in settings. Resync option will automatically pull the TITLEPIC for existing files.
Implemented directory support. Will treat the directory like a pk3 and can be launched with ports that support directories via the -file parameter (e.g. GZDoom)
Added Include All checkbox to allow searching for files that would be excluded from an exclusion tag.
Implemented utility loading for unmanaged files.
Added option to allow for multiple play sessions.
Fixed setting multiple files tags when using Select Tags option.
Allow resizing for grid in tag selection.
Fixed saving screenshots from the screenshot viewer.
Fixed issue that prevented tagged IWADS from displaying.

[pantheon]

Thank you for another great release, I wouldn't ever want to be without this awesome program.

[hatehatehatehate]

Yea, same. This is the be all end all of doom launchers for me. I do have a Feature Request though. Something I work around currently, but would love to have it implemented: 

 

Add in the ability to not only choose a random wad (this is already in), but to also choose a random map. 

 

 

[hatehatehatehate]

I got a bug in the new update. Let me see if I can explain properly...

 

My load order is borked. All mods I had in the list are there still, but if I click 'Select Individual Files', only a couple mods in the list show up. Noteworthy, is that the selectable mods are the last couple ones I added, recently. I'm not currently do choose which mods to enable/disable.

 

Let me test a new profile to see if there's a change.

 

Update: creating a new profile has the same effect. Next step is to delete the mod, and re-add it to the library. Doing that now.

Update: deleting mod, or trying a new mod has no effect. I can't see anything new in the Additional Files/Load Order

Update: I can now see mods in the list if they are Managed. I have most of them Unmanaged.

 

Hope this helps, and let me know if this is indeed a bug.

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by SaucepanSF

[Deil]

Some minor bugs:

 

3.5.0 bug: Select multiple files with the same tag "Tag_A", click "Select Tags...", none of the tags are selected. Now if we wanted to add "Tag_B" to these files, we click on "Tag_B" checkbox, click "Ok", and now these files only have "Tag_B", "Tag_A" is lost. I think "Tag_A" should be already checked if all selected files has this tag.

 

Downloaded "Anomaly Report" wad from idgames web page (not via DoomLauncher), added it to DoomLauncher, now I want to update metadata for it. It has generic "ar.zip" filename, so the Launcher finds multiple files, BUT there's no "Anomaly Report" in that list for some reason. WAD: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/megawads/ar

 

Launcher incorrectly(?) reads "Description" in .txt file in .zip archive, if there's "Additional Credits to" block after description then the Launcher thinks it's part of description. Examples: WAD above or https://www.wad-archive.com/wad/Robocop-game

 

 

Also I'm only using "Managed" files mode, but I think for "Unmanaged" mode there should be an option to "remove" the file from DoomLauncher only instead of deleting the actual file from the disk.

[hobomaster22]

15 hours ago, SaucepanSF said:

I got a bug in the new update. Let me see if I can explain properly...

 

My load order is borked. All mods I had in the list are there still, but if I click 'Select Individual Files', only a couple mods in the list show up. Noteworthy, is that the selectable mods are the last couple ones I added, recently. I'm not currently do choose which mods to enable/disable.

 

Let me test a new profile to see if there's a change.

 

Update: creating a new profile has the same effect. Next step is to delete the mod, and re-add it to the library. Doing that now.

Update: deleting mod, or trying a new mod has no effect. I can't see anything new in the Additional Files/Load Order

Update: I can now see mods in the list if they are Managed. I have most of them Unmanaged.

 

Hope this helps, and let me know if this is indeed a bug.

 

Thanks for the update. Selecting individual files for unmanaged files was broken with the directory support. Should be resolved soon.

[hobomaster22]

12 hours ago, Deil said:

Some minor bugs:

 

3.5.0 bug: Select multiple files with the same tag "Tag_A", click "Select Tags...", none of the tags are selected. Now if we wanted to add "Tag_B" to these files, we click on "Tag_B" checkbox, click "Ok", and now these files only have "Tag_B", "Tag_A" is lost. I think "Tag_A" should be already checked if all selected files has this tag.

 

Downloaded "Anomaly Report" wad from idgames web page (not via DoomLauncher), added it to DoomLauncher, now I want to update metadata for it. It has generic "ar.zip" filename, so the Launcher finds multiple files, BUT there's no "Anomaly Report" in that list for some reason. WAD: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/megawads/ar

 

Launcher incorrectly(?) reads "Description" in .txt file in .zip archive, if there's "Additional Credits to" block after description then the Launcher thinks it's part of description. Examples: WAD above or https://www.wad-archive.com/wad/Robocop-game

 

 

Also I'm only using "Managed" files mode, but I think for "Unmanaged" mode there should be an option to "remove" the file from DoomLauncher only instead of deleting the actual file from the disk.

 

I don't think Doom Launcher ever dealt with discrepancies for selecting multiple files and tagging. For example, what should it do if one file has only Tag_A and a second has only Tag_B. It's something I can think about for a future feature. Maybe I will start with checking if the selected files have the same tags to deal with your example since it's an easy start.

 

For Anomaly Report idgames appears to do partial searches on file names. Since there are a ton of files that end in 'ar.zip' it truncates the results to 100 files and ar.zip is not there. I'm at the mercy of the api, unfortunately there is not much I can do here. You can see the query here:
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/api/api.php?action=search&type=filename&query=ar.zip

 

Doom Launcher has always pulled the additional credits section as part of the description. It has intentionally worked this way since Doom Launcher doesn't have a field for it. Anything the author puts underneath the description sections is going to be pulled.

 

For unmanaged files Doom Launcher does not delete the file from disk. It's not even an option. It describes this specifically when deleting unmanaged files.

[DrR0Ck]

Hello and thanks for rolling out the new version!  I have been using it for a day or so and haven't encountered any bug or issues.  I really like the titlepic scan feature!

 

Will report back if I run into any issues or have any requests.

 

 

[Deil]

@hobomaster22 somehow I didn't have that confirmation window, or I missed it somehow. Thanks.

 

Another tiny bug, if you set "Automatically Pull Titlpic" to "Off" in Settings, you can't pull Titlepic even manually, by clicking "Resync" on the wad, so "Resync" and "Resync (Ignore Titlepic)" are doing the same thing now.

[hobomaster22]

10 hours ago, Deil said:

@hobomaster22 somehow I didn't have that confirmation window, or I missed it somehow. Thanks.

 

Another tiny bug, if you set "Automatically Pull Titlpic" to "Off" in Settings, you can't pull Titlepic even manually, by clicking "Resync" on the wad, so "Resync" and "Resync (Ignore Titlepic)" are doing the same thing now.

No problem. Both resync options will do the same, even if it seems kind of strange since it's disabled. This is a good point to describe why the two different options were added. The resync option will check if the titlepic exists to avoid duplication. Since Doom Launcher has existed for a long time the previous method for adding the titlepic was taking a screenshot on the titlescreen. The port will take the screenshot in the native resolution and it will not match Doom Launcher's automatic extraction, since most titlepics are 320x200. The resync (ignore titlepic) option is to resync just the data and will never try to pull the image for when option is enabled.

[MauryMyers]

I have tried to use the following wad Drought with DSDA-Doom but it causes a window error in the source port, it seems to be the only wad it happens with. I already tried to run the wad manually and with other launchers and everything seems to work fine, it seems that DoomLauncher is the exception. 

[hobomaster22]

1 hour ago, MauryMyers said:

I have tried to use the following wad Drought with DSDA-Doom but it causes a window error in the source port, it seems to be the only wad it happens with. I already tried to run the wad manually and with other launchers and everything seems to work fine, it seems that DoomLauncher is the exception. 

Strange, it worked for me. What are the launch parameters Doom Launcher generates? Curious if something is getting in there DSDA-Doom isn't liking.

[MauryMyers]

8 minutes ago, hobomaster22 said:

Strange, it worked for me. What are the launch parameters Doom Launcher generates? Curious if something is getting in there DSDA-Doom isn't liking.

I just use the default settings

[hobomaster22]

2 minutes ago, MauryMyers said:

I just use the default settings

If you click show next to Preview Launch Parameters and post that. These are the parameters it will give to DSDA-Doom to launch.

[MauryMyers]

5 minutes ago, hobomaster22 said:

If you click show next to Preview Launch Parameters and post that. These are the parameters it will give to DSDA-Doom to launch.

Go it, here it is.

[hobomaster22]

16 minutes ago, MauryMyers said:

Go it, here it is.

I was still on 0.23. I noticed from your screen you were using the latest. Once I updated DSDA-Doom to 0.24 I got the same crash.

[hobomaster22]

On 5/16/2022 at 2:35 PM, SaucepanSF said:

I got a bug in the new update. Let me see if I can explain properly...

 

My load order is borked. All mods I had in the list are there still, but if I click 'Select Individual Files', only a couple mods in the list show up. Noteworthy, is that the selectable mods are the last couple ones I added, recently. I'm not currently do choose which mods to enable/disable.

 

Let me test a new profile to see if there's a change.

 

Update: creating a new profile has the same effect. Next step is to delete the mod, and re-add it to the library. Doing that now.

Update: deleting mod, or trying a new mod has no effect. I can't see anything new in the Additional Files/Load Order

Update: I can now see mods in the list if they are Managed. I have most of them Unmanaged.

 

Hope this helps, and let me know if this is indeed a bug.

 

This build should resolve this problem with unmanaged files. Let me know if this resolves your issue and I will push out an official release.
https://ci.appveyor.com/project/hobomaster22/doomlauncher/builds/43595139

[DrR0Ck]

Unfortunately, it looks like I am seeing an issue after all.  It seems to be mostly isolated to the "Untagged" tab.  What I am seeing is a large number of items being reported as untagged on this tab that have tags assigned. In some cases items have more than one tag.  In addition, metadata is not being read by this tab.  So for instance I see a large number of these items that are improperly classified as untagged, and their metadata is not being read either.  As an example, I see an item that lists its zip name for its title, no author and no release data.  If I go to edit the item, it does indeed have a properly set title, author, release date, notes, etc.  And from the edit dialog, I can see which tags are applied.  I had started to correct this information - editing an item, and just clicking save will remove the item from the untagged tab, but I figured if this is a bug, it's best to report it.

 

In addition, I have come across a number of items on the "Local" tab that weren't color-coded for the tag that they are assigned to.  Again, clicking edit will display the tag assigned, and I do have the ability to re-add the tag.

 

One thing I am uncertain of is whether the various tabs are displaying everything they should be displaying; i.e. if tags are not being read correctly, it stands to reason that the tabs items are assigned to may not be displaying everything they should be, but I am not able to verify this just yet.

 

If it helps, I am running everything unmanaged.  Let me know if I can provide any further details or screenshots that might help.

 

Thanks!

[hobomaster22]

8 minutes ago, DrR0Ck said:

Unfortunately, it looks like I am seeing an issue after all.  It seems to be mostly isolated to the "Untagged" tab.  What I am seeing is a large number of items being reported as untagged on this tab that have tags assigned. In some cases items have more than one tag.  In addition, metadata is not being read by this tab.  So for instance I see a large number of these items that are improperly classified as untagged, and their metadata is not being read either.  As an example, I see an item that lists its zip name for its title, no author and no release data.  If I go to edit the item, it does indeed have a properly set title, author, release date, notes, etc.  And from the edit dialog, I can see which tags are applied.  I had started to correct this information - editing an item, and just clicking save will remove the item from the untagged tab, but I figured if this is a bug, it's best to report it.

 

In addition, I have come across a number of items on the "Local" tab that weren't color-coded for the tag that they are assigned to.  Again, clicking edit will display the tag assigned, and I do have the ability to re-add the tag.

 

One thing I am uncertain of is whether the various tabs are displaying everything they should be displaying; i.e. if tags are not being read correctly, it stands to reason that the tabs items are assigned to may not be displaying everything they should be, but I am not able to verify this just yet.

 

If it helps, I am running everything unmanaged.  Let me know if I can provide any further details or screenshots that might help. 

 

Thanks!

If you can send me a copy of your DoomLauncher.sqlite and give me an example of what files and tabs are giving you problems specifically I can take a look. I'm not able to see this issues in my local and development databases.

[DrR0Ck]

23 minutes ago, hobomaster22 said:

If you can send me a copy of your DoomLauncher.sqlite and give me an example of what files and tabs are giving you problems specifically I can take a look. I'm not able to see this issues in my local and development databases.

 

I attempted to send the DB via DM.  Let me know if you receive it OK. 

 

Note that I tried to fix metadata for a bunch of items near the top of the list, so once you're on the untagged tab, scroll down about 20% or so to start seeing items missing metadata.  Also, note that everything except one or two items has tags assigned, so everything on this list is categorized incorrectly.  I am pretty fastidious with tag application and metadata information.  Note in the image below, a number of items without proper titles, authors, dates, etc. For the highlighted item, I have clicked edit and you can see a tag is assigned, description is present along with title, author, date, etc.

 

Since I can't find any additional problematic items on other tabs after a quick scan at the moment, let's just focus on the Untagged tab - everything on the tab at the moment with one or two exceptions should not appear on the tab.

 

[MauryMyers]

Hello, I found a problem related to GZDoom, if you try to use the launcher option to start on a certain map, the source port starts and has sound but it is completely in black.

[hatehatehatehate]

On 5/19/2022 at 5:21 AM, hobomaster22 said:

This build should resolve this problem with unmanaged files. Let me know if this resolves your issue and I will push out an official release.
https://ci.appveyor.com/project/hobomaster22/doomlauncher/builds/43595139

 

 

Hi hobomaster. I have not tried the new build yet, but I did find a workaround. If you simply change the iWad to something else, and then back again, all the mods show back up in the list! 

EDIT: this is not the case actually. My bad.

 

Aside from that, I spent some time renaming/re-adding all my mods to the library as Managed, and everything now looks and behaves much better now. I would like to thank you for being awesome and keeping this amazing front end going.

Edited May 22, 2022 by SaucepanSF

[garu32]

Thanks! Now I can launch different launchers in a launcher inspired by a 1995 launcher!

[hobomaster22]

3.5.1 is pushed out. This is just a patch release to resolve the issues with with adding unmanaged files and directories as additional files from 3.5.0.

https://github.com/nstlaurent/DoomLauncher/releases/tag/3.5.1

[Deil]

If you try to add .zip file that was created on MacOS, DoomLauncher tries to read the .wad "file" inside "__MACOSX" "folder", which is actually not a folder, and that .wad file inside is not the .wad as well. That folder is created by MacOS and it's only used by MacOS itself to work with .zip files.

So what happens, DoomLauncer copies the .zip file successfully to GameFiles folder, but them it tries to read it and gets stuck on this window, you can't close it, the only thing you can do is shutdown DoomLauncher process in taskmanager. Also memory usage goes through the roof at that moment, was few gigabytes before I killed the process.

Example:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/a-c/axolotl

This __MACOSX folder should probably be completely ignored.

 

 

Another small bug happens if .zip file has "&" symbol in filename, looks like the symbol is not escaped when you try to update metadata with idgames API, so efficiently only the part before "&" is passed as "query" parameter, thus leading to confusing results. I tried to update metadata for "Trick&Tear2.v1.zip" file and it returned me bunch of irrelevant "trick" results.

Looks like "%26" can be used instead of "&" safely in query.

Edited May 22, 2022 by Deil

[hobomaster22]

1 hour ago, Deil said:

If you try to add .zip file that was created on MacOS, DoomLauncher tries to read the .wad "file" inside "__MACOSX" "folder", which is actually not a folder, and that .wad file inside is not the .wad as well. That folder is created by MacOS and it's only used by MacOS itself to work with .zip files.

So what happens, DoomLauncer copies the .zip file successfully to GameFiles folder, but them it tries to read it and gets stuck on this window, you can't close it, the only thing you can do is shutdown DoomLauncher process in taskmanager. Also memory usage goes through the roof at that moment, was few gigabytes before I killed the process.

Example:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/a-c/axolotl

This __MACOSX folder should probably be completely ignored.

 

 

Another small bug happens if .zip file has "&" symbol in filename, looks like the symbol is not escaped when you try to update metadata with idgames API, so efficiently only the part before "&" is passed as "query" parameter, thus leading to confusing results. I tried to update metadata for "Trick&Tear2.v1.zip" file and it returned me bunch of irrelevant "trick" results.

Looks like "%26" can be used instead of "&" safely in query.

Good points. Thanks for the examples. This will give me something to do for the next release!

[hatehatehatehate]

I've got something to add besides my aforementioned feature request to choose a random map within a wad:

 

The ability to UN-rate a wad that's already been rated. In other words, just set it back to zero. I haven't figured out how to do it aside from deleting the wad and re-adding/re-downloading.

 

As always, thanks again for all your hard work on this great app.

Edited May 27, 2022 by SaucepanSF

[Deil]

Could you please add another "time played" stat to cumulative stats, along with existing total time from statistic tab, that summarizes the "time played" displayed in the right panel, i.e. total time the wad was launched.

 

[hobomaster22]

13 hours ago, Deil said:

Could you please add another "time played" stat to cumulative stats, along with existing total time from statistic tab, that summarizes the "time played" displayed in the right panel, i.e. total time the wad was launched.

 

 

No problem. I'm updating the cumulative stats to look like this:

Edited May 29, 2022 by hobomaster22