Author Topic: Touhou Game Launcher (Read 16189 times)

Widdiful · « **on:** September 21, 2014, 08:32:41 PM »

Touhou Game Launcher is a small project I started that puts all of your games into one program. It's nothing spectacular or game changing, but it's useful for people who play more than one Touhou game. Everything you need to know about how to use it is in the readme.

Current features:

Run any official Touhou game (obviously).
Create shortcuts to Touhou games so they can be used by the software.
Open AppData folders
Run PC98 emulators
Run fan games
Open the game's folder to access custom.exe and others
Themes
Play a random game
Download replays and extract them to the correct game folder
IRC (kinda)
Optional tray icon to quickly launch any games

Future features:

Download and apply patches
I can add pretty much anything as long as it's not a stupid idea and it's possible, give me your ideas.

I haven't tested it on other computers but I've done some pretty rigorous testing on my end so hopefully it's okay, can't imagine any issues that could occur. If there's anything you want to tell me about it outside of these forums then feel free to email me at widdifulsa@gmail.com or send me a tweet @WiddifulSA

DOWNLOAD (Version 1.11)

Screenshots

(Yes I realise that the text is unreadable sometimes, will try and sort that out soon)

I might forget to update this page, so check http://widdiful.co.uk/touhou.html just in case.

shockdude · « **Reply #1 on:** September 21, 2014, 11:52:55 PM »

That's awesome! I'll have to check this out when I have time.
Can you make shortcuts to each game's custom.exe? What about opening a game's directory or a game's AppData folder?

Also "Unthinkable Natural Law" should be called "Hisoutensoku"; UNL is a mistranslation.

Widdiful · « **Reply #2 on:** September 22, 2014, 12:01:24 AM »

Quote from: shockdude on September 21, 2014, 11:52:55 PM

That's awesome! I'll have to check this out when I have time.
Can you make shortcuts to each game's custom.exe? What about opening a game's directory or a game's AppData folder?

Also "Unthinkable Natural Law" should be called "Hisoutensoku"; UNL is a mistranslation.

Hi, thanks for the reply!
Some good ideas, adding custom.exe and AppData features is possible and I'll hopefully be able to add them by the next time I update it and I'll change UNL to Hisoutensoku right now.

Teh Kookaburra · « **Reply #3 on:** September 22, 2014, 12:14:56 AM »

Not a bad idea, it would help me stay organized instead of having all the games littered across my desktop.

BB · « **Reply #4 on:** September 22, 2014, 02:03:50 AM »

That's a neat solution- does it work with thcrap patched copies? Would be a nice way to integrate that into Steam, if so.

Widdiful · « **Reply #5 on:** September 22, 2014, 02:18:30 AM »

Quote from: BB on September 22, 2014, 02:03:50 AM

That's a neat solution- does it work with thcrap patched copies? Would be a nice way to integrate that into Steam, if so.

Yes it does work with thcrap, just copy the shortcuts into the 'th' folder that the program creates and rename them, for example, from 'th07 (en)' to 'th07'.

Widdiful · « **Reply #6 on:** September 22, 2014, 04:19:27 PM »

I've made some updates to this. You can now open the AppData folder for games that have it, load a PC98 emulator (can't load PC98 games from the program yet, has to be done manually) and add fan-made games. I also touched up the UI a bit.

Validon98 · « **Reply #7 on:** September 22, 2014, 04:22:05 PM »

Quote from: Widdiful on September 22, 2014, 04:19:27 PM

I've made some updates to this. You can now open the AppData folder for games that have it, load a PC98 emulator (can't load PC98 games from the program yet, has to be done manually) and add fan-made games. I also touched up the UI a bit.

If that's the case, your site kind of 404ed itself.

EDIT: Or the link here could just not be updated. Oops. :V

Widdiful · « **Reply #8 on:** September 22, 2014, 04:25:56 PM »

Quote from: Validon98 on September 22, 2014, 04:22:05 PM

If that's the case, your site kind of 404ed itself.

EDIT: Or the link here could just not be updated. Oops. :V

Yeah, I changed the file name to allow people to download previous versions from my website. I've updated the OP and it's all correct now.

shockdude · « **Reply #9 on:** September 23, 2014, 05:14:11 AM »

Set up the launcher; looks really good!

Some additional feature suggestions:
Option to disable the splash screen
Option to automatically close after launching a game
Automatically generate the "th" folder if one doesn't already exist

Phasm · « **Reply #10 on:** September 23, 2014, 08:22:45 AM »

Sounds like a promising idea, i like it!

Widdiful · « **Reply #11 on:** September 30, 2014, 12:01:43 AM »

For some reason I haven't been getting emails for this thread and I just checked to find some replies so I'm sorry about the absence!
I'm really happy that you're liking it, I'm really surprised that this is (as far as I'm aware) the first Touhou launcher, I've only been playing for about two months!
Shockdude, you'll be glad to hear that a few days ago I set the th folder and the fan folder to be created automatically if they don't exist and today I removed the splash screen (honestly, I never really liked it in the first place). Unfortunately, saving settings wasn't working when I first made this for some reason so I just kind of gave up, but I'll try again and include an option to close the program when a game has been launched. For now, though, I can add a checkbox although it'll have to be checked every time you run the program so it kind of defeats the point of saving time so I might not do that.
Again, thank you for liking it! I'm incredibly happy about how well this has been received by the community!

Widdiful · « **Reply #12 on:** October 18, 2014, 05:47:53 PM »

Hi, just letting you know that I've just updated the launcher again. I wasn't happy with how boring the fan game browser looked so after a few hours of tinkering around I've improved it significantly. Now the program loads the game's icon instead of the windows folder icon, the games can be sorted alphabetically, changing the view and sort is now saved between sessions so if you change it to tile then the next time you run it it'll be set to tile and you can open a fan game's folder. I've also improved the process of adding fan games as it would only show the entire path so now it shows the file name, the full path on a new line and then a break between games. I did this to make it easier to identify which game is which.

I hope you like this update!

Widdiful · « **Reply #13 on:** October 23, 2014, 02:00:50 AM »

I did a couple of pretty big updates. 1.6 added an update checker and an options menu, 1.7 added much better PC98 functionality so you can now load PC98 games like the Windows games.

Colticide · « **Reply #14 on:** October 23, 2014, 05:08:25 AM »

Does it make it easier to launch the PC98 games? Sadly on my end I've only gotten to the point of getting everything I need but unable to actually play them yet.

Romantique Tp · « **Reply #15 on:** October 23, 2014, 08:54:49 AM »

https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,11117.0.html

Follow this guide.

Widdiful · « **Reply #16 on:** October 24, 2014, 01:00:37 PM »

Quote from: Colticide on October 23, 2014, 05:08:25 AM

Does it make it easier to launch the PC98 games? Sadly on my end I've only gotten to the point of getting everything I need but unable to actually play them yet.

What it does is when you click a PC98 game it'll automatically load the correct game with the emulator. Follow the guide that Not Bigode posted before setting up a link to it or else you'll have to set it up five times. When you click on a game for the first time you'll have to link the emulator to the game file but every time after that it'll load it automatically. It's a bit more work than before but once it's set up it works much better. I've written a full step-by-step guide on this in the readme.

Also, the next version will have a built-in web browser for replays.gensokyo.org and replay.royalflare.net and when downloading a replay it'll put it in the correct game's folder and ask if you want to run the game. Are there any more replay depositories that I should add?

Colticide · « **Reply #17 on:** October 24, 2014, 05:26:49 PM »

Quote from: Widdiful on October 24, 2014, 01:00:37 PM

What it does is when you click a PC98 game it'll automatically load the correct game with the emulator. Follow the guide that Not Bigode posted before setting up a link to it or else you'll have to set it up five times. When you click on a game for the first time you'll have to link the emulator to the game file but every time after that it'll load it automatically. It's a bit more work than before but once it's set up it works much better. I've written a full step-by-step guide on this in the readme.

Also, the next version will have a built-in web browser for replays.gensokyo.org and replay.royalflare.net and when downloading a replay it'll put it in the correct game's folder and ask if you want to run the game. Are there any more replay depositories that I should add?

Sounds pretty simple but I'll just have to try it.

Thank you! This will make it super easy to get replays.

Widdiful · « **Reply #18 on:** October 24, 2014, 11:09:52 PM »

Quote from: Colticide on October 24, 2014, 05:26:49 PM

Sounds pretty simple but I'll just have to try it.

Thank you! This will make it super easy to get replays.

Just remember to open np21nt.exe and not np2nt.exe like I did the first time, the latter can't run Touhou games.

Now that the main purpose of the launcher is pretty much finished I've been adding lots of useful features like the replays. I'm hoping for this to be the program that can do pretty much everything Touhou related at some point, if you have any suggestions for things like patching, replays etc. then let me know and I'll try to add it. I'm also trying to figure out a way to get the game time from all games and add them up to let the user feel bad about how they've spent way too much time playing Touhou.

Colticide · « **Reply #19 on:** October 25, 2014, 12:55:26 AM »

As long as it does a better job then the lan client Evolve, that's apparently tells me I've played hours of UFO when I don't even own it yet and only played IMaP with it on... good job Evolve.

EDIT: dang it not origin! Need to know what's on my desktop more.

Widdiful · « **Reply #20 on:** October 26, 2014, 09:44:25 PM »

I'm thinking of releasing the next patch tonight unless I can figure out the time tracking thing. I know that it's in the score.dat file but I'm wondering if there's a way to read them? I've tried opening it with Notepad++ and messing around with the encoding options but nothing's made it legible. If there isn't a way then I guess that it's pretty much impossible to track time as good as the games themselves do it. Hopefully there is though because all it'll require is a bit of maths and slapping a counter somewhere and it might even lead to online scoreboards or at least a multi-game scoreboard for your own progress in a tab that combines the stats from all games.

Widdiful · « **Reply #21 on:** October 27, 2014, 03:25:15 AM »

Just sent out the latest update. I think that this might be the biggest and best one yet. Main feature is the new replay browser that downloads .rpy files to the correct game's folder and runs the game if the user wants to. You also have more control in the fan game browser almost as if you were in a normal file browser as you can now delete and rename files and add, rename and delete folders. Folders within subfolders still work but won't work with the new folder options. I've worked very hard on this one and I hope that you like it!

Widdiful · « **Reply #22 on:** November 03, 2014, 12:06:25 PM »

Another update, smaller than last time (except for the file size). Mostly adjusting a few older additions and adding the rest of the character themes. Hope you like it!

Colticide · « **Reply #23 on:** November 13, 2014, 05:26:53 AM »

Just thought I'd give some feed back on my time with it. I love it! My taskbar use to be filled with all my games but being able to combine all of them into one makes it so much better and easy to access. Only issue I ran into is with adding replays but I managed to be able to save replays by opening the application as a administrator.

As a side note: I was just driving home and for some reason came up with a silly youtube ad for this, no idea why I did that but I guess I liked it enough?

Widdiful · « **Reply #24 on:** November 13, 2014, 12:53:47 PM »

Thanks, I'm really glad that people are enjoying it! What was the issue with adding replays? My only guess would be that the games are in a folder that requires administrator rights to add files. Do you have any other suggestions for this? I've made a few changes towards 1.10 but it's not enough for a new release and I'm out of ideas, I might have already added everything there is to add. I sure hope not!

Colticide · « **Reply #25 on:** November 14, 2014, 03:20:06 AM »

As of right now I have no ideas, I'm sure something will come to me out of no where in the middle of something. I'll post any ideas that I might have here at a later point of time.

shockdude · « **Reply #26 on:** December 17, 2014, 08:59:58 PM »

That replay browser is pretty cool!
One suggestion: can you make the replay browser not connect to the websites by default? This is mainly a security concern, in case one of the websites goes down and is replaced by a malware domain or something.

Widdiful · « **Reply #27 on:** January 07, 2015, 02:46:10 PM »

Quote from: shockdude on December 17, 2014, 08:59:58 PM

That replay browser is pretty cool!
One suggestion: can you make the replay browser not connect to the websites by default? This is mainly a security concern, in case one of the websites goes down and is replaced by a malware domain or something.

Sorry for the late reply! I don't check here often and I'm not receiving emails about new posts for some reason.

Anyway, that's a good point. I'm not entirely sure how to do that but I'll see what I can do. I might as well add a button for the next game, too. Is there anything else I should add while I'm at it?

Widdiful · « **Reply #28 on:** January 10, 2015, 09:29:50 PM »

Updated with lots of new features. ULIL button and system tray icon are the two biggest additions, with the latter probably being much more usable than the launcher itself!
Hope you enjoy it, let me know if you find any bugs.