LaunchPad build 1 -- new DAOC program in alpha test

[Rob]

In my never-ending quest to attract more people to this website, I decided to write a program that launches DAOC and logs in toons at the press of a button. Hopefully this will be of interest to many players.

The program isn't finished yet. You can enter settings for toons and log in with a key press, but when you close the program, the settings will be forgotten.

Please tell me what you think.

LaunchPad

[Rob]

Somebody asked me in the game whether the program will store passwords safely. This is an excellent question.

I'm planning to use the exact same method of storing encrypted passwords as Google Chrome. I figure the people at Google know a lot more about this than I do.

How Google Chrome stores passwords

Microsoft reference page on cryptographic API

[Warriorperson]

First build suggestion: It needs to be able to handle multiple accounts and log in more than one character per session. Otherwise, I REALLY like the idea, and would definitely use it.

Edit: As a second idea, and more for clarity, refer to them as characters instead of toons? Toons is more slang-ish, characters seems more official sounding.

[Rob]

First build suggestion: It needs to be able to handle multiple accounts and log in more than one character per session.

It does that now. Is there something about the way it looks, or something that I wrote, that gave you the opposite impression?

Edit: As a second idea, and more for clarity, refer to them as characters instead of toons? Toons is more slang-ish, characters seems more official sounding.

"Toon" has the advantage of being short, so it fits easily on buttons. Let's see what other people think about this.

[Warriorperson]

I didn't know if it did or not, I can't really test it out since I'm not playing. I could see that being overlooked on accident though, and that would be an important feature to have.

[vaenry]

Nice i like it but i have a stupid question we will still need to run the launcher to patch every so often

[Rob]

Thanks and yes.

[Boudecca]

Hi Rob
Have sent a couple of suggestions in a pm - one was about the Patcher option. One other thing - from what I can see you will need to instruct users of Vista to turn OFF User Account Control, or Launcher won't er, launch.

This is going to be extremely convenient. N1

Cheers

[Rob]

One other thing - from what I can see you will need to instruct users of Vista to turn OFF User Account Control, or Launcher won't er, launch.

Thanks for the comments! It should launch on Vista with UAC on. In fact my development machine has that configuration, and I haven't seen this problem. Can you tell me more details? Thanks.

If UAC is on, Vista should show you a prompt requesting elevation.

[Boudecca]

Hi Rob
Launchpad : this is going to be a highly useful applet, used by many players alot of the time. Initial suggestions :

1. omit the message screen about system requirements - only halt if the system does not meet them

2. when you have entered a toon details how do you Save the info?

3. when you exit the prog, give an option to retain it in the system tray

4. have a selectable option to run the patcher before launching a toon - I do this once a day at first log on.

5. have an assurance somewhere that the details of a user's account and password will not leave their machine or be collectable by anybody else

6. It may have been some other reason it wouldn't launch with User Account control on - it seems ok now, although I have now turned off UAC - I hate it.

7. make launch occur straight from the icon selected instead of at the moment you select an icon then go to the launch tag

8. still cant really test it properly as I can't Save the added toons

(ps IMO there's nothing wrong with use of the term 'toon' )

Cheers

[Rob]

this is going to be a highly useful applet, used by many players alot of the time.

Thanks for the kind words and thanks for the suggestions!

1. omit the message screen about system requirements - only halt if the system does not meet them

I'm not sure which message you mean. Could you tell me the exact text? Thanks.

2. when you have entered a toon details how do you Save the info?

The next build will do this automatically.

3. when you exit the prog, give an option to retain it in the system tray

Good idea, will do!

4. have a selectable option to run the patcher before launching a toon - I do this once a day at first log on.

I'll do this if possible. It may turn out that the best I can do is provide a button to launch DAOC normally without logging in automatically.

5. have an assurance somewhere that the details of a user's account and password will not leave their machine or be collectable by anybody else

Good idea, will do!

7. make launch occur straight from the icon selected instead of at the moment you select an icon then go to the launch tag

You mean with a left double click on the icon? That may turn out to be a good idea but I'd like to wait until the program has more features so we can see if that will be intuitive after more features can be chosen.

Btw you can right click the icons for a menu.

8. still cant really test it properly as I can't Save the added toons

Hopefully I'll post a new build today that saves. The work is slow because password encryption has to be foolproof before I post a build that saves passwords, and I want to be careful. But I think the new build will be done today.

(ps IMO there's nothing wrong with use of the term 'toon' )

Thanks. So far the vote is 2 in favor, 1 against (somebody voted yes in a tell in game).

[Boudecca]

"1. omit the message screen about system requirements - only halt if the system does not meet them"
Rob replied : I'm not sure which message you mean. Could you tell me the exact text? Thanks.

"Verifying Application Requirements. This may take a few minutes"

This may be something only I get - though it happens on both my desktop and laptop - both running Vista SP2. If it is an internal feature of Vista, I can live with it.

Cheers

[Rob]

only halt if the system does not meet them

But the program doesn't halt when that message appears. That's a progress message.

Programs display progress messages while they perform tasks that might take more than about a second. Nothing stops while the message is visible.

If there were no progress message, users would say to themselves, "Is this program broken? Why isn't anything happening?"

[Fang]

Very nice little applet Rob. The "checking system requirements" message that Boudecca is getting is one that is from the .net software doing version checking of installed components. Can't get rid of it unfortunately.

Anyways, it would be nice if you could build in an import feature which would bring in the last ten toons played (there's my vote) from the user.dat in the lotm directory.

[Rob]

Anyways, it would be nice if you could build in an import feature which would bring in the last ten toons played (there's my vote) from the user.dat in the lotm directory.

Good idea! I'll try to do that.

[Rob]

There's a new build, so let's move to a new thread:

LaunchPad build 4 -- settings now get saved