Einstein

Ahem.....porn is not allowed on these forums....unless it is that awesome Yeah I'm between spaces right now, and its messy as well so I'll not be posting immediately either....man thats nice though!

Another update! Nothing major, just tied up some loose ends involving input validation. No visual changes. [Old version removed]

Haha, Translation: They've figured out more details about the sort of code they're working with here, much like how our scripts guys dissected and studied and subsequently were able to make their own implementations of the W3D engine code. And yes, I would think this probably qualifies as progress Good work Blade, and thanks for the update!

Update time! In the last couple days, I've added a couple things and taken care of some bug squashing that accompanied the new stuff (and some old ones too). I won't go into all the details because its mostly boring stuff, but for all you programmers that might be reading, I finally got around to organizing the code a bit. I busted my main .vb file out into the main + 4 modules, each with a specific purpose. This greatly increased my ability to think while working on this thing, and also helped me find things faster (duh!). I wish I had started off doing that. Now I know better! So as far as new stuff visually, there isn't much. I introduced a "games list" to cater more to anyone wanting to just quickly select and launch a single player game, so there is a new dropdown selector for that, as well as some buttons for adding/editing/deleting games, and a new window for that as well. Other than that, nothing has changed visually. The only bugs that I am aware of are on the "add profile" and "add game" windows. There is no input validation (yet)! If you find something else that seems to be amiss, please let me know! If you used the previous version, you'll need to follow this process to "import" your saved profiles: Add all the games you had before. Select a profile from the list and hit "edit". Select the game that you wish to be associated with that profile. Save! Repeat for all your previous profiles. Download here: [Old version removed] Enjoy! EDIT: If you downloaded this before, get it again. I messed up and left debug code enabled that prevented launching anything at all!

I thought I should mention (because I forgot to before) what local data this program creates, and what it does behind the scenes. This program should run with any permission set, it does not require any special rights to operate, certainly not admin, though it will work as admin. If you look in your "My Documents" folder, you should see a folder called "W3D-Asterisk", and inside there should be a "profiles.ein" file. This file is just a renamed text file that stores the saved profiles in plain text. You can open and edit it with any text editor. In the next version, there will also be a "games.ein" file that stores a list of games and their executable paths in the same format, also in plain text. Aside from these, the only local data that this program creates is a few user-registry keys (and I don't even know where exactly) that it uses to retain the last set of data used to connect from one program run to the next, as well as some other settings such as the "state" of the checkboxes and what theme you're using. Thats it! *An additional note: Next version will have a slightly different layout in the profiles.ein file, and saved profiles from previous versions of this tool will not be compatible. Just backup that file if you need the info inside it and you can put it back in manually - sorry.... Nevermind that, I've fixed it where it will modify the existing format to be compatible. In the new version, start by adding a game, then just select a profile, hit edit, select the game you just added, save and it will automagically re-format the profiles to be correct. You will need to do this for all your saved profiles.

Oh hey! I remember you from when you used the OAM name Welcome back!

And another one! Everyone wish Testament a happy birthday!

I would love to add something such as that, but thats a tad beyond my knowledge range currently. Anyone that knows how to make this happen and wants to help, it would be greatly appreciated.

@Jeod You really need to try chop's tool, its pretty great. Also nice pseudocode

And If anyone is curious, here is a screenshot of my current progress. In an effort to make things a little easier when launching single player games, I've re-arranged a thing or two and added a "games list" in place of just the exe paths, and made the games in the list selectable via dropdown menu on the main screen for quick and easy access. It mostly works, I'm just working out some bugs mostly. After this, there is one more major feature that I would like to add later, but I'll keep that to myself for now. Unless someone has a really great and easy-to-implement idea, you're likely looking at the final UI design (haha, I've said that before).

Thanks! The reason that it works faster all around can be attributed to the aforementioned nature and design. This can't download games or game updates like the launcher can, nor can it display whether or not the server is online and how many players, ping, etc. Its a one trick pony

Alright guys, I had planned to keep this little project under wraps a little longer, but in light of the current launcher issues, I have decided to let this thing out into the wild a little early. Disclaimer: This tool is in no way affiliated with W3D-Hub or its developers or staff (except for me because its mine). This tool is not intended to be a W3D-Hub launcher replacement, and by nature can not fulfill the role of a launcher because it is by design different. It is a connect tool. There is a difference. This tool is provided as-is with no warranty, express or implied. This tool is a work in progress, and is considered to be in a 'beta' state currently. In May of last year, I began working on a simple direct connect tool that would be compatible with Renegade and any other mod running on the W3D engine. It was a simple idea, and it didn't take me long to produce something tangible. This is the first version that worked (I think) and I completed it on May 30 (notice the version number). It fulfills the basic function of directly connecting to a server and thats it! Then someone said, "hey, why don't you add (X feature)..? That would be cool..". So I added (X feature). Then someone else said "hey, why don't you add (Y feature)..? That would be cool..". So with a little bit of feedback from a handful of people, I made some changes and reiterations, and had a few new ideas of my own along the way. Eventually, it actually started to look alright. The first few versions were pretty hideous, as you can see from that screenshot. I realized that I might actually want to make it look nice, so I enlisted the services of Isaac The Madd to design me a logo! Skipping forward several iterations, a few hundred lines of code, and hours of headbanging because I suck at coding, I finally had something that I was (almost) pleased with. Citizens of W3D-Hub and the rest of the Renegade modding world, I give you the W3D-Asterisk Connect tool beta version 0.31! I have done everything I can to make this tool flow with an easy-to-use design. Here is a short list of features: The tool will retain the last set of data that was used to connect to a server. It supports saving/editing/deleting multiplayer profiles, so you can keep an entry for every server you play on, and easily edit the info if it changes. It has an option to close the tool upon connection, or leave it open. It supports additional launch commands. (useful for developers) It has themes. (this is not really useful, but I thought why not make it look nice) Its better than a batch file Bugs.... As mentioned above, this version is being released because I feel like the community needs it, even though I'm not quite finished with it. There are a few things that aren't yet "right" about it, but instead of telling you, I'm going to let you tell me. PM me here with any bugs you find, or find my email in the help menu of the program (where it falsely says "version 1.0" because I had not intended on releasing this while still in beta). I hope some of you will find this useful, and I hope that the ones of you that do not find it useful will tell me what I can do to improve it! Here's the download already!

Lots of us here use mIRC or otherwise KiwiIRC. For mIRC scripts, @Chopbam is definitely your man, he's made a really cool tool that the mods use. (Sorry if we forgot to tell you, you should totally know about that). On another note (and sorry for the slight hijack)... For a long while now, I've been working "in the shadows" on a direct connect tool for use by renegade mod projects that either don't have a launcher, or like in our case, the launcher is misbehaving. I'm debating on whether or not to release what I have right now because it works fine, it just doesn't have all the features I want in yet. Its pretty simple. You put info in it, save it as a profile and it keeps up with it. After that you can launch the game really quickly. Here's a screeny.

Thats the thing though, the launcher has not changed. I'm very confused by this myself now, especially since I can't produce the issue you all are describing

It installs and runs fine from origin, and that version already has (I think) some slight compatibility mods as well as a no-CD patch since its made for digital download anyway. All they would really have to do is drop the price to $0 on origin. It would be nice if they did a standalone DRM-free download though. Om nom nom nom.

So you don't get this? If you have this screen, then you can hit the join button and it will totally work. There is nothing on the backend that can break that can cause this screen not to function, unless the game servers are actually down. Help me out guys, screenshots, something. If you don't have that screen, then thats a new one.

The posts in this thread are not in chronological order, please be aware of this. It appears to be a feature we gained in the upgrade I'm hoping we can disable that, its somewhat confusing if you aren't expecting it. So what you're telling me is that you don't have join buttons? At all?

We are aware. Its been talked about in half a dozen other threads as well as probably a thousand messages' worth on slack.

Danpaul is working on updating the launcher, but its not workable as of yet. There were some major changes with how that stuff works going from the old forum version to the new one, so he's having to re-design some things to get it working. We'll let you know as soon as its working, and it will likely make "the news" when it does. You should be able to see the two public servers though, that feature has never been dependent upon logging in. Its possible for it to falsely read a zero player count, but click join anyway to find out!

Here we go again! Happy birthday ChopBam!

DERPolitics

So uh...in 2006 I was just starting my internet crusade into the world of command and conquer (I was that loser kid that always played offline ), so beings as I was very new online back then and didn't know hardly anyone in any community, I can't confirm this.....but we have a staff member here named Sentry. Could it be the same guy?

Here ya go bud. Shrunk down to around 56%

Our favorite "tea-drinking monstrosity" is turning another year older today. Everyone wish OWA a happy birthday!