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Author Topic: KunLauncher - it's like sfmlprojects.org but not as good  (Read 3146 times)

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kennyrkun

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KunLauncher - it's like sfmlprojects.org but not as good
« on: June 09, 2019, 07:57:38 pm »
It's basically the poor man's Steam. While developing apps and games, I got tired of repackaging and sending zipped game files to people for testing, so I developed a launcher to automatically manage games for people. Originally, this was just to make distributing my own tools easier, but it's grown quite a bit since then. It'll probably never be anything really useful, but it is neat.

it stores all it's useful files in a folder called `bin` in the same directory of the executable, so it's best to put it in it's own folder before running.

It uses (more accurately abuses) SFML's FTP capabilities for file retrieval. It is very slow, be patient with it. Almost everything aside from SFML and the SettingsParser was written by me, off and on, over the course of about two years. I have not made the source available, however, because I'm incredibly insecure,

It might crash a lot, I don't think it will, but if it does it has lots of debug output that can be obtained when attached to a bash session.

When the little cog icon is rotating in the bottom left corner, you can't do anything, so it's best to just leave it alone. The "all apps" state is very slow to load the first time. After this, it should load quicker, but it will still be a bit slow. "my apps" should should load quite quickly.

looks like my file exceeds the maximum file size allowed on this forum. that's quite unfortunate. I don't suppose you'd mind downloading it manually?
« Last Edit: June 09, 2019, 07:59:53 pm by kennyrkun »
it's probably terrible.

Gleade

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Re: KunLauncher - it's like sfmlprojects.org but not as good
« Reply #1 on: June 13, 2019, 04:39:24 am »
This is a very interesting post indeed, you've not really sold me on this product I must admit:
  • "Poor man's steam" - Steam is free already & you can add all non-steam games to your library?
  • It probably won't be anything useful.
  • It's very slow, be patient with it.
  • It might crash a lot.

I am very suspect with this, has anyone else tried this? the fact that you download an executable directly from what appears to be a sketchy download site accompanied by an equally sketchy "installation" instruction set (e.g: downloading an executable file with a miscellaneous extension that must be changed back to ".exe").

Have you tried zipping it?

kennyrkun

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Re: KunLauncher - it's like sfmlprojects.org but not as good
« Reply #2 on: June 21, 2019, 05:08:06 am »
yeah, it's super sketchy, that's true. I thought about zipping it, but I haven't currently figured out how to use zip/unzip things with C++. I started working with it for another project but I haven't created anything reliable enough to use in this program.

eventually I'd like to make the download site very similar to sfmlprojects.org, where the application and the website share information and both allow downloads, but i haven't gotten there yet. the website it's hosted on is just a simple free site from 000webhost.com. I don't really like using it, but it's the only thing I could find with free FTP. the reason it's named 'noexe' is because 000webhost doesn't allow executable files to be uploaded, but they don't really try that hard to enforce it, so I just renamed it.

I guess it's not 'the poor man's' steam, more like 'the poor developer's' steam. i created it so that i didn't have to zip and send updated files to my friends everytime i wanted them to test something. instead, they could just press a button and update (or, if they were patient enough to let the info.dat file for each app get redownloaded everytime they opened the apps list, update automatically.)

the program isn't really useful for anyone but me, since I'm the only one who can upload things onto it, but it was only made as a way to make sharing my own applications easier. I was going to make it something that anyone could add things to, but then SFMLprojects.org was launched and I didn't really have reason to make a full application to do the same thing.

I just thought it would be a neat thing to share, and I do admit I didn't really do a great job selling it to people, but I guess I didn't really want to.

I'll answer any questions about it, though. I love questions. makes me feel important, ya know?
it's probably terrible.

 

anything