Game Launcher Creator V1.1
GLC Official Website

Hello GameGurus!

Some of you may remember me from the TGC community, active from 2007 until around 2014. I was the main developer for a product I created for FPSC9/10 called InterFPSC. InterFPSC was a great product to work on. It met the needs of so many users and I got great feedback.

Naturally, I was a backer from the start for FPSC Reloaded (now GameGuru) and have been following it (and using it) from time to time (amongst other projects).

I now present to you a brand new product for 2018, the Game Launcher Creator.



The Game Launcher Creator enables you to design and develop your own game launchers for any game engine, including GameGuru. It comes complete with a professional WYSIWYG editor (no coding involved at all), and it's not "just" your basic game launcher creator. I knew whilst I was developing it, that it would have to contain some real cool features either never seen before or at least "modern".

Updater
It contains a built-in updater. This is a must for any Game Launcher these days. You can configure it in literally less than a minute and it works directly with your server and your game files.

WYSIWYG
A full What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get editor. You design and develop your Game Launcher by simply dragging objects into your Game Launcher, sizing them, positioning them and configuring them.

Objects
Inside GLC is a full-range of exclusive objects to drop into your game launcher. This includes:

- Server (Cloud) Images
You can include Cloud based images into your Game Launchers. This will enable you to update your Game Launcher by simply replacing the images in the cloud (your server) or the destination where the images are hosted. Your users then get update the instant you upload it.

Images
As well as the Cloud-based images for your game launcher, you can also include local images (shipped with your game launcher). Almost every image type is supported.

Text
You can insert static text into your game launchers. Choose fonts, sizes and colours for your text strings.

Dynamic-Server Text
Ever wanted to show how many people are playing online? What about a real-time newsflash? How about some text updates? It's all possible with GLC. You can design dynamic text strings that retrieve information from online through PHP. This allows you to update the text string dyamically, whether it's to show how many players are currently playing your game or how many maps are available for download. You can insert an unlimited amount of these strings.

Buttons
Design your own buttons inside the game launcher itself. Import your own graphics and then assign an action to the button (Launch/Webpage/Update/Exit) etc.

Video
Video is always a cool addition to a game launcher and the Game Launcher Creator supports most popular video formats. You can full-scale your video as a backdrop or size it and position it however you want.

All of the built-in objects come with configurable properties such as size, position, layer and additional fields.

You can check out the Game Launcher Creator now on the website > https://gamelaunchercreator.com

I have also included a tutorial video below for you to have a glimpse into what GLC offers. It is an actively developed product, so feedback is always welcome and any new features. We are currently working on some new features as we speak.

Feel free to drop a message on this thread or email me for any further information.

Cheers,
Danny

YouTube Video for GLC working with GameGuru!

Holy crap, this is awesome. Someone get this man a toolmaker badge

It does look pretty cool ..
I'm guessing there is no demo version to download ?

Thanks Bolt Action Gaming

Synchromesh - Not at present. I'm making sure there is plenty of tutorial videos and showcase material available so people can see exactly what it can do though.

excellent stuff would it run and executable that was renamed i.e. mygame.exe renamed to mygame.gg or something it would be great if there was only one executable in the folder so that people ran the launcher rather than the game directly if that is possible ?

Just purchased will have a play and give some feedback

Hey GraPhix,

This could be possible. It would take some coding to rework it like that (as an option) however, I would highly recommend, when you build your installer, just to point the Start Menu and Desktop shortcuts to the Launcher, so the user by default goes to that instead.

Any feedback is welcome. I'm always looking for new features to develop to make it an awesome piece of software!

That's nifty

This is really neat! Nice work! Do you think it'd be possible to include a settings screen?

One thing I noticed on your intro video is that, when hovering over the .exe of the built launcher it showed "File Description: GLC Launcher". Is it possible to change that?

This looks very interesting... I have been looking forward to something like this.

This is very cool indeed.

After watching video here are a couple of suggestions:

1. Importing sounds for things like buttons
2. Incorporate a button for about which gives information
3. Specify timer for splash screen. It was too fast
4. Incorporate option to modify launcher icon
5. Incorporate option to create launcher shortcut on desktop
6. Allow modification of some setup.ini fields e.g. full screen, invert mouse, show huds , controller etc
7. Consider adding encryption to pack the game data files securely

looks good, I will look to purchase at future date.

Thanks everyone for the feedback!

Landman - Changing file description I will try and add for the next update. In the meantime, you can change the Icon and file description using ResHacker. A quick Google and download and you're good to go!

Nomad Soul -
1) Button sounds are already on my list for the next update
2) Will pop on the list to add an 'about' screen with additional information and a (?) for that, may even incorporate it into a button action
3) I will also incorporate a minimum time for the splash screen. The splash screen is the actual 'loading' screen of the Launcher itself, as some launchers may contain heavy graphics, videos and cloud content, so it shows something more visually appealing than a boring loading window, but will integrate a min. time for splash
4) At some point in the future and Icon modifier will become available. For now, you can use ResHacker no problem.
5) Will certainly implement a 'add shortcut to desktop' feature
6) Adding an initialisation file modification screen would be a great feature. I am looking into it as we speak although this could take some time
7) I will certainly look into packing/encryption of data files

Thanks for the suggestions.

This is the good stuff right here.

Can't wait to see more. Good job so far.

this is a GREAT idea and if I ever make a game big enough to warrant a launcher, I will totally use this one.

Thanks guys. My ears are always open for suggestions.

One thing I *did* have in mind for the future, is the ability for users to create their own templates to share. I'm keen for opinions on that...

Looks really good, will definitely be using it if I make a game.

Just one thing, with the dx11 update gg will be getting a slight rebranding, instead of the tag line "easy game maker" the new tag line will be "game making for everyone" so you might want to adjust any gameguru branding you have used (see the donation banner at the top of the forum for an example).

Thanks for the heads up Belidos!

Discount code: INTRO15 to retain the introductory price for GG users. This code is valid until 31st March 2018.

Changes in the last two revisions

1.3
- Improved Launcher Speed
- Touched up UI

1.2
- Updated GLC Interface (fonts/icons)
- Implemented a 'move window' routine into Launcher
- Fixed Launcher Updater (Ignored version numbers)
- Ensured old update files are removed before new update download

[Still to come]
- Sounds for button hover/click
- Adding an 'About' screen
- Minimum timer for Splash Screen

If we have already purchased how do we get the updates ?

Hey GraPhix,

Inside GLC you can select "Check for Updates" in the left menu.

Cheers,
Danny

DOH!!!! I feel dumb now lol thank you

how do I check my current version number? its updated four times now seems to be in a loop

Heh, it's Tuesday... no problem.

I will integrate an auto update check for the next version

You can check by clicking on the GLC logo in the top left. If it's causing a loop, you can change the version.txt inside your GLC install folder to 4, that should fix it. I will look into that, although my tests came up trumps

I must be doing something wrong updated 7 times now the version number is always 1.01

Wow, how strange.

I'll PM you the link.

completely unistalled and installed from the link you sent me still version 1.0.1

I have the same problem as GraPhiX. The only file that was changed by the updater was the Uninstal.exe. Is there a problem with installing Game Launcher Creator in a different location than the default?

Hey samoh,

That is strange indeed. I am beginning to think that my server maybe at fault here (cache) - it has to be. As the installer does indeed contain the correct (updated) files but I know I have a lot of caching setup on the server. I will take a look into that this evening.

In the meantime, I will PM you the direct link to the install. If this update doesn't work, we can patch in alternative ways.

Cheers,
Danny

@Sting
The install you send me worked fine, but again AVG antivirus seems to really hate your install. I had to disable it to complete the install. It wanted me to wait 215 minutes while it checked it out. It is checking it out as I write this!

Anyway, I now have Game Launcher Creator V1.3 installed and working.

Thanks Danny
Sam

Edit: I ran a AVG scan of the folder I downloaded your install to, it found no problems with the exe itself, but does not like it on execution!

Edit2: The updated Game Launcher Creator says that my serial number is invalid. It will run from the installer, but when I close it and run it again it wants me to reinstall with the correct serial number. I uninstalled and reinstalled with the same result.

@Sting,

I to have the same problems. I have tried a few different ways including making sure the install path could be written to under my user profile. It would not update and still at version 1.0.1.

Thanks,

Joe

Thanks for the reports Gents. PM's sent.

The tool looks very good.

Purchased

Will there be more templates available in the future?

Very nice tool it seams....

Easily on my get list as soon as my PC is set up again!

Edit: just one question can this tool be used to deploy as well, or launch only?


Reliquia....

@Luis Alberto Rubio - Awesome! Sure, I will be working through lots of templates over time. They will be available from the GLC website.

@reliquia - How do you mean deploy? WIth the launcher you create, you can create updates that the user can download. You can also launch apps, games, websites etc. The full documentation is available on the website. However, any other questions, feel free to fire them over

Posting this to let everyone know I have Game Launcher Creator working by running the program as administrator.
If it refuses to run because of an invalid serial number, that could be your problem.

I also would like to thank Sting for all his help, and his quick response to my problems.
It is good to know that Game Launcher Creator has him there to help if there is a problem.

Thanks again Danny,
Sam

You're very welcome Sam. Thanks for trying a few things out for me, much appreciated.

Hello everyone,

The latest version (1.5) is now officially available. It's taken quite some time to get to this point as I have completely redesigned the user-interface and have now docked the toolbar to the right side of the window. I am debating whether to keep this docked, put it back to undocked or letting the you have the option.

Changelog is inside the installation and is available from the GLC directory once you have updated.

Trying to update from within Game Launcher Creator itself may produce no results, as we have a caching system on our server which is very stubborn so I need to include a cachebuster for this in the next release.

For now, you can download the installer at:

Copy this link, add some random numbers to the end and press Enter to download

https://byteboxmedia.co.uk/SoftInfo/glc-install.exe?rand=382928

If you experience any issues, please post here and I will try my best to keep on top of them all.

Danny

Now available on the TGC Store - https://www.tgcstore.net/product/32362

Nice tool ,looks like you nailed it now

Dave

Howdy there. Sounds like a fine idea- but what are all the features?
Can a person launch a video while their game is loading?
Will it continue to play while the game loads?
Is it on Steam, or is there a blog, FB, etc to see video examples?

This really looks nice - it is now on my wish list

Reliquia....

@GubbyBlips
Second post down showed it in action with GG

Dave

Version 1.6 now available!

Featuring a brand new WebView object (display websites/pages directly in your launchers) and a new auto-update option.

You can update via the Update GLC link inside the software. Any bugs, issues or weirdness, please feel free to let me know

All good here

Dave

good

i have something like this but also free