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Update time!
- The site is back online
- I made both a 32-bit and a 64-bit version
- I added an icon to the program to make it prettier
- I added an "offline" command line switch and an "offline mode" batch file to launch into offline mode (this means it will skip the check for a new version upon starting the launcher, this can be useful if loading takes too long or if the site is down again).

http://rwlauncher.woubuc.be/

As always, let me know if you find any more bugs / problems.

Will you be able to add functionality that allows for compatibility patch mods? The way I make those patches work is by requiring the player to activate them after activating the prerequisite mods. Would this program be capable of placing the mods in the correct load order if the player doesn't do that themselves?

Would you be able to use the mod settings for this, combining the different parts into one mod and providing on/off switches for each part?

Bug report:
v0.1 doesn't run on 32bit systems.

Okay that's a pretty important one.. To be honest, I've completely overlooked the 32 bit thing since I work on 64 bit by default. I will have to repackage the app, a 32 bit version should be available by tomorrow.

Edit: The hosting company where I host my websites seems to be having issues, right now I can't access any of my websites, so I won't be able to upload the new version to the site until it gets fixed. No idea how long that will take, still waiting for the company to actually acknowledge that there's something wrong...
Of course if I cannot upload it to my site I'll put it here on the forums.

Edit 2: Because of the site not being available for some people (not everyone has this problem, it seems to be bound to certain geographical locations), the update checker in the launcher doesn't work. Either it will fail silently and the launcher will do nothing, or it will produce an ugly error. It's getting pretty late right now, but I'll try to get an updated version done by tomorrow.

I meant colony restart
But yes I guess a proper warning could suffice if it's visible enough!
would you still be able to roll back to previous version though? like if you'd leave the modder the option to leave the thing up there or something like this

This is a good idea to add to the launcher, later on. I could make it so that, if you've enabled new mods that will not let you continue with your existing colony, the launcher will give you a choice between playing with the new mods (and then you'll have to start a new game) or playing without those mods so that you can continue with your old game.
I've also been thinking of the idea of being able to save different mod configurations, so that you can easily switch between different lists of mods.

Unfortunately I cannot do everything all at once, and I will focus on the main functions of the launcher now (the mod gallery and the auto-updater), but I've added these points to the ideas list on my Trello board so I'll get to them once the main features are done.

How would this work with releases that are not compatible with your current colony?
like the kinds that need a restart?

Ingame requirements (like mods that require you to start a new colony or generate a new world) won't change, I cannot do anything about this as it depends on the mod. I will provide a way for mod makers to add a warning to their mod, that you get to see when you activate the mod.
Also you talk about "mods that need a restart" but RW Launcher runs separate from the game, so it will always first apply your mods and your mod settings, and only then will it actually launch the game.

Making a tool that replaces certain content in a file with something else would be pretty easy to make. Keeping up with all the things that should change between alpha releases is the biggest part of the work.

*evul doing facepawn du to obvious miss*

That's why I'm here to point you in the right direction

When you get a chance to try it out, let me know if it all works with the launcher, and if the documentation is correct?

Do you have a format exsample or is it still in WIP

See my last post for everything about the 0.1a release
Here's the link to the documentation page: http://rwlauncher.woubuc.be/docs.html

[RW Launcher]

So I got some news: First release v0.1 alpha is out, and I called the program.. RW Launcher! (I know, very original)

Check it at http://rwlauncher.woubuc.be/

It's just the mod manager and the settings menu right now, not much fancy new stuff yet, but it should work. Be alert when you try it out though, chances are I've still overlooked some bugs, so let me know if anything doesn't seem to work the way it's supposed to.

Documentation on the extra launcher data is also available on the site, check the "documentation" link on the top of the page.

All thoughts and feedback are welcome, as always

PS: If you add RW Launcher support to your mod, do let me know.

Then when its finished I can uninstall winrar!

Sounds like a plan, haha

..I don't even have winrar, I use 7zip for everything

So when it pulls the mod from the database it would already be in a form windows/Rimworld can read?

Exactly. The launcher will download the mods from the database, and install them into the RimWorld mods folder right away, ready to play

I would love to have a launcher to add mods to the game, and to unpack-age them without winrar

Unpacking won't be in this mod, because it's not my aim to support loading various kinds of archives into it (this would take a lot of work since every mod is packaged slightly differently). The main goal for this launcher is to offer a mod gallery which will let you download and install mods with a single click, eliminating the need to manually download files altogether.

This also saves me mayor of time on making my own switcher

That's the idea, to make this one tool that will make it easier for everyone else

How is it defined in the about.xml?

I won't put it in about.xml since the game throws notices / errors when I do. The extra data will go in /About/Launcher.xml and I'll tell you how that file will be structured as soon as I finish with the settings function.

it would be better just for mod creators do another xml in mod folder

I wouldn't mind putting an extra .xml file in my mods specifically for this.

I guess the concensus is that I'll use an additional xml file for the launcher data

[EDIT:]

It is only a yellow warning though so it didn't force the window to pop up

This was my main concern, I was a bit confused by the fact that it said "error", which in my experience means something that will make the program go wrong. But as long as it's just a warning, it should be okay.

Does this mean the mod installer won't be able to utilize that extra field in the about.xml?

My launcher will work fine with the XML, I was just concerned that the extra data would mess up something ingame.


EDIT: I'm going with an extra xml file after all.

1. do styles for the window look, mainly only background since its white X_X?

I won't add this into the initial app, since it would be quite a lot of work to customize it all, and it would distract from working on the main functionality. But, I've added it to the ideas list on my Trello board, so once the main app is finished I'll evaluate the ideas in that list and one by one add these ideas to future releases.

2. Project armory got kit switcher, would it be possible to implement similar funcionality thrugh mod manager ?

Already working on something like this, that's what the on/off switches on the lower part of the screenshot in my previous post are for. It will allow mod makers to easily turn on or off parts of their mod, using a simple list structure inside the about.xml file (that's where I put all the additional mod settings that my launcher will support).