The launcher (and the updater which is built into it) is probably one of the biggest features v1.0 will bring. This is because it completely changes the way you launch the game, and it allows us to deploy updates at a much, much quicker rate. To demonstrate everything, I recorded this video, which works through the main things the launcher and updater offer.
So now that you've watched the video (I apologise for my microphone), hopefully you've got a lot better understanding of what everything is. But let me go through it again in a bit more detail.
When you download v1.0, you will be downloading a single ".iso" file, which for those who know, is essentially a DVD image. You then mount, burn or extract this in order to install PR. For those who don't know how to use .iso files, don't worry, we'll be providing plenty of instructions on how to use the .iso file, so it'll be as painless as possible. You then run the autorun application, which provides a quick and easy method to launch the installer, or launch the game if it's already installed.
Anyway, once everything is installed, you then have to sort out some Project Reality specific profiles. So, before, profiles were BF2 profiles, read out of Documents/Battlefield 2/Profiles. No longer in 1.0! Profiles are now read from Documents/ProjectReality/Profiles, and this allows us to customize settings and provide unique PR settings without affecting other mods and vanilla BF2. So no more grey crosshair when you go and play other mods!
Once you've sorted out your profiles, you then get to the main launcher. This is where all the action happens, and you will not be able to skip this when launching PR. You will always have to launch the launcher, and press play. The background image here was done by [R-DEV]Chuc, and is totally badass.
In the support menu, you'll be able to get support information which will be extremely helpful when posting support threads in the forums. This, along with error logs, and dialog messages, can all be copied and pasted into the forums, and are wrapped in code tags to make things all nice and well formatted.
So, one of the cool new features about the new profile system, is the ability to have multiple profiles each with unique prefixes. Not only this, but you can have multiple profiles using the same account, which allows you to set up things such as different video/audio settings, but still use the same account name as displayed ingame. You can set it up to always use a profile to skip the whole login page, which can save a couple of clicks, which everyone should like.
Now if you thought the launcher was pretty cool, the updater is even better. One of the main problems we have with development is the ability to push out updates. We don't want to release too many installers, as it's a pain to download and install them, and we'll piss everyone off and people will leave. But then we run into the problem of making individual versions, but all the developers want their stuff in it, and development times lengthen as we want to get everything in. So, then we run into issues with months (years in 1.0's case) of development time, and people leaving due to lack of updates.
Another really badass feature of the updater is the filesize. Now, this isn't demonstrated well in the video (because 1.0.8.0 contained a tonne of changes), but updates we push to the public should be extremely small. This is done through updating files inside the zip archives the mod uses directly (instead of providing the entire zip archive to download again, which is extremely useless and a waste of download time), as well as using BSDiff for binary modification. To provide an example of this, say we changed the texture paths in a .bundledmesh (a model file). Now, usually, we're just changing a couple of strings in the file, or maybe a couple of vertices were changed. With BSDiff, instead of having to download the entire 4 MB mesh file again, you only download say 5 KB, the changed strings for example. This is then applied directly inside the zip archive, so instead of downloading the entire 1.12 GB objects_vehicles_client.zip file, you only need to download 5 KB. Pretty, pretty badass.
Now, the problem with the whole update method, is it relies that you're applying updates over the top of unmodified files. This is why we now have file verification inside the launcher. It essentially replaces server side MD5 checks, and it should be a much nicer method than randomly getting disconnected from a game, just to be greeted by some weird and random MD5tool error. So, be very, very careful if you go about modifying PR files, because you could mess up your game, and you'll be forced to reinstall everything again. Always create backups first!
). You'll probably notice a few names missing from the credits, which is because not everyone has contacted me with their details to be included in them. Hopefully though before we release everyone is there and credited for what they did. Also, the music is another badass track made specifically for the credits by [R-DEV]Alkali, he's done a real awesome job on the soundtrack for v1.0.And that's about it. This has been my project for a bit over a year now, mixed in between University and real life (and other PR tasks). I'm quite happy with how it's turned out so far, and hopefully it'll hold up when the public gets their hands on it. Let me know what you think, and I hope you appreciate the effort and thought that's gone into each and every little detail (yes, even those little rounded corners on buttons took time
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