Alternative PA Launcher

the uber launcher does that, not yours

Ah, sorry. I know what you meant. I was talking about this one being less buggy than the uber one (in that respect). I was just confirming that mine doesn't do that.

Version 0.5.1 is out that fixes the mod path for Windows (and maybe Mac, I'm not sure if it was broken before.)

@s03g: Try it now

Can corfirm, mod path works on win7. However in both this and previous version i am getting "Error while starting PA with following command: \bin_x64\PA.exe". Placing launcher in "stable" folder doesn't help.

What did you fill in for the install path? (See screenshot in the first page where it says "/home/********/Games/PA/stable"). It sounds like it is blank. It should fill in a default path on start-up, but I take it yours was empty from the start?

Oh. I didn't realise I need to login first.

Ah, I see what you did now. Yeah, that's an interesting edge case.
You are right, you don't need to log in, and can just use the "Launch offline" button. BUT that only works if you have ever used my launcher to download PA in the first place. The location of PA only gets set on downloading.

So to fix this, you can log in with my launcher, set the installation path to wherever PA is currently installed and press "Download and install". The launcher will then verify your current install and remember the location. After that, you can use the "Launch Offline" button normally.

Do you happen to know what the default install location for PA is under Windows for stable and PTE?

I think I installed PA in default location: C:\Games\Uber Entertainment\Planetary Annihilation Launcher\Planetary Annihilation\stable (C:\Games\Uber Entertainment\Planetary Annihilation Launcher\Planetary Annihilation\PTE)

Launcher didn't download some coherent ui files for 79317 (that's the only time I used it so far): CoherentUI_Host.exe, icudt.dll .

That's really bizarre. I used it just yesterday to install the update (but on Linux of course).
Which CoherentUI_Host.exe is it missing btw? The bin_64 or the bin_86?

Actually, this seems to be a problem that the official launcher also suffers from from time to time. What happens if you press "Download and install" again? It should verify and try to download the missing files. Does it do that?

Actually, never mind. I think I may have found something. It's probably a bit of untested code that overcomes the limitation of not having symbolic links on Windows by making copies of the files (at least when compiling with MinGW).

Ok, new release that fixes the missing files under Windows. Try it now, @zx0

Other fixes:

• Check for empty install path.
• Use correct default install path for Windows.
• Add support for the stock client mods.

Seems like it downloaded PTE correctly. Nice! My only request/suggestion is that game path/parameters can be set in offline.

I considered that, but then I thought: why would one need the launcher then, if one could just start PA(.exe) directly? My idea for the off-line play button was more of a fallback mechanism in case one cannot connect to Uber for some reason.

I'd be happy to put it in if you want though.

Well, I am using launcher only to update, but if I wanted to to run game with parameters it would be the fastest way to use your launcher. It's not like it's super important or anything, but if it's easy to implement then why not

Yeah, it is. The most difficult part is where to put all of the buttons.
Anyway, on it!

Ok, new release:

• Bugfix for mod enabling.
• Added "X-Clacks-Overhead"
• Improved offline launching (@zx0 )
  
• Support for new PAMM server mod

Does the linux version of pa run better? Might dual boot if the performance benefit are significant enough. This and also ksp.

Dunno, I have no Windows to compare it to. I imagine it's the same though.

I'm on dual boot Windows + Linux with PA installed on both. I get pretty much identical performance on both from what I can tell, which is good given GPU drivers usually lag behind on linux compared to windows. The only situation where I think you'd see a benfit to Linux is that it uses less memory, so if you were loading a system near your ram limit you may get smooth performance on Linux if it avoided disc caching.

My system:

AMD FX 8320 (now working smoothly after I sorted out the cooling, oops!). 8gb DDR3 Dual Channel Ram, AMD R9 280 gpu (basically a HD 7950 boost card).