CBP Launcher

A launcher/installer for the Rise of Nations Community Balance/Bugfix Patch.

• CBP Setup GUI is a small installer/updater (has separate language files to allow for translations). Unless mentioned otherwise, "CBP Setup" refers to CBP Setup GUI.
• CBP Launcher is the main program and contains the vast majority of overall logic. It's a launcher for CBP (patch/unpatch RoN:EE), an updater for CBP Setup GUI, and essentially provides its own mod manager via a basic plugin system, separate from RoN's mod manager.

Both are C# WPF apps using .NET Framework. As of v0.5, CBP Launcher haphazardly implements elements of MVVM architecture.

Unused/Legacy (likely to be removed but spun out to their own project pages for posterity):

• CBP Setup (note no GUI) is the predecessor to CBP Setup GUI and is a console application that ran without user interaction. Some anti-virus programs found this behaviour deeply suspicious, so it was converted into CBP Setup GUI (and development after that point continued on CBP Setup GUI, not CBP Setup non-GUI).
• CBP patriots was briefly trialled as a replacement for RoN's own launcher (patriots.exe) that would just launch CBPS/CBPL as needed. This responsibility was instead integrated directly into CBP Setup GUI to avoid having to use three separate programs.

The Rules.xml Editor plugin bundled with CBP as of Alpha 8 can be found here.

The Sound.xml Editor plugin bundled with CBP as of Alpha 8 can be found here.

screenshots show v0.5

TODO

• Able to function even if source of update checks becomes unavailable (target v0.7 - clunky implementation present in 0.6.6.1)
• Integrate all first-time-run prompts into single window (target v0.7-v0.8)
• Improved offline functionality (target v0.8)
• Move CBPLauncher.exe location away from CBPSetupGUI.exe to reduce user error from misreading instructions (target v0.8-v0.9)
• Option to load archived versions of CBP (target v0.8-v0.9)
• Minimal translations of essential portions only of CBP Setup GUI and CBP Launcher (target v0.8-v0.9)
• Select loading of secondary CBP files individually, rather than as group (target v0.8-v0.9)
• Complete translations of all text in CBP Setup GUI and CBP Launcher (target: when the multi-lingual multi-national RoN community gets off its collectively lazy ass and contributes)
• Option to configure max number of logs in UI (wishlist)
• Load / unload Workshop mod alongside local mod files (wishlist)
• Hide hotfix versioning on primary version display (wishlist)
• Secondary fallback command-line load/unload scripts using .NET Core for crossplatform usage (wishlist) - (see here for some advice on making this); could also consider using MAUI for it (no official Linux support though).

License

• Code and documentation are licensed under the European Union Public License v. 1.2 (EUPL-1.2) or later.
• Most images and logos are -- or are based on -- assets owned by Microsoft and are not covered under the aforementioned EUPL license. These images are not licensed for further re-use outside of RoN mods and similar RoN-related works.

Credits

• The basic structure and functionality of the launcher (although now only a small minority of the code) is ported from Tom Weiland's excellent launcher tutorial.
• Huan Tran provided some guidance across a large swathe of my persistent coding questions.
• A slim few members of the RoN community actually bothered to spend a few minutes testing the launcher and providing feedback. A number of bugs were only fixed because they were willing to do so.
• The background image for the Spartan V1 skin is from Tingey Injury Law Firm via Unsplash.
• Costura.Fody is used to embed some dependencies into a single exe (PostSharp.Community.Packer can do the same thing).
• PoLaKoSz's fork of Pablissimo's fork of CodeKicker's BBCode parser is used to parse BBCode patch notes into HTML.
• Nathan Harrenstein's port of Microsoft's XAML FlowDocument to HTML Conversion Prototype is used to convert pre-parsed patch notes into a viewable flow document.
• TgaLib is used to preview TGA textures in the Optional Changes window.
• NLog is used for logging, and the fancy log viewer is a lightly modified version of Sentinel.NLogViewer.
• tips'n tricks' C# XML tutorials were invaluable as a starting point for reading and modifying XML files.
• Video tutorials by ToskersCorner and BinaryBunny helped with a few aspects of WPF development.
• mjn33's automated workaround utility for the object masks bug isn't used by CBP Launcher, but was a key part of creating CBP itself.