Create game launcher

[TheJJ]

It may be useful to have a game launcher with these features:

• [ ] Update functionality for non-package-installs (Windows, macOS?)
• [ ] Mod ordering and activation (later, the download and update manager for those)
• [ ] Convert script invocation (for initial convert-mod creation and updates)

If needed, it can be extended with some more features, but this should be good for now.

I'd say this should be written in Python and Qt.

It strongly works together with #632 and then has to provide information to the engine about the activated mods when it performs the launch, but how? :)

[TheJJ]

Some notes about launchers from @janisozaur: i guess I never explained why I said I absolutely hate launchers they just add another unnecessary step to the whole process it is cross-platform to the extent such a project can be cross-platform which means it has no 64 bit windows build, no support for anything other than x86/x86_64 and probably only supports ubuntu and derivatives

maybe a job for a launcher, but can be solved differently: one common issue for us is people often report bugs that cause their game to crash but it's hard to extort dumps from users, especially those on inferior platforms maybe use breakpad breakpad is also superseded by crashpad on top of that you may want to give socorro a try to automatically collect and aggregate those crashes https://github.com/mozilla-services/socorro

I strongly suggest you look into integrating that if you ever start shipping binaries

[TheJJ]

We can integrate the mod management and convert activation in the main application. The updater for windows/mac is something different, we'd need a separate program there.

I can't tell what is a good solution for this, I was thinking of doing something with the same concept as the skyrim launcher.

[janisozaur]

Do note these are points about third-party launchers.

Some other notes not included in comment above:

• Launchers can be bigger than the game itself (in terms of size of distributed binary)
• It has no logs whatsoever
• People often confuse launcher with the game and come to us for help
• Launchers mislead users about version information
• Launchers that offer configuration often don't keep in sync with options of the game itself.

I'd still urge you to confront that with https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi who have first-party launcher that seems to do what you have in mind (mod management). Maybe their view is different.

[heinezen]

We can integrate the mod management and convert activation in the main application. The updater for windows/mac is something different, we'd need a separate program there.

There are good reasons to have mod management both in the launcher and the main application. For example a badly programmed mod could crash the game on startup. Deactivating it can prove to be difficult without mod management in the launcher. On the other hand it should be possible to configure and turn off some mods from within the game (e.g. visual changes like this "tiny trees" mod). Otherwise players are forced to restart the game on every change.

[simonsan]

FYI: Design work is being done in this document: https://pad.stusta.de/p/openage-launcher