[WIP] Release Manager. (Installer, Patcher, Launcher)

I have been playing with the HTML5 tools, I really hope we can implement that aspect. Also took another look at the Launcher for Warframe. We certainly want to try get to that level. I have been carefully looking at communications between the backend launcher and the HTML5 components so if someone wanted they could build the full visualization of the tool in HTML as an option.

The log should be in

C:\ProgramData\ReleaseManager\app\ReleaseManager.log

I will look at an easier way to open it for future use.

 

OK some updates.

I've finally got the basics working. It still drops the download and just stops (restarting launcher works)

Oh and I patched to test and see if it takes a long time. I was around 2-3 minutes and the project is around 600mb. Very tiny patch created too.

Overall I get more messages when something goes wrong to figure out how to solve it. Nice work!

 

Great glad you got end to end operating. I am going to continue to work on feedback in app. Its really easier to learn that way.

 

Ahem.... where do i find the prefab to put into my project again? It had an accident

I can't seem to find it into the program folder.

EDIT: Nvm i've got it!

 

I had to still post this for anyone in the future. (besides I made a picture )

 

Got any news?

 

I've used this launcher every day for around 2 weeks now. And while not finished yet, it works like a charm. This will become a hit for most unity developers once some details are changed (details I've mailed to Travis).

 

Hey Zubba,

I have been working on some changes to the Launcher solution, if it works out we wont need the ProgramData folder. Also control of upgrading the Launcher will be in the hands of the ReleaseManager tool not in our hands. Also the reworking of the compilation into a threaded tool with additional controls and measures.

I expect these changes should be completed before the end of next week.

Regards
Travis

 

Nice!

One suggestion I forgot to mention before. We need some way of displaying some kind of EULA wich the user has to click yes to continue. In the installation of the .msi would be perfect. If not possible I guess it can be made by a ticker in the launcher. "I have read and agree to the EULA" kind of thing.

Is this possible? Displaying a large EULA text within unity might not be a good idea.

 

On a second thought. If not possibble in the installer, it's easily done inside unity linking to a webpage with the eula.

 

Great you considered including dropbox but what would be a blast would ve using mega as is the only free file hostimg with AAA speed and no limits.

 

Actually I have been considering this. It would be part of the launcher and would require acceptance whenever the version or the EULA changes. Its not a high priority right now though. Getting all the bits just right is my main focus. The compile process and MAC builds are the highest priority.

Do you have a link? I can test it.

 

a wip demo I've hosted in mega.
https://mega.co.nz/#!po1zHQoZ!DzUW0Yj_L1HXP39QIOuH_qnDG6Ug7ZLUAA33NHeflSk

 

Hmm it doesn't look like this would be easy to use.

 

Doesn't mega use end to end encryption? It has to download the whole file to a buffer and then decrypt it with js. The key is part of the url, after the !.

 

The keys for the file are:
DzUW0Yj_L1HXP39QIOuH_qnDG6Ug7ZLUAA33NHeflSk

link without keys
https://mega.co.nz/#!po1zHQoZ

Sorry for not posting this way previously. I'm used to share the full link.

 

But, if you have a regular hosting that handles the patcher graphics and hosts the latest version data asociated to the Mega link, that wouldn´t be that hard right?. Would just need to call the full download link. I'm not aimign to host in MEga all the stuff but the heavy stuff like the full download as well as the patch downloads. Witch are the problematic ones due to bandwith limitations

 

The issue with there service is that you can upload a single file and get a url for it. ReleaseManager needs to be able to release files in a folder type structure. They then need to be discovered that way.

The initial game download could of course easily be handled in the solution. But that is actually a smallish download. I don't see an easy way to use the service and the amount of engeneering that would be required to do so just cant be made a priority right now.

 

No prob. Thanks for giving it a look.

 

Short update.

The threaded compiler is working nicely and saving some time. I will try get screen shots soon.

I am making an installation change to the way files are installed on windows machines. Currently the project deploys the modifiable code into the ProgramData folder. This has two issues.

The first issue is that the end user might expect that data on a different drive due to hard drive size issues. The 2nd issues is 32 and 64 bit versions of your project will clash as they use the same folder. What we will do instead is mark the folder installed into as writable by all users. This will allows us to leave the project in the folder its installed in, also it will reduce the drive space used and lastly it will allow us to update the primary updater at a stretch.

The main reason we have not release any new patches is we getting an official release of the tool we use to compile the release manager. Its a bit pricy so its taking us a bit of time. Please bear with me we will get it sorted ASAP.

 

Hello,
We have purchased Release Manager one week ago to use in our 3D game created in Unity. It's features are really amazing at the moment, but unfortunately, beacause of the few wiki pages we can't use it properly. One of our problems is that when we start the published game, unity displays the default Launcher and not the Release Manger Launcher. Are we doing anything wrong with the prefab (which should be placed in the first scene of game) or should we do something else?

 

Hello,

We will have the rest of the tutorial wiki pages done be end of business tomorrow. That should help a fair bit.

In the mean time lets me sum up the steps required before you can release using ReleaseManager.

Create your project
You need to create your project in the release manager. This include setting up the FTP and download links. Currently the first 3 tutorial pages should assist with this step.

Design your Launcher
You need to design your launcher there is a default version available. Once designed you can upload the design to your hosting site with the upload button on the top. (This launcher will be the thing your customer sees)

Compile and upload your first version
You need to add your first version to the ReleaseManager. Once added you hit the compile button to compile your Release. The first release is always a full release. Once done you upload your Release.
After uploading you need to make your release active with the make release active button.

Create your package
No you need to create the package people will download and install to play your game. This is the last tab in the system. Currently we only support Windows packages. The system requires you install WiX first as that is the tool we use to package your MSI.

The remaining Wiki pages will be updated tomorrow. http://info.celestial-games.com/doku.php?id=releasemanager:gettingstarted

We are busy making some changes that will effect how your current install base works. Please keep in mind untill the BETA is released you can expect your users may need to reinstall latter.

 

Any chance of extending the discount, seeing as we are still in the alpha stage?

 

I will adjust the site. Beta will continue for a while. The current build does have an issue with 32bit games I will put up a work around for that this evening too.

 

Hey there,

Any word on a patch that resolves the Java evaluation issue?
- This was resolved. Just needed to download a new version of the ReleaseManager. Thanks!

 

Hello Travis, how do you handle the resources folder with patching? Usually that's our biggest file and will get updated a lot

 

The site is showing £99.63? That's not the discounted price is it?

Keep up the good work!

EDIT: Just seen you have now updated the price and I have purchased it, thank you.

 

Hey,

So, when trying to compile a new release (patch) for my game, Release Manager returns null during the compile process. I checked the Release Manager logs and noticed the following:

Jun 13, 2015 12:00:47 PM celestial.patcher.BuildFileSet run
WARNING: null
java.lang.NullPointerException
at celestial.patcher.BuildFileSet.findAllFiles(Unknown Source)
at celestial.patcher.BuildFileSet.processFolder(Unknown Source)
at celestial.patcher.BuildFileSet.run(Unknown Source)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
​

NOTE: I see what's happening here. Release settings can't change (platforms -- Win32 vs Win64), which makes sense. If your previous release was on one platform, the next release for a project can't be on a different combination of platforms -- they must stay consistent from the initial release. Creating a new project with the platforms I desired was enough to fix this.

 

Thanks I will add this to my list of polishing things. It should be possible to create a new release on a different platform. We need to cater for that.

 

Hello,

Sorry its taken me a while to reply.

We have the same issue. We put a lot in our resources folder and as such its the largest file in Battle Arena Drones. The only issue is you need about 10 times the ram as that file is size wise. So if its a gig you should need 10gigs free (give or take) it will move to working on drive if you don't have enough ram, but that's going to be really slow.

The patches have proved to be really small for our game. The old way was about 50mb a shot (about 25% the size of the largest file) with the new differential compression the patches were only about 2mb or so. Of course if you add 40mb of new stuff its going to add to the download size.

I am sure the folks using the tool here can give you an idea of the patch sizes they getting.

 

Version 0.0.13b

I have put out this patch as a stop gap to resolve the 32bit issue for people building games on 32Bit. I have emailed everyone from mailchimp with details. I wont spam you it will just be for now while we stabilize the product and you need to know.

Thanks for everyone's support and especially for your patience. I am back on track with development again. Everything looks good for a Windows Release Candidate for July.

 

Just updated the installation to the latest version and now I cannot use it. Here is the error:

 

Hi,

That is peculiar. This happens when you try to launch Release Manager from the Launcher or when you try start the launcher?

 

Just when I launch the installed Release Manager application as normal. I clicked the update button to update the install to the latest and now each time I click [Start], I receive this error and the application just quits. The application used to work prior to the update.

 

I can only suggest downloading the newer installer. I did regression testing of this and didn't have that issue.

Even if a file was corrupted it should have repaired. Did you install in a different folder? I only ask to try see how to prevent this from happening again.

 

I didn't download a new installer, should I have done? I just launched the application as normal and clicked the update button. Once it had finished downloading and installing, I just receive this error. I'll give a new download a go and post my results here for you.

 

It should have updated fine. Tested from scratch and I updated a version. That's why I asked about specifics in case there was a gap I didn't perceive. Will see if a full download helps solve the issue. Will also try see why it didn't detect the problem and download the broken files.

 

Ok I've uninstalled the application, downloaded the installer from the link provided in the email today, reinstalled, had to click [Update] button ([Start] was greyed out and not clickable). It went through its process and updated, [Start] was then clickable, as soon as I clicked [Start] I now have the same error.

It's broken.

 

Doing some tests now on various boxes to see if I can replicate that issue here.

 

If it helps you in any way, I can stream my screen on twitch and you can see/interact to get this resolved. Just let me know if it will help you

 

I have managed to recreate the error. Busy looking for a resolution. It comes down to having a clean machine for me to test from. The application is finding some of the files it needed from other folders.

 

Well at least you've replicated the issue, I'll wait for a fix.

Thanks

 

This was patched as 0.0.13c 7kb.

I was my mistake in the build process on the new build server I set up. Was trying to link to installed libraries not the included ones. My apologies.

-- I did write a post about this before hitting the sack but didn't hit send. :/

 

Now works fine, good job!

 

I purchased this the other day and for some reason can't get it to work. I followed the tutorial and was able to create a release, push it to my server, create a launcher, push that to my server, built the installer...all worked fine up that point. I installed the project via the installer, opened it and the launcher came up fine. Clicked update, it updated fine. I clicked play, the launcher closed and nothing happened. Open the launcher again and it shows as updated, but the play button does nothing. Hovering doesn't swap the image for hover and clicking it does nothing. The button doesn't appear to be disabled like when waiting for an update also. I tried modifying the action of the button in the launcher designer. Changed it to run exe with the action set to both the game name and "launcher" which is what I saw in the program data folder. I also tried "run unity game" with no luck. I can run the launcher.exe in the program data folder with no issues and it loads fine. Any ideas? My next step was going to be make a simple project with pretty much nothing in it and see if I can get it to work.

 

Hello Iamallama thanks for getting Release Manager, let me see if I can assist you.

You should be picking unity game for your play button. And you should just need the name of the executable in it. So if your exe is called launcher.exe then just launcher will do.

Assuming you already have that, could you forward me the file layout.xml in the cache folder in ProgramData email it to me info@celestial-games.com I can take a look at it and see if I can figure out anything more.

 

I'll check it out when I get home from work. It appears as though the exe was renamed to launcher in the compile/build process of Release Manager as that isn't the name I gave the project. I just found launcher.exe by looking in the program data folder. If it would rename the game exe, then why need to put in an action if you select "run unity game". I'll see if I can fix it.

Also, btw, aside from a few small things non-obvious (such as what to put into the action field on a button) everything appears to be great and easy to use.

 

Glad you finding it reasonably easy to use. I have created a ticket to extend the button information on the wiki.

Ok launcher.exe is in fact the thing that shows the Launcher display. There is a folder called app where your game files are.

 

How do you actually update the launcher itself? Say if we have redesigned it completely and someone is still using an older launcher? Do they have to reinstall?

 

If you mean the design of the Launcher all you need to do is hit upload on the designer. That will upload you new design. Each of your players will then get that design next time they use the Launcher.

The launcher does cache the design but will detect if the files have changed on startup.

Does that make sense.