TinyLauncher - 3 questions

[PoulpSquad]

Good day,

I've been trying to set up TinyLauncher on my emulated Amiga, but I'm having some trouble. I'm writing this hoping someone can help me out.

The launcher is fantastic, but I'm having problems when I quit it, as icons seem to be damaged. Running NewIcons before TL has no effect for me.

I noticed that enabling RAD: fixes this issue by restarting Workbench.

I'd like to know 3 things:

Is it possible to have TL restart WB in a similar way when exiting?

Is it possible for TL to return after ending a game?

Is there a way to stop TL from messing with icons on AmigaOS 3.5/3.9?

Thanks a lot for your time reading this.

[DisasterIncarna]

hmm, never used it before, i thought it was for proper amigas and was something you ran early boot to keep mem usage low? As you are using an emulated amiga is IGame not something you would want to use?

[PoulpSquad]

I will have to, if there are no ways to fix this issue with icons.

That would be too bad though, because I really like how TL looks and how it sorts stuff.

And yes, WHDLoadMenu or iGame would fit the bill if there aren't any other ways.

[DisasterIncarna]

icons getting messed up would suggest your workbench color palette is getting overridden somehow, you know what ive never tried tinylauncher before, always stuck with igame and im making my own variation combined with my old boot sequence selector tool which im having to rebuild after losing the code for my original and decided to just merge an igame like games launcher into a boot sequence selector into 1 convenient package.

I might as well give tinylauncher a shot, i mean, now you mention it, i cant believe i never bothered trying it before, i do remember seeing a few vids on youtube regarding it, but i think the video i saw only had the youtuber running in the basic 4 color hires screen and he pretty much disregarded workbench and went all out for the launcher so if such an issue was/is a thing i never noticed it on those vid(s).

[PoulpSquad]

It's not a palette issue. NewIcons get disabled. TL does something but I have no idea what tbh.

They advise to run NewIcons before TL to prevent this issue, but I'm on OS 3.9, so NewIcons isn't working for me.

Give it a try if you can, the launcher is great and it's the only one I've tried so far that gets the names of games correctly.

[DisasterIncarna]

ah right, does it strip out unwanted characters and the likes? always hated slaves that added games wrapped in -------- Rando Game 1 ------- which messed up the order of games.

[PoulpSquad]

Yeah, it does a pretty decent job at organizing them. I'll add 3 screenshots comparing WHDLoad and iGame with TL.

For instance, A-train is shown as A-Train and A-Train for 512K memory in TL, but twice as A-Train in WHDLoadMenu (and others).

Same for games with intros etc.

Don't get me wrong, I love WHDLoadMenu and that's the one I'll use if I can't find a way to sort the icons issue, it is lightweight and very nice to use!

iGame's reading slaves data is... interesting. Using directories' names is about the same as WHDLoadMenu.

I'll attach also a picture of some NewIcons before and the same after running TL.

[DisasterIncarna]

hmm yeah it looks like either newicons isnt running afterwards for some reason or the tooltype data has been stripped from the icons?

heres a quick/dirty vid of my work in progress launcher for all things, games, demos, startup-sequences.

[ Show youtube player ]

[PoulpSquad]

They aren't touched, after restarting WB they are back to their normal state.

Interestingly enough, IconEdit doesn't remember the default icons (the ones in ENV: that are named def_xxxx,info).

Trying to save default icons results in a write error

[DisasterIncarna]

Very strange, i'm almost scared to install them myself, perhaps ill make another copy of my current emulated setup....juuuust incase.

[PoulpSquad]

ikr... sounds almost like voodoo, but not nearly as fun!

Using RAD solves the icons problem by restarting WB after exiting a game, but one could enter TL and exit it without running anything, thus borking the icons and part of the ramdisk.

I'd like to find a way to restart WB after exiting TL.

I'd get dropped back to WB and would still need to run TL manually again to get back where I was. So now I need a way to get back in TL after resetting WB, but without adding anything in my startup sequence, since I don't want to run TL automatically everytime I run WB

Oh I just noticed the video of the launcher you're working on! Looks very promising... it might be just what I'm looking for!

Is it usable or is it a dev version?

[DisasterIncarna]

part useable, it relies on having IGame do a full scan of its games, then i take its results and er, strip a load of stuff out as unneeded, ive had igame crash on me several times doing directory scans (on emulated systems + directory mode and on 1 of my fpga's) so am currently doing a bit of cheating atm by getting the system to do all the work for me in a totally system friendly way.

Turns out i can just use the LIST command and with some messing around with the LFORMAT option, i can make something very close to a config similar to how igame makes one, only in a system friendly (Emulated or real) way.

Once i remove the need to depend on an iGame generated gameslist i could give it out in its semi-working state, that aint just yet tho, and i know from making my GUI for UHC-Tools, that only doing this stuff on 1 system (for me atm, thats OS3.2 via Emulationp) that what works for me might not work for others on their system A/B/C, X/Y/Z.

Atm all i got working is all whdload games that igame scanned, and a second list for whdload demos/megademos, they all launch and can have their tooltypes examined/edited, the boot time startup-sequence stuff and utilities/emulation parts arent working just yet. yet....

Dont worry, when i need someone to risk life and limb to test a semi working abonination ill be all over the forums for experimental lab rats..... volunteers

[PoulpSquad]

Wishing you the best of luck in your development process, It's obvious you got this by the balls.

Definitely, count me in for trying stuff... Making backups of this virtual Amiga thing is as easy as copy/paste a bunch of files, so I got no issues breaking stuff. Bonus points if it makes stuff die in horrible ways, it's always entertaining.

Ya know what, I'm going the iGame route and calling it a day. I'm mentally exhausted after months battling this thing every inch of the way xD

[DisasterIncarna]

best to use whatever keeps your mind rage free so you can concentrate on what matters more, retro goodness.

[paul1981]

TinyLauncher is pretty naughty really as it reassigns both ENV: and T: (for a reason I know not, nor care about). After quitting TinyLauncher, you need to reassign both ENV: and T: by typing the following at a command prompt:

Assign ENV: RAM:ENV
Assign T: RAM:T

Instead, I've made a script for you that takes care of this and also NewIcons. Just extract the attached LHA archive to your TinyLauncher drawer and either run TinyLauncher by clicking on the space invader icon (called TinyLauncher), or run it from the command prompt. If running from the command prompt you must CD into your TinyLauncher directory first, and then type 'tinylauncher'.

The script will still work even if you boot with no Startup-Sequence, and even if Workbench isn't loaded. It should always work! This is needed for the current version (3.56 of TinyLauncher). Future versions may not need it.

I would have helped you out with this much sooner had I known about your post! Hopefully it will help you and maybe others too. Also, I made a little doc a couple of years ago to better explain the keyboard commands from within TinyLauncher. Christmas has come early for you.

P.S. The space invaders icon was from an archive called 'TL_icons.lha' for which I can't remember where I got it from now. Does anyone know who drew the icon?

[PoulpSquad]

Hello Paul,

So this explains that... I wasn't aware it did stuff with assigns. It explains a lot actually!

Thank you very much for the script, I'll make sure to try it out tonight, that's very sweet of you!

P.S.: Can't help you out with the icon thing, I got the icon I use with TL from user Fendrix in his thread on EAB at https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=103523.

**EDIT**

Works beautifully! Just had to move newicons to DH0:C and newicons.library to DH0:Libs and replace the original TinyLauncher script with your own.

Thanks a lot!

[paul1981]

You're very welcome. I had a look at that icon link of yours too, and I quite like it. I'll certainly consider using that one myself as soon as I see how it looks on my Workbench. If you have any further questions regarding TinyLauncher, feel free to contact me.