Catapult is a cross-platform launcher and content manager for Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and Cataclysm: Bright Nights. It is in part inspired by earlier versions of Rémy Roy's launcher.
- Automatic game download and installation (stable or experimental releases).
- Updating the game while preserving user data (saved games, settings, mods, etc).
- Mod management: Kenan Modpack download and complete or selective installation.
- Automatic download and installation of soundpacks.
- Good support for HiDPI displays: UI is automatically scaled with screen DPI, with ability to adjust the scale manually.
None required. The launcher is a single, self-contained executable. Just download it to a separate folder and run!
- OS: Windows 7+ or Linux, 64 bit.
- OpenGL 2.1 support.
- The Windows version relies on PowerShell to extract archives, which is kinda slow.
- When attempting to run the Windows version from a USB stick, the files are not created alongside the executable, but god knows where. A "security" feature of Windows, I suppose. My knowledge of Windows is rusty, so I don't know if there is any workaround for this.
- The Windows executable has to have the default Godot icon, since you can't have a custom icon and a self-contained executable at the same time.
These are tentative. They may or may not come to fruition.
- Translations.
- Backups for savegames, settings, maybe the whole game. (Backing up at least the current installation before updating will be a good failsafe.)
- Multiple UI themes (with at least one light theme).
- Download and installation of tilesets? (Only if there are at least a couple of finished tilesets out there that don't already come with both games.)
- Maybe an OSX version some day. (The main obstacle here is that I don't have a Mac and don't want one for anything other than this project. However, the amount of porting work should be minimal, so maybe I can get an IRL buddy to help me.)
I had had ideas about making my own launcher for a couple years, but it didn't go beyond small demos until August 2021. The main reasons for me to start active work on it were that:
- there was no launcher for Linux with a GUI;
- there was no launcher for C:BN with advanced features, such as mod and soundpack management.
I thought, wouldn't it be nice if a unified launcher existed that was cross-platform and supported both forks of the game. All in all, I made this launcher mainly because I wanted it.
My choice of tools wasn't great, since I wanted the app to be cross-platform and ship as one self-contained executable, like remyroy's launcher used to. I initially started making it with Python/Gtk/PyInstaller, but the latter didn't want to cooperate, especially on Windows. I started looking into other options, but nothing quite fit the requirements.
I was almost desperate enough to use Electron, but then I remembered about my old buddy Godot, with which I had some limited experience. I knew that it had a good UI system, and some non-game desktop apps had already been made with it. After some prototyping it seemed like it was going to work. Of course, Godot apps aren't as lightweight as fully native binaries, but they are nowhere near Electron in terms of size and resource usage. I think you'll agree that it would have been awkward if a game launcher was heavier than the game itself!
Once I confirmed that Godot was a good fit, I moved the project to it and started fleshing it out. I worked in secret, since I have a nasty habit of burning out and losing interest half-way though projects, so I didn't want to announce anything until some kind of MVP was achieved. Therefore, the first public release of the launcher is already in a fairly finished state.
I am an amateur, and developing something for the public and with a clear practical purpose is new to me, so feedback and criticism are welcome (constructive or not, I can bear it).
