Changelog (1.27.13)
Miscellaneous Installer Improvements
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Previous Changelog.
This update adds small miscellaneous improvements around the Reloaded-II installer for Windows.
Abort Install on Existing Directory
The installer will now abort installation if there is an existing installation; this is to prevent data loss.
Setup.exe now Starts Reloaded-II Without Admin
When running Setup.exe, the Reloaded-II.exe file would start as admin. This is because Setup.exe
starts as Admin. Setup needs Admin to auto-install .NET Runtime (if missing).
As starting with Admin may potentially cause drag & drop issues with some 3rd party programs and
file explorers running as non-Admin; the Reloaded-II.exe process started by Setup.exe is now non-admin.
Surprisingly, this change was non-trivial to make.
Static Installer for Linux/WINE
There is now a 'static' installer for people who want to install Reloaded easier within a WINE environment.
This installer saves you a minute by allowing you to omit:
winetricks dotnet48
During the install process.
This was mainly done with the intention of providing a terminal-free installation experience to people
new to Linux.
Note that this may fail to run if you have native Linux .NET Runtime installed, in which case you have to start with DOTNET_ROOT="" DOTNET_BUNDLE_EXTRACT_BASE_DIR="" wine ./Setup-Linux.exe; I'll try looking for a solution tomorrow.
Documentation Updates
Documentation updates will follow tomorrow.
Expect Issue 247: Document one click installer
to be closed. In addition, the Generic Linux setup guide will be updated.
Previous Changelog (1.27.11)
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This update adds a retry policy for in-launcher downloads that are not updates, in order
to make downloading more reliable when the servers on mod sites are under heavy load.
Previous Changelog (1.27.10)
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This update improves Reloaded's Launcher for people using screen readers, labelling many
previously unlabaled items throughout the core UI.
Most of the core/main UI should now be a bit friendlier 😇.
It's not going to be perfect, but I hope it's just a little better.
Previous Changelog (1.27.9)
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This update re-enables WPF Automation Functionality to improve accessibility for users who require
the use of assistive screen readers.
Originally this was disabled in an effort to improve performance, a significant amount of time is spent
initializing the automation system on every launch. However, I did not expect at the time that said Functionality
would have an impact on accessibility. I originally assumed that the functionality was only used for debugging purposes.
For that, I am sorry.
Previous Changelog (1.27.8)
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- Fixed a launcher crash that would occur when trying to set the Mod Preview to an image that's already in the Mod Root Folder.
- For example setting
Reloaded-II/Mods/your.mod.id/Preview.pngas the image, whenPreview.pngwas already in the correct location. - Originally reported here: #389
Previous Changelog (1.27.7)
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- Added a Safeguard against people putting files in
Program Files/dotnet/sharedthat don't belong to the .NET runtime. - Originally reported here: #373
- It's unknown why the files were there, it may be
tModLoader, but I'm not personally sure.
Previous Changelog (1.27.6)
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- Reduced time taken to download many small mod updates.
- Improved fault handling for mod updates.
This was done by adding an exponential backoff retry policy for mod updates. In addition, we now update 4 mods in parallel,
instead of just 1.
Previous Changelog (1.27.5)
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Previous Changelog.
Fixed by @AnimatedSwine37.
Fixed a bug where saving after clicking Load Existing Pack would cause the ReleaseMetadataFileName
property of every loaded mod to be lost on save, making the pack unusable.
Previous Changelog (1.27.4)
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Originally reported as:
When changing the install location of a GamePass (Microsoft Store) game within Reloaded-II, the operation will no longer fail if the file is protected/unreadable due to OS' built in Copy Protection/Sandboxing.
This is useful if:
- You have reinstalled the game.
- You have moved the game to another location.
etc.
Instead, the same logic/steps as will be applied as if the game was added for the first time, including ASI Loader re-deployment (if necessary).
Previous Changelog (1.27.3)
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This update adds fallback logic that will display error messages if any should occur before the UI is fully initialized.
Previous Changelog (1.27.2)
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This update removes the dependency on PowerShell when decrypting MS Store games.
Just in case a user has a borked PowerShell setup.
Previous Changelog (1.27.1)
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This update fixes a rare race condition resulting in
mod files sometimes being missing after a mod update or download.
(Thanks to @AnimatedSwine37)
Previous Changelog (1.27.0)
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Previous Changelog.
This is a longer 'Progress Report' kind of post. Consider reading in a browser.
Dependency Resolution Update
This update is focused on more reliable resolution of missing dependencies, notably, reducing the amount of time that the following message is seen:
A fix for end users:
- Launching Reloaded without Internet after a mod download will no longer render missing dependencies undownloadable.
- We now ensure we don't remove unused dependency metadata if we're missing dependencies.
- Fixed a very rare edge where it was technically possible the launcher incorrectly reports a missing dependency.
- This would happen if a mod had multiple download locations (e.g. GameBanana+GitHub), but was removed from 1 location.
A fix for mod authors:
- A launcher restart is no longer required to update mod dependency info.
- This info is what's used to download missing dependencies.
- You can now safely add/edit a mod in launcher, set dependency, add some files and publish.
- Previously a launcher restart was required to ensure dependency info was embedded in your mod.
- We now update the dependency data before publish, ensuring mod authors don't pack mod with missing dependencies.
An Automated Error Handler for Edge Cases:
- We now use the Search Index as a fallback, if all else fails.
- The search index is what normally makes your mod searches in App super fast.
- But it also knows the unique
ModIdof each uploaded mod. - So we can use this to find missing mods.
- This currently works for 11 games that use Reloaded-II on GameBanana (I don't index any other sites currently).
- Enabling this has some security implications. This is only used as a last resort fallback, when all else fails.
This should hopefully help in getting cases where users experience missing dependencies closer to 0.
Especially in situations where a dependency is hosted only in 1 location, e.g. Only <This Mod Site>
Updated Docs
Documentation and in-launcher tutorial has been updated to feature installing via drag-and-drop as a method of installation.
(Hint: It's animated in the launcher)
Infrastructure Update
The open 1st party package server is an unsung hero ensuring your modding experience is as smooth as possible. This is the place where critical code mods are fetched from automatically when the primary source (like GitHub) hits its limits - a common scenario given GitHub's restrictions of 60 requests per hour per IP.
Given Reloaded's modular nature, you'll typically hit that limit restarting the launcher around 4 times. Now imagine you have a family, or are in a hotel room, or just troubleshooting, this limit may already be exhausted. Now you download a new mod, which requires some framework/critical component and suddenly you're told...
Not ideal.
With the surge of users, traffic on this server has risen drastically. In the past 20 days we have transferred 6TB of data. Month started with approximately 5MB/s and is now 7.5MB/s. This is especially surprising, as the critical code mods stored here are typically under 0.5MB in size.
I only found out a few days ago, as I was looking into why the server was unresponsive. Sometimes queries randomly took ~2-3 seconds to respond, and I was rather flabbergasted.
The Package server runs on a very minimal-effort fork of BaGet, renamed as BaGet-Reloaded to avoid confusion with the original project. Using the Sqlite3 backend.
To the best of my knowledge, the delays in responses were caused by a combination of:
- A lot of writes to the DB, which blocks reads in Sqlite out of the box.
- Notably, BaGet increments the 'download count' every time a package is returned via search.
- Sustained load on a shared CPU (a.k.a. 'vCPU'). [to a very, very small extent]
I changed the settings on Sqlite3 to use WAL and synchronous=NORMAL. This allows us to perform reads during writes, thus fixing up the performance. In addition, I bumped the server specs a bit, just in case the load continues to climb. Currently the server is completely responsive again.
A Thank You
Services like the Package Server are supported by your donations.
They also help cover occasional game purchases.
Recent Example: Fixing Compatibility with Special K in presence of Steam Copy Protection/DRM for games like Granblue Relink
In the ~4 years I've been accepting donations so far, I've received a total of £358.87 (and 4 games). This has helped cover most of the costs involved. e.g. Package Server, Server Backups, Discord Bot(s), Search Index, Services for some Online Mods, Domain (Website Name) Costs etc.
With these donations I can almost break even. I don't have any concrete numbers (hard to calculate), but based on some quick maths, I've probably spent around £450-500 on Reloaded related things so far.
Thank you.
About the Future
Please remember. For most of its life, Reloaded has been a solo project.
Not just the Manager, but the Loader and many of the core components used across your popular mods.
In any case, the work on the successor continues, albeit slowly.
Every week, I spend around 24-30 hours on Reloaded things, on top of my fulltime job. Hopefully in 2 years, we'll live in a future where users can start experimenting with porting core components from Reloaded-II to Reloaded3. This is not easy to do, but I will relentlessly keep going, until it is done.
The intent of the recent reliability/bug-fix patches is to allow me to step back from maintaining Reloaded-II for a longer time and let me focus on the successor.
If you are a programmer, I should hopefully have a 'Specification' ready not too long from now. The work on this is resuming today, after a long hiatus, so various core parts of Reloaded3 will be open to community contributions. Until then, hang tight.
Complete Changes (Autogenerated)
1.27.13 - 2024-09-19
Merged
- Setup: Abort on Existing Directory & Don't Start Process as Admin
#440 - Added: Static Build of Setup.exe for Linux Use
#439 - Updated: Reloaded.Mod.Template and GH Actions
#432
Commits
- Added: Static Setup Build to GitHub Releases.
48efd50 - Setup: Don't start the process as administrator.
b6e2e93 - Added: Warning in installer to prevent data loss.
1474bab - Updated: Changelog for 1.27.13 and Project Versions
9f57079
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Available Downloads
(Below this text, on GitHub)
Setup.exe: This is a 1 click installer for Windows.
Setup-Linux.exe: This is a version of Setup.exe for easier use in WINE / Proton.
Release.zip: For people who prefer to install manually without an installer.
Tools.zip: Tools for mod authors and developers.
Other files are related to updates, you can ignore them.