Glauncher - Read Me

GLauncher.... for use with GLaunch. By Ken Rager August 2006.

Contents:
(1) About GLauncher
(2) Installing GLauncher
(3) Running GLauncher for the first time.
(4) Choosing path to Glaunch.exe
(5) Choosing whether or not to shutdown machine after Glaunch quits.
(6) Choosing fullscreen or window for the shutdown screen.
(7) Using shutdown's exit function.
(8) Choosing shutdown pause for exit time.
(9) Choosing shutdown method.
(10) Choosing images to display on the shutdown screen.
(11) Saving your setup.
(12) The Glauncher.set file.
(13) Changing settings in glauncher.set, or running setup routine again.
(14) The glauncher.txt file.
(15) Using Glauncher with programs that are run from within Glaunch's MISC folder.
(16) Troubleshooting
(17) Support
(18) Credits

1. About Glauncher.

If you have an arcade machine that is using Glaunch as the "front end" menu, then you may find it desirable to shut down your machine after you are finished playing your games. That is what this program is for. This program starts Glaunch, and when GLaunch finishes, it can be setup to invoke a shutdown process. If you need to go into windows instead of shutting down the machine, you can by pressing ENTER (or RETURN) on your keyboard before the pause time counts down to zero. You can also place a shortcut to glauncher.exe in your windows' startup folder, so that when you turn on your machine, Glaunch will automatically start.

GLauncher requirements:

GLaunch installed and properly working. Windows95, Windows98, WindowsME,
WindowsXP home, WindowsXP pro, Windows2000. (At the time of this writing, it has only been tested on Win98, WinXP home and WinXP pro.).

Other requirements are at least 16 meg ram, 2 megabytes free hard drive space, and an ATX type power supply.

Note: This program will not run in DOS. Also, the shutdown screen can only be viewed in the horizontal position, so if your monitor is rotated 90 degrees, the shutdown screen will be turned wrong, but it can still be used.

--2 Installing GLauncher.
Double-click on the setup.exe file. You will be asked where you want to put the program. Anywhere on your hard drive should be ok. I highly suggest you choose "create a desktop icon" option, to allow you to easily run the program when setting it up, etc.

--3 Running Glauncher for the first time.
Double click on the glauncher.exe icon in the folder where you installed it, or on the desktop icon, if you chose that option. The first time you run Glauncher, you will enter the setup mode, where you will be walked through each option of Glauncher.

--4 Choosing path to glaunch.exe
Your first setup choice is mandatory. Here you tell glauncher where glaunch.exe is stored on your computer. Navigate through the drive and directory box, you will be notified when glaunch.exe is found. Click OK to go to the next step. If you click Cancel before glaunch.exe is found, you will receive a warning that glaunch won't run, and the next time you run glauncher, the setup process will start over.

--5 Choosing whether or not to shutdown machine after glaunch quits.
The next screen gives you the option to use the shutdown routine after you quit launch. If you choose no, the setup process will end, you will be prompted that the setup has been saved. The next time you run glauncher, glaunch will start, and when it finishes, the machine will not shutdown, but return to windows desktop. If you choose yes on the shutdown option, you will advance to the next part of the setup, choosing fullscreen or window.

--6 Choosing fullscreen or window for the shutdown screen.
Here you can have the shutdown screen run in fullscreen mode or window mode. In fullscreen mode, the shutdown screen will cover most of the window's desktop. In window mode, it is in a window, in the center of the desktop. Hint: if you use fullscreen mode, set your taskbar to autohide. Otherwise, the window's taskbar will appear at the bottom of the shutdown screen. (Right click on the taskbar, choose properties, then check auto hide.)

--7 Using shutdown's exit function.
While the shutdown screen is being displayed a timer counts down. This is called the pause
time. You can press the enter button on the keyboard during this pause time to cancel the
shutdown and return to windows. This is very handy if you need to do maintenance work
on your games or on windows. Just connect your keyboard, turn on your machine, exit glaunch
after it starts, then press enter on the keyboard. You may also need to plug in a mouse
when you plug in the keyboard, since most programs need the mouse. (Including Glauncher
setup routine.)

--8 Choosing shutdown pause for exit time.
On the next option, you can choose the pause time. Options are 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 seconds. After you pick the number of seconds you desire, click OK to advance to next step.

--9 Choosing shutdown method.
On this screen you have two choices, shutdown or poweroff. During testing, it was found that some machines performed better when this option was set to poweroff. If your machine doesnt shutdown correctly, try changing this option. Click OK to continue to the next setup option.

--10 Choosing images to display on the shutdown screen.
You may choose one or two images to display on the shutdown screen. These images can only be bitmap (.bmp) or jpeg (.jpg) format. Note: If you wish to use a .png image from Mame's Snap folder, convert the .png to .jpg first. You can do this with Window's Paint program. (Open .png file, SaveAs .jpg file) On this screen, you will see two boxes, the box on the left is called image1, and the box on the right is image2. They will appear on the shutdown screen respectively. To choose an image, click on the box you want to place the image in. A navigator will pop up between the boxes. Choose drive and folder where your images are stored. All the .bmp and .jpg files in that location will be displayed. Click on the image you wish to use. A preview of the image will be displayed in the box. Click on the other image box to choose a image for it. If you dont want any images displayed on your shutdown screen, leave both image boxes blank. To clear the boxes, click the Clear Previews button.
Click OK to advance to the next screen.

--11 Saving your setup.
The final screen of the setup procedure will alert you that the setup is finished. Press OK. Next time you run Glauncher, glaunch should start.

--12 The Glauncher.set file.
Your settings are saved in a file called glauncher.set. This file should be in the same folder as glauncher.exe. You can view this file or edit it by opening the file using Wordpad or Notepad.

--13 Changing settings in glauncher.set, or running setup routine again.
You can change the settings in Glauncher.set by editing them with notepad or wordpad. There are a lot of comments within the glauncher.set file that should tell you what settings are required. If you choose an option that glauncher doesnt like, the setup routine will run next time you start glauncher. You can invoke the setup routine by changing this line in glauncher.set:
Run setup = No
To run the setup routine change the line to:
Run setup = yes
Save glauncher.set, next time you run glauncher, the setup routine will start. It is highly recommended that you use this method to change any settings. The Run setup option will be changed back to No after you run the new setup.

--14 The glauncher.txt file.
Glauncher creates an info file called glauncher.txt. This file should be in the same directory as glauncher.exe. It is created by glauncher, first time glauncher runs. Most errors that glauncher might come across will be posted in this file. Consult this file if you are having trouble running glauncher. This file can be opened with wordpad or notepad.

--15 Using Glauncher with programs that are run from within Glaunch's MISC folder.
You can run programs from within Glaunch by placing them in the glaunch\misc folder. This is the way MenuMaker runs. MenMaker is a program that I wrote that allows you to make favorite mame game lists within Glaunch. I am using MenuMaker as a reference only. This file will not go into the mechanics of Menumaker, there is a readme.txt file for
that. I found that when I ran MenuMaker from Glaunch's misc folder, I wound up with a
blank screen. This is a flaw within Glaunch itself. I discovered that if I ended Glaunch
before running MenuMaker, it did OK. But to return to GLaunch after MenuMaker finished, I
had to restart GLaunch. I added this line to glaunch\config\misc.cfg:

post command = start /w c:\glaunch\glaunch.exe

To run Glauncher, you will need to change the line to resemble this:

post command = start /w c:\glauncher\glauncher.exe

The path above assumes that you install Glauncher in it's default path of C:\Glauncher. If you install GLauncher in a different path, the command needs to reflect this.

Example: post command = start /w c:\my install folder\glauncher.exe.

The point is that this line must point to where glauncher.exe is, and it must start glauncher.exe, not glaunch.exe.
The problem with using Glauncher and running programs from Misc, when glaunch ends, GLauncher starts the shutdown routine. To get around this, I had to have a bat file call MenuMaker. The bat file is stored in Glaunch\misc folder. The bat file writes a temporary file called menumake.tes to the root of C:\ drive. It then ends Glaunch and starts MenuMaker. When menumaker finishes, the temp file called menumake.tes is deleted. When GLauncher runs, it looks for the temporary file called menumake.tes. If it doesnt see it,
then after Glaunch finishes, Glauncher starts the shutdown routine. If Glauncher does see the menumake.tes, it quits without running the shutdown routine. This seems to work good.
Here is an example bat file to run menumaker.exe:

Rem Menumaker.bat
echo> c:\menumake.tes
Rem This line writes temp file
taskkill /f /im glaunch.exe
rem this line ends glaunch. (may not work with win98)
start /w menumaker.exe
Rem this line starts menumaker
del c:\menumaker.tes
Rem This line deletes temp file
exit

After this bat file exits, glauncher.exe is started again from the post command= line in
misc.cfg. The taskkill line above may only work with windows Xp. You may need to run a seperate utility to end Glaunch, if you are using win98. If so, the utility would be run where the taskkill line is.

16-- Troubleshooting
- If you are having trouble running Glauncher check the glauncher.txt file.
- If glaunch doesnt start correctly, make sure glauncher.set is pointing to the correct path where glaunch.exe is stored. If you have two copies of glaunch.exe on your system, make sure Gluancher is pointing to the correct one.
- If the shutdown routine doesnt work, make sure auto shutdown = yes is in the glauncher.set file.
- If this looks ok, try choosing a different shutdown method. Shutdown works good for WinXP, but on a few Win98 machines, Poweroff had to be used.
- It is highly suggested that you run glauncher for the first few times from the desktop icon. Make sure it is working properly before putting a shortcut to glauncher.exe in your startup folder. You may want to set the pause time to 25 seconds the first time, this will give you time to cancel the shutdown if something doesnt look right. Make sure the program does what you want it to before taking the keyboard and mouse away.

17-- Support
If you a problem with Glauncher, or if you see any bugs, please email me. Be prepared to send me a copy of the glauncher.txt file. Email me at kenrager@hotmail.com

If you are having problems getting Glaunch to run correctly, email me, or check out the
Glaunch forum at: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum=glaunch-public
(This forum is not maintained by me, so the link may change without my knowledge.)

18-- Credits.
I like giving credit where credit is due.
Thanks to Dave Dribin, creator of GLaunch (http://www.dribin.org/dave/game_launcher/)
And special thanks to Brian Siekmann, for numerous hours of testing Glauncher and helping
me work out quite a few quirks. (Couldnt have done it without you Brian!)

--Copyright: Ken Rager 2006

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