Here's the source code: github.com/tom-weiland/csharp-game-launcher *If you've run into issues with the zip file not extracting properly, there's a few things you can do:* 1. Make sure you zipped your files using the default Windows method, _not_ with a third party application such as WinRAR, WinZip, 7-zip, etc. 2. Try using a different file storage provider, such as OneDrive or Dropbox. 3. Host the files on your computer and just use the file path as the download link. Obviously this won't work if the launcher isn't running on your computer, but it'll do the trick for testing/development purposes. You'll have to find a _proper_ file hosting solution at some point anyways, as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, etc. all have limits on how frequently a file can be downloaded, so all of those are really only usable during development. 4. The last (and most involved potential solution) is to stick with Google Drive and to try and fix the error, which may be caused by Google Drive sometimes showing a confirmation page when downloading files. This prevents the zip file from downloading properly, which in turn means that it can't be unzipped. Unfortunately I never ran into this problem myself when building my launcher, so I wasn't able to account for it in this video, but here's a StackOverflow answer that mentions a GitHub repo which you should be able to use to circumvent the popup: stackoverflow.com/a/44402826 From my research it sounds like the confirmation only pops up if the file is larger than a certain size, although I'm not sure what that threshold is. The StackOverflow answer claims that it's 50mb (my zipped folder was 20mb), but others have apparently gotten the popup with files under 30mb. Edit: the original Drive link converter doesn't seem to work anymore, so here's an alternative: www.wonderplugin.com/online-tools/google-drive-direct-link-generator/

What do you guys think of the new end screen? I spent way too much time on it, but I'm still not sure if I actually like it 🤔 Also, at 5:10 I added a popup saying "this should be false!" even though it should say "this should be true!"-I guess that's what happens when you've been editing for too long :P

Wow! These series are just going better and better... I first watched you in networking series and you made this topic very easy to understand for me. You are doing excellent job. Please keep it up!

I think I'm gonna try this out! It will be very useful when developing a game because it is updating frequently. This will make it much easier for testers to get the constant new updates. Also nice end screen. You just need to fit in the subscribe card somewhere...

My game is getting close to being finished and I have been searching a lot on how to make a launcher. Thank you FBI and other trackers for putting this into my recommended!

Just wanted to say Tom loving these videos. They are super informative and a massive help. Thank you

Tutorial is excellent, as always! I'd add more specific error trapping to give the user more info on how to solve problems. Also I would write an Equals/Hash pair for the version number struct. Loving the tutorials, tho, they're great! Like the new end screen, forgotten that I'd appear on it.

Awesome tutorial, clear, easily followed and at the same time in depth.

This is just what i needed for my dev plan for the summer.

Thanks! Really the only straight on turorial I could find! Appreciate it man! 👌

Omg thanks! 🤩 Thats exactly what i need it! Your tutorials are the best! 👌

Thanks my guy! I had no issues on my end, I even managed to set a custom user agent string too. The game files are hosted on my own server so there was no issue with it. Thanks again!

Thanks for this awesome tutorial, your channel is precious you make tutorial about subjects I personally didn't find any tutorial appart here

Really cool, needed this badly! Thanks a lot. Became a fan of yours.

After 5 Secs I thought: I LOVE YOU ! 😆 Thanks rly rly nice, usefull AND awesome ! :)

Perfect tutorial.. the first that I really learned about how to create an mmo.. Very nice Tom! Brazilian here 😁

dude you are so underrated it is insane

i was looking for a game launcher tutorial for a while lol ty

Amazing video. I bookmarked it and will get back to it when I reach the point of implementing an launcher.

Hi, love the content, you literally the only person I’ve seen on KZfaq who made a tutorial like this. Keep up the great work !!😎Also out of curiosity, how would we create a settings menu , with for example the ability to change languages , also how would we make a auto update for the launcher?

I remember looking for something like this in 2015 and 16 when I wasn't experienced in c# at all,thanks for sharing

This is incredible, I will definitely use this. Is it possible you could make another video expanding on the hash comparison you talked about at the end to speed up downloads? If not, it’s totally fine, amazing video!

For anyone having the error on line 129 with google drive that pops up, upload the files to firebase storage and get the access token (The direct download link). Firebase is free to use and it fixed this problem for me. Great Video btw, helped a lot.

You are awesome! I enjoy your videos so much! Im not a kind of people that comments videos, but you are the exception. PS: Sorry for my bad english (?)

This is actually a neat tutorial

Brilliant video, thank you!!

ty so much! you make awesome tutorials 😁

A really great tutorial, good job

Great vid ! Many thanks - love it !

This is super useful, thanks!

THIS SAVED ME THANK YOU

This work perfectly Thank you so much :)

This is so cool! THANK U :D

You are very quick at programming.

This video helped me with the zip download and extraction, thank you!

Thank you! This help me really hard !

Thank you very much for this lesson!

Great job! Thanks!

Thanks! This is really helpful~

Genius Tom! 😄

Thank you for this tutorial. 🙌

THIS IS INSANELY GOOD.

Dude you are real hero :)

Thank for sharing the knowledge!

Fantastic ! Thanks for source code :D

Only at 6:03 but I'm really loving the tutorial - Thank you!

Amazing tutorial, very helpful! Anyone else try to type in the direct download link to try and get the game lmao

thank you so much Sir!

Thanks Man You saved Me!

Thank you for this great video. Im currently modifying the code to support multiple games and it seems to be coming along. If this video wasn't here then I would probably have not bothered with an launcher.

You are a hero.

Awesome. 🤩

Thanks it helped me a lot

thanks for your help

Ehrenmann, wirklicher Ehrenmann

sir u are really great :-)

Hi! Very nice video! Can you show, how you would implements an slider showing the current progress? And maybe some stats, like mbit/s or a "time left"?

To ease updating literals I have come to use string constants that I define at the start of the code and I name them close to their content. That way updating the stings takes place in one spot and the compiler can spot any typos while coding instead of me having to find them during testing.... just a thought ;-)

Would this also work to retrieve the game files from a github repository? Or do I need to use a service that can host a .zip file like Google Drive?

Hello, thanks a lot for your video. I have a question: what will happen with my saves after update?

Thank you for that explanation ♥. But explain how to add more games in launcher 🙃👍🏻.

Thaaanks alot for this tutorial , it was easy to understand even tho im not familiar with the programming language :D. I was able to finish the launcher/patcher :D , btw is there a way that i can delete the file from local copy if it was not included in zip file ?

This might be a stupid question but is there a way to update the launcher once it's released? Say if I wanted to adjust the launcher to have an option for a new game(kinda like steam) is it possible to have it update or will people have to redownload it

Great video, Question, from 11:00 What do you mean by hashes containing these folders? I'm trying to make the launcher not download every file with each minor update.

Are you an life savior? Because you saved mine

Good time of day. Ned to connect the extracting process to the progress bar, Found a lot info. Basically I need to compare the extracted size and need to exctract size. How can I get the the archive total size ( size which will be after extracting)? I right clicked on the zip and there is the "Total Size" how can I get it?

Hello, I had commented earlier and I’m not quite sure if you remember you but you replied back to my questions saying that you didn’t understand what I meant by downloading it. I basically mean when you finish building “the first version” of your game and convert it to exe file. So is after I do that when I start the tutorial? Is is that an unnecessary step? Hopefully this provides more clarification

If your gonna make a launcher for multiple platforms you will need to use something like Electron or QT creator

I think this might be big! There are virtually no game launcher tutorials for Unity.

you could also use downloadstring and set that in a variable and then use that with downloadfile

hi :D , thanks to perfect tutorial..!! I have one question about this tutorial. Can this floating object reflect the directional flow velocity(or current) in the marine environment? Where can I check if possible?

auto update that sound amazing one question this system works with the offline games as well ?

LOve For tut they are so fun

Nice

is this part 1 of this tutorial? Seems like it doesn't start at the beginning. I'd like a little more info on the set-up and pre-requirements to get this set up. Also, would this work if you want a launcher to be able to launch multiple games?

Tom i just wanted to let you know that the link converter desnt work any more and also is there a substitute for it

There is no need to create a custom Version class/struct. You can just use Version class from the System namespace

Hm weird I can only open that project with VS 2019 not 2017 or 2015 🤔 It doesnt matter but I just wonder why it is like that^^ Thanks again for the GitHub and all of ur Vids

hi! i did this with github and downloading works but whenever i update through github it doesnt update. i have to delete the game and relaunch the launcher for it to update, any idea why this is happening?

Thanks for the tutorial, it was very helpful! Any idea why the download is not working at all once I make an installer for the launcher? It is working great with no installer, but once I install it to program files the build.zip file won't install at all, and the only error is when the build.zip file is meant to be deleted, and the error is that the file does not exist. I am wondering if this has something to do with windows firewall?

If anyone is wondering why the "rootPath = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory();" causes an error just put "using System.IO" on the top (idk if this applies to anyone but it did apply for me) Sometimes it just isn't there

You know that this will always download the Build.zip file, no matter if its downloading an "Update" or the game ? So there is no difference. Just an idea: Do zip files named as the version of the update (like Update-1.0.1.zip) and if the launcher installs the game, it downloads them one by one and for updating it downloads just one by one for actual local version to current version on server. But anyways: great tutorial like always :)

If your having errors, upload your files to dropbox, use a direct link converter, put the links in, and there! it works!

If you are doing this on the .NET framework and you can't find the ZipFile class, you need to install System.IO.Compression.ZipFile in the nuget package manager then include the namespace there

Tom one last thing sorry to be critical but im using .net framework and the ZipFile.ExtractToDirectory(gameZip, rootPath, true); line is giving me an error saying Argument 3: cannot convert from 'bool' to 'System.Text.Encoding' what do i do?

I have a question. Will extracting the zip file work If my game is installed inside the 'Program Files' folder? I'm afraid the launcher might request 'admin access'. (Which is a hassle for my clients who aren't tech savvy).

@Tom Weiland on 7:00 is there a problem with ZipFile , on you're screen it is blue and on mine it is white Could you help me please

Hey man, great video, im at the end of the tutorial but can't get the thing to run, Visual Studio doesnt seem to make an exe and "build" function doesn work, it only shows one error in code, it being "The name 'ZipFile' does not exist in the current context, would you know how to fix it?

Great Tutorial! how would we do a progress bar for the download?

Hey, awesome tutorial im just getting this one error. my zip folder only downloads to 39 kb then I get the error: System.IO.InvalidDataException:End of Central Directory record could not be found. any help would be awesome cheers!

Hi, thanks for this great tutorial, But I got into some problem the google method is not working anymore so I was asking if there is any other way to do this Please?

When I try downloading the game, it says error finishing download: System.IO.InvalidDataException: End of Central Directory record could not be found and occurs at line 128. May someone please help me?

Niiiice!!! But can you add a progress bar to this?

Hey, is there a way to select the location of the game files before installing the game (just like in a setup wizard)?

when i launch the game launcher it wont download the file but gives a really long error message that says the problem is at line 135 "ZipFile.ExtractToDirectory(gameZip, rootPath, true);" and the zip file it downloads is corrupted any idea on why this might be

Hey!, I have this error, "Error finishing download: Central Directory corrupt. It occurs in line 129 (Zipfile.ExtractToDirectory) Thank you

Hi im doing the launcher and in the DownloadingGameCompleteCallback there is a error with : ZipFile.ExtractToDirectory(gameZip, rootPath, true); Can someone pls help

Great video! Is it possible to display a webpage on the background instead of an image?

Great tutorial , but i have a question, how do i delete the old game file and the version file?

Привет. За видео большое спасибо. Вопрос: если у меня в игре есть сохранение, то при скачивании новой версии что будет с файлом сохранения?