Introducing: Guild Wars Multi-Launch

I want to share this project with the community. An open source (GPLv3 license) program to make opening multiple copies of Guild Wars simpler. There is also support for multiple Texmodded Guild Wars and experimental support for opening multiple Guild Wars of the same copy. (no need to make extra copies for quick mule sessions)

The instructions are in the readme.txt file distributed with the binaries. It does not make any changes to any Guild Wars files, so you don't have to worry about updates breaking it or you breaking the TOS.

Requirements:

• Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7 (server editions may also work)
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0+

Update - 2010/04/11:
v0.6 (2010/04/11)
* Fixed "-character" switch argument passing for shortcuts
* Shortcuts to launch individual copies may need to be remade to be compatible with new version
* Allows storing multiple profiles of same path
* Enables associating different arguments with same copy
* Added arguments wizard
* New art for buttons (less intense colors)

Notes

Video tutorial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orwCDttJ3Iw

External hot keys notes
If you have using Vista/7, due to increased security policies of Windows, it is necessary to run the program that will be catching "key presses/clicks" at the same or greater privilege level as gw/gwmultilaunch. This means that if gw/gwmultilaunch is ran as admin, programs such as teamspeak or vent will also need to be ran as admin for it to be able to intercept hotkeys.

Vista/7 notes:
short version: Run the launcher as admin if the second guild wars window does not show up.
long version: See readme.

GWx2 notes:
If you have previously used GWx2 before, you may need to retrieve a fresh untainted gw.exe. Easiest way to do this is download the gw client from arenanet and start the installation. You only need to let it to download the first parts (you only need gw.exe). When it starts to really download lots of files, stop it. Move/copy over the gw.dat file from the original folder overwriting the much smaller gw.dat file in the new folder.

Download v0.6 - 32bit
Download v0.6 - 64bit
(Official links hosted by Google Projects)
http://code.google.com/p/gwmultilaunch/

The C# project solution source code is open for viewing/auditing.

Please post any suggestions here.
Please post bugs at the Issues Page if you have a Google account.





Older Updates

Update - 2009/09/26:
v0.6RC (2009/09/26)
* Fixed registry path setting for certain setups of Guild Wars on 64-bit oses (requires admin)
* It is strongly recommended not to install GW to "Programs Files (x86)" folder on 64-bit operating systems since this causes GW to set keys in the "Wow6432Node" node which requires admin access to write to.
* Fixed edited arguments not being used if "Launch" button is clicked while cursor still in arguments textbox
* Moved "Launch" button to left side and increased size
* Added warning message to confirm copy removal

Update - 2009/08/25:
Video on how to use for people still having trouble. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orwCDttJ3Iw

Update - 2009/08/23:
Wanted to refresh the UI on this to look more modern. It is also more multi-lingual with help of icons. If you are happy with old UI, stay with v0.5. This is mainly a refresh with one new feature. Master shortcuts. It reduces the need to create multiple shortcut. The create regular shortcut functionality was left in since it is still useful for situations in which you want to launch a specific account with specific augments. Useful for situations in which you made a shortcut to launch a copy with account A and one to launch the same copy with account B.

Also, I added preliminary compatibility with gw.exe which were modified by GWx2. I only did a quick test. Could use feedback on whether this works on your GWx2 modified exe.

Under the hood, the code was re-factored to be cleaner and more efficient.

v0.6b (2009/08/23)
* Interface refresh
* Changed functionality
* Clicking "Start TexMod" will also set the path and clear mutex, saves two clicks
* New feature
* master shortcut: shortcut to launch additional copies, automatically picks unlaunched copy
* compatibility with gwx2 modified exes

Update - 2009/06/12:
v0.5 release is now available. Main change made was making the registry path setting function set both LOCAL_MACHINE and CURRENT_USER if possible. This resolves issues with certain setups which result in gw.exe reading from one or the other path when locating gw.dat. Again, thanks to all who helped me track down the bugs to get to this release.

Update - 2009/05/22:
v0.5 release candidate is now available. If there are no more bugs, this will be identical to the final v0.5 release. There are separate builds for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows. The 32-bit version will only work properly for 32-bit operating systems. The 64-bit version will not run on 32-bit Windows. Again, thanks to all for helping me tweak this so it runs on every edition of Windows (2000 and newer).

Update - 2009/05/22: Preliminary testing with 64 bit version is good. Build coming soon (today or tomorrow) for those running XP, Vista, or Win7 64 bit. Will do a joint release of a new 32 bit build using the same more-robust codebase.

Update - 2009/05/17: Fixed possible bug introduced in v0.4 and v0.42 with NTQueryObject possibly hanging the namedpipe thread under certain setups.

Update - 2009/05/16: Fix for making copies in Vista/7. Vista/7 stores the Templates folder under user\documents\guild wars\

Update - 2009/05/16: Beta release is finally here. Added the last few features in before the feature-lock which is beta. There is no need to download this copy if you are happy with 0.35a. I hope I did not introduce any bugs. I am probably going to let this release sit for a week or so, then release a 0.5 stable release if there are no issues.

# Added ability to drag and drop into list of copies
# Added ability to make copies of Guild Wars from the gui.
# Added super experimental "Force gw.dat unlock" for launching the same copy multiple times (new graphics will only load in the gw copy with active file lock on gw.dat)

Update - 2009/05/14: Few updates. Changed how registry path is set to be more compatible with new updates. If you are having trouble updating multiple copies, definitely grab this release! I hope to have these bugs ironed out by this week. Will probably move to beta releases next week. Thank you all for testing.

Update - 2009/05/12: New version ready. 0.2a should be more compatible with Vista and Windows 7 now. Thanks go to Moriz for testing the first release in Win7! Please report any bugs as you find them.

Update - 2009/05/10: As mentioned further down in this thread, there seems to be issues with using it in Windows 7 and possibly Vista. Will look into these as soon as I have these installed. Please post if you are having trouble using it in XP as well.

the program managed to run EXACTLY once on windows 7. any subsequent attempts to open it will just give you the "this program has an error" window. even when it ran, it failed to open two GW instances. now all this program has done for me, is somehow make my GW client always open in windowed mode.

moriz:
Sorry, I do not have a Windows 7 or Vista box to test this on yet. I will look in downloading the RC for Windows 7 so I can test it. I suspect, it might be a security model thing. Might have to run in admin mode or compatibility mode since this program closes a handle which belongs to the Guild Wars process.

It shouldn't be hard to make the regular gw open in full screen. Just open the gw client through your regular shortcut, not the one this program made. Or if you don't have one, just open the gw.exe file directly. Once you maximize it once, guild wars should remember to open in full screen.

The running once part, are you talking about the launcher program not opening anymore or the shortcut not working out?

it doesn't remember to run in full screen. it now opens in windowed mode each and every time. compatibility and admin mode changes nothing, since the program does not start.

personally, i think its broken because of some registry interaction with the ini file.

Concerning the windowed mode issue, can you check shortcut properties? There isn't a "-windowed" argument in the target right? The "-windowed" switch forces gw into window mode. I have it as the default switch for new shortcuts made by the program, but it shouldn't have modified the original shortcut you had to gw.

Ini file:
It may be the ini writing/reading function then. I am using a windows api function to write/read the ini files. Not sure if it works differently in windows 7. Can you delete the ini file that is in the gwmultilaunch folder? That should allow you to launch it again. The ini file being there should be the only difference between first and later launches.

Once I get my Windows 7 installed, I should be able to test it myself. I may switch over to the xml format for storing the data instead if ini file is causing issues.

Kind of useless since you still need a second copy of guildwars. Saves you a couple minutes I guess since you don't have to manually close the handle. When I used Process Explorer to run two copies, the second copy became useless after an update, as far as I can remember, I'm not sure if this is what you meant by updates not breaking it now.

If you could make it so I didn't have to keep making copies of GW then it'd be amazing.

alright, deleting the ini file allowed the program to start. however, it still does not work. only one GW instance opens. any attempts to open the second one, whether through the program or the shortcut results in nothing.

I don't think there is a way around having a second copy of guild wars. This is due to the way guild wars interacts with the gw.dat file. It locks on to the file and won't let another program touch that copy. Kind of how when you have a word document open, and you try to open the same document again, it is "read only".

You shouldn't have to keep making copies of GW since this programs sets the registry path before it launchs gw for you. The gw updater looks at that entry and updates it for the copy that was just launched. Again, I haven't tested this thoroughly yet, but this has been the behavior I have seen so far.

The con to this is, when a new update comes out and you launch multiple gw.exes, the update will be downloaded multiple times applied to their respective gw.dat file. There shouldn't be a need to copy the .dat over from one of the copies after an update.

One more thing, under expert control, the "close mutex" button basically does what you would do with process explorer in closing the handle to that mutex.

You have to select and launch them individually.

I shouldn't have said useless above, it's a great start and hopefully you'll keep working on it.

The second copy you are trying to open is in another folder right? Just making sure. If that is the case, the only thing that would prevent the second copy from even showing is the mutex handle closing failing somehow.

I suspect this is due to the tight process to process security restrictions implemented in Vista/Windows 7. Again, I will try to test this once I get Win7 installed and hope to have a resolution for that.

Thank you for testing this out.

Hey, good job on a first alpha. No source code yet?

http://code.google.com/p/gwmultilaunch/source/checkout

Use the SVN checkout procedures, or hit browse. Everything in under trunk, just a few files.

Sorry, my bad, thought it was like on sourceforge. Reinstalling Tortoise as we speak .

Nifty application. For some reason, GWx2 fails to launch after the first time, so I'll be using your program form now on Thanks a lot!

...need to buy me a bigger (wider) screen ^^

Looks great, but I'll keep using GWx2 untill the bugs are sorted out and the community has deemed this safe
Good job though, keep it up.
(gonna need multiple screens Arduinna )

Yes, safety was one of the primary goals of this project. Also why I made it open source.

I learned a bit while digging into the nt kernel documentation with this project, so I hope the process handle killing code can also be a resource to others. The meat of what makes it possible is in HandleManager.cs file. It was not as straightforward as I had originally thought.

Also, since the source is open, anyone can pretty much download it and compile their own copies with one click in Visual Studio. Please be aware that I can only guarantee safety for copies downloaded from the Google project page because of the ease of making a "modified" version from the open source.

hey moriz,

I just got windows 7 installed. I experiencing the same Guild Wars starts not in full screen mode if u take it into window mode just once. This is an issue if you use the "X" button to close.

But I don't think my program is causing it since I got this behavior and I haven't even ran gw multi-launcher yet in Windows 7. Still installing VS2005 at the moment to debug the real win7 issue.

I think this is a Guild Wars <-> Windows 7 issue. I was able to resolve this with a little playing around though. Once you maximize gw, don't use the "X" button to close GW. Sometimes the "X" doesn't make GW save the window state setting in windows 7. If your at the login screen now in window mode.

Do this:
1) Maximize GW.
2) At login screen, put the cursor in the account name box, then password box
(this step forces proper focus into the program)
3) Use Alt+F4 to close.

This seems to work for me in getting Windows 7 to save the window state of the gw window.

I hope that helps!

i've already solved the problem by deleting the ini file, and then making sure -windowed is not used as a tag afterwards. however, this also removed the -perf switch permanently. it's not a big deal, fortunately, since -perf doesn't tell latency.

Glad it works out for you then. You should be able to use any of the switches though.

I am debugging it right now in windows7 to see if I can resolve the crash issue. Hope to have it resolved sometime this week.

I have Vista 64x and it works fine for me. :]

Can't seem to open texmod though. "Unhandled exception has occurred in your application - Path cannot be the empty string or whitespace. Parametere name: path."

I could just be retarded though.

Nope, was my fault. Just figured out that vista and windows7 store the guild wars path under:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/software/ArenaNet/Guild Wars
instead of
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/software/ArenaNet/Guild Wars

I have made the update in the code to fix that incompatibility, still trying to iron out the other ones before I make another release.

Btw, did you have to run this in admin mode for it to work?

No I didn't. I just drag and dropped and it worked.

yay .
I have not tested this on 64 bit versions of the OSes, so if you have 64 bit Window 7 or 64 bit xp.. test if you can.

I will be updating the source branch and uploading a new release shortly.



Technical bug description:
The root of the problem was in how C# converted unmanaged buffers (retrieved from the nt kernel) back to a managed structure and then to a unicode string from one of the structure members. Fortunately, when I was researching and coding this up initially, I had discovered two methods of doing this. Look in the first revision of the "ConvertString(" function in HandleManager if you are interested in the bug. I don't know why exactly, but the second method seems to work more universally.

Have it finally working on windows 7

How many clients can i run with this program? I can't open more than 4 at the moment.

Haha, what are you aiming at? Holding Halls singlehandedly?

Hey not trying to rain on your parade but there already exists a loader with texmod ability , the number of accounts you can load are dependent of your computers power...I have loaded four accounts at once using it....have seen it load 15 on a more powerful pc...here is a link to that site
http://www.guildwarsmagic.com
the one thing I love about GWML is that if anet puts out an update on some other loaders I have tried, I had to open up the files and hard copy the new files from one folder to the next. with GWML I could start the app and double click both icons one after the other and both copies will download and update at the same time....


but I will commend you on trying to do something for everyone and maybe you will learn something new in the process.....

Now I have question for the OP, does every time anet has an update do you have to change the program so it will work again?

Hi Gummy.

Was not actually aware that gw multi loader already existed. Gw multi launcher will do as you described with updating. Each instance will update their own .dat files whenever arenanet releases an update.

I had seen other loaders but they are all closed source. I did this mainly as a learning project for myself and everyone since I believe in open source for software. People should have full rights to know what executes exactly on their systems.

My other goal with this project is to make it as user friendly and compatible as possible. I believe the special desktop shortcuts you can craft for as many installs as you want is an unique feature of this program. You can pretty use these desktop shortcuts without having to worry about the launcher app or updates breaking anything.

I made this GPLv3 partly because I want this to be owned by the community and not just by me. I can't do it all. If anyone wants to help:

Some of the things I wanted to implemented:
http://code.google.com/p/gwmultilaunch/wiki/WishList

Some items such as "Virtualize file access to gw.dat" I do not know how to implement yet. But if done, essentially, you would not need to make extra copies anymore. Need windows api hook guru help there.

I also don't have infinite time to work on this as well. Haven't had much overtime on my full time job recently so mainly doing this as a hobby at the moment. Like if I suddenly disappear, the software can easily be picked up by someone else and updated.

Just downloaded the new release, works fine on vista 64x. No more errors on the texmod, and haven't tried to run more than 4, but 3 works fine. :P

Wow. Thanks for this. I look forward to giving it a try, hoping it addresses the shortcoming of GWx2 that in order to open a second instance, I have to close the first

It does, at least at my PC

Didn't really get to test update grabbing until today. There seem to be some issues with gw.dat updating. Setting registry to the launching path and 1 second later setting it back doesn't seem to give the update window big enough time.

Will be issuing an update later today to address this. In the mean time, if you need to update a copy, just use the Set Registry button on the proper copy, then launch the copy outside the launcher for now.

Did you know you can de-attach a running game client from the gw.dat file?
One program I know can do this is 'Unlocker' (freeware, get it from: filehippo)

gw.exe won't be able to load new data, but it shouldn't crash as long as you stay in the same outpost

this way you might be able to get multiple gw.exe clients running on 1 gw.dat file?

yes, it is definitely possible to force a detach. The mutex killing code that I have in there actually does a similar thing. It detaches a mutant handle instead of a file handle. I could add the function call to make it detach the file handle as well but, what I worry that forcing a detach is that if it happens while the client is actually updating the file, it may crash or corrupt the gw.dat file. Since I think guild wars treats the gw.dat like a virtual file system or virtual drive.

It brings up race conditions of which client has access to the gw.dat at the time. Although you may be right that if the gw.dat is fully up to date with the -image command, it might be safe to unlock it. I will try to test this theory out to see how it goes.

I could possibly add this as an expert option to attempt to force the relaunch of the same install and doing a file unlock before that session is launched again. Probably will popup a dialog box to confirm. This option may be good for those that just want to launch another instance to do a quick mule item transfer at the guild hall which this might work best in.

Mine too. LOVE IT.

Thanks for this!

Thank you, this works beautifully. Both of our computers have Vista and had problems w/ launching multiple copies of GW after the update, managed to circumvent that with the solution you posted and now after the update the problem is gone altogether

thanks again and keep up the good work

0.4 beta is released. check the first post.

That's it for the feature updates. I hope I didn't add any bugs . Will only be doing bug fixes for one weekish before stable release next weekend.

Error occurred while copying Guild Wars From C:\Program Files(x86)\Guilds Wars to C:\Program Files(x86)\Guild Wars 3

Happens with any copy that I've made myself with anywhere I try to put it.

I think i need to palm face myself again.

I assumed that the Templates folder is under the Guild Wars folder. Probably should have checked it in code to see where it existed before throwing that error message. For Vista/7, is the Templates folder located elsewhere?

The things I try to grab for copy are:
<Install Location>\Guild Wars\*.*
and
<Install Location>\Guild Wars\Templates\*.*

stuff such as screenshots, i assume most people would not want in a copy.

edit: Seems that the templates in vista/7 are shared by every install anyway (in Users\username\Documents\Guild Wars\) so theres no need to copy. will update this shortly. Thanks for finding this!

I can't seem to launch either of my copies now too. :P It worked once and now it only launches one. It shows me the GW loading box and then disappears.

Wow, great! Loving it. I always throught the other methods were a bit too much hasstle. I'm a bit lazy, but I'm currently running myself for the first time

I get a fuzzy colour screen when I minimize a full screen instance of Guild Wars, which I can only get out of by button bashing alt+tab, alt+F4 ect. Easy to get around by alt+tabing to another program when using a full screen instance.

I'm using windows xp pro 5.1, I think.

Thanks again for a great program!