Introducing: Guild Wars Multi-Launch

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!