AutoHotkey Community

Coming Soon:

Annoying Steam Community Event Messagebox Remover

You already get slider notifications for Steam Events. Why is there no option to disable the messagebox notifications which must be manually dismissed?

Now there will be.

_________________
Ben

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An update for those who are interested in SteamLab's development:

I'm replacing all of my Auto Update labels with functions, and making them more generic to avoid possibly overwriting unsaved data in the XML files.

At that point I will do one of two things:
1. Put out a new release as-is, with a working but non-visual Auto-Updater (with no scheduler yet)
2. Create a GUI for managing updates first, then put out that version (with or without a scheduler depending on my progress)

I haven't decided whether or not to wait for the GUI before releasing

Just for general Auto Update status, this is what the process currently involves:

1. Click the Update button in SteamLab
2. Verify the current version of any Non-Steam Games not already in games.xml
3. Automatically searches for game patches and saves the patch data to games.xml
4. Auto-downloads the patch torrents
5. Monitors the downloads, and auto-starts the patch installer when complete
6. Updates the version in games.xml upon success and cleans up the downloaded files

This is obviously not perfect, and it's the first version of this which actually works, so I'm sure it's got a few bugs. When this version is released, I'm going to ask (no... beg) that others with Steam shortcuts take it for a spin and report any patching issues in general or any issues with particular games. Testing is the only thing that's going to make the game updater better.

I personally have a good 30 or so shortcuts, and SteamLab successfully downloaded and installed patches for several of them, including: The Witcher, TimeShift, Unreal Tournament 3, Medal of Honor: Airborne, and others. I'll post a full list when the feature is actually released of games it's been tested with. It should work for most games though, as long as you name the shortcuts properly in Steam.

Thanks everyone for following along with SteamLab's development. Starting with the next release (next couple of days probably), SteamLab will be a lot more useful.

_________________
Ben

My Trac projects
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[Broken] - My music

Development update:
- Implemented Red OSD background color option (still defaults to blue)
- Incorporated launching of GPGNet from SteamLab if installed
- Created basic Game Updates GUI for visual auto-patching of games and applications
- Fixing bugs and tweaking performance to work best with new config system and greatly increased number of config options

Updated Estimated Release Date: Sunday, 1/6/2008


Are there any game tools anyone uses which I could add options for in SteamLab? Any preferred tools I can check out, or apps that come along with games you own? I would like to incorporate as many as possible so that all game tools can be launched from one place.

Currently Supported:
-CrosuS (Source / C&C3 / Other Mod Management tool)
-Oblivion Mod Manager (Hands down the best Oblivion mod tool)
-GPGNet (matching and updates for Gas-Powered Games stuff)

Planned:
-XFire (Game Instant Messenger)
-Gamespy Comrade (multiplayer match making tool)
-Gamespy Arcade (multiplayer and chat tool)
-IGN Downloader (downloads from FilePlanet, Direct2Drive, etc)
-Battle.Net apps (Blizzard multiplayer client)
-Cosmos for World of Warcraft (World of Warcraft UI Mod manager)

Support Removed For:
-GameShadow (functionality replaced by internal Auto-Update functions)

If you have any other tools on your machine that might fit in with this list, please send me the name of the tool and, if possible, the registry key that contains its installation folder.

_________________
Ben

My Trac projects
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[Broken] - My music

Bmcclure, i downloaded the exe, and when i opened it, there was a little bug.
Check this screenshot: http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/5649 ... labqg3.jpg
As you can see, the layout isn't the same as the Steam layout.
I hope you can fix this

But anyway, I really like this program.
If you could make support for xfire, than it would be great
Maybe an Favorite Server manager for steam/xfire?

The button issue is known. For a while I didn't know it existed because it looks correct in Vista and only seems to have a problem in XP.

It's actually fixed in the new version of SteamLab I'm working on. The buttons are no longer buttons with images overlayed, they're just regular GUI pictures now that are auto-generated when the GUI loads. So the bug is completely gone in the new version.

There's also a new OSD (that sort of matches Team Fortress 2's OSD and can be switched between blue/red)

There's a hotkey manager where you can create hotkeys for common game-related functions (SteamLab stuff, volume stuff, screenshots, and more to come)

There's even now an auto-updates manager with a GUI that allows you to search for, download, and install patches for any of your Steam shortcuts (Non-Steam Games).

This will all be released hopefully today if I can get the kinks worked out in time.

Also, thanks for the suggestion about XFire. I like it for some things as well, and plan to include support for it in the next release of SteamLab.

_________________
Ben

My Trac projects
My Wiki
[Broken] - My music

Steam window locking is also persistent between launches now in today's (hopefully) release.

SteamLab will not allow you to exit it unless you unlock Steam first. If SteamLab closes prematurely, however, then it will auto-lock Steam next time it runs.

This means you can simply persistently lock Steam until you're ready to actually use it.

I also plan to implement an auto-lock setting which means that it will lock Steam upon loading of SteamLab no matter what, and Steam must then be unlocked to use.

Update: Yeah, that didn't happen. I'm trying to get a few major bugs worked out and holes filled in before releasing the next version. Because this one will be much better than previous releases.

Stay tuned...

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Ben

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Still on track for a release sometime this week.

I just wanted to introduce a new idea I had.

Thanks to majkinetor's wonderful new enhancements to the Dock() function, I got to thinking... what if, as an optional alternative to the SteamDock, I add a dock which integrates extra tabs into the main Steam window.

It would be seamless, and I could still put the SteamLab title above the start of my tabs. I'd add tabs like CD Keys, Screenshots, Backups, and Hotkeys.

Then, in this mode, the various windows opened would open as overlays inside the main Steam window, acting just like new tabs. The only quirk, that I may or may not be able to find a way around, is that the previously selected Steam tab would still look selected. Not a big deal...

This idea has me very excited to give it a try. I think this would make SteamLab even more (a) cool and (b) useful.

Anyway, back to the Update Manager GUI for me!

_________________
Ben

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[Broken] - My music

If any graphical artists are interested in contributing to SteamLab, I'd love to have a nice, crisp, icon that sort of goes along with the Steam icon.

I created the current icon in about 5 minutes and haven't really paid it much attention since. I don't have much time to create a new one with all the features I'm trying to get working.

If anyone's interested, send me your work or ideas and I will be sure to give you credit directly in the app as well as on the forum and documentation. Thanks!

_________________
Ben

My Trac projects
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[Broken] - My music

Will try to make something this afternoon

Thank you I truly appreciate it.

If you feel up to the task, and only if you want to, you could also create a couple of variations of the icon. My ultimate goal is to have an icon for these statuses (for starters):

-Normal
-Processing
-Downloading
-Update Available

My thought it it could just be the standard icon with a small graphic overlayed on part of it indicating what the status is (or none for Normal). I figure this would be intuitive since there isn't always a SteamLab window open with progress. Your thoughts or ideas would be welcome also.

Thanks again.

_________________
Ben

My Trac projects
My Wiki
[Broken] - My music

New in SteamLab 0.9 (scheduled for release tomorrow!):

-XML-driven
-Automatically grabs all Non-Steam Games from Steam
-Searches the web for updates
-Downloads and manages patches as torrent files
-Supports simultaneous downloads
-Auto-resume config option
-Cleans up after itself

The GUI is just a front-end for the actual functions which perform all of the update searching, downloading, installing, etc. This means the whole process can be completely automated without using the GUI at all (though you currently still have to click through each patch installer yourself after they launch).

*Wipes sweat from brow... goes to sleep*

_________________
Ben

My Trac projects
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[Broken] - My music

SteamLab 0.9 Announcement
Est. Release: 1/12/2008

New Features:
-Automatic Non-Steam game updates
-Update Manager GUI
-XML back-end for game management
-Better looking SteamWin windows
-Fully-realized auto-generated text buttons
-New INI settings system, many new options
-New OSD
-And More!

New release, screenshots, and more information coming tomorrow. Stay tuned!

_________________
Ben

My Trac projects
My Wiki
[Broken] - My music

Results of installing updates with the Update Manager GUI:

Unreal Tournament 3 1.1 - Success
TimeShift 1.2 - Success
Medal of Honor: Airborne 1.1 - Success
Crysis 1.1 - Failure (extracted CAB file was missing a required file for the patch, I don't think it was SteamLab's fault)
Supreme Commander 1.1.3269 - Success

Things are going pretty well. I'm still experimenting with the way the ListView is updated as files are downloaded, installed, deleted, etc. so it currently doesn't act exactly like I planned, but it does a damn fine job so far.

You can search / download / install single patches or patches for all games at once.

No word on whether a new icon will be ready for the 0.9 release or if it will have to wait for a future update.

There will also be a number of INI settings that don't have a place in the Settings GUI. These are mostly experimental or unimportant settings. They can be modified directly in the Ini file only if SteamLab is not running. SteamLab will overwrite any config.ini file that exists in its location when it closes in order to save all updated settings.

If I have time before release, I'm also going to create XML functions for the CD Key Manager and combine the CD keys with the games.xml database. It's my goal to store all game-specific data in this XML file.

Also just a note, I will be consolidating all time-based settings into the Schedule Manager sometime after this release and before the 1.0 release. For now schedule settings are a bit scattered.

_________________
Ben

My Trac projects
My Wiki
[Broken] - My music

Bmcclure, I think I found what the problem is with the .ahk files.
You included no lib files at the bottom of steamlab.ahk...

No Lib files are supposed to be included in the .ahk files. You're supposed to put the Lib files in My Documents\AutoHotKey\Lib\ (or in your Program Files/AutoHotKey/Lib folder)

If you do that, then they will be included automatically as needed.

See here for details.

To avoid this issue, I'm considering including Lib.zip inside SteamLab.zip, and having SteamLab automatically extract it to the correct location upon first run. This seems logical to me. What do you think?

_________________
Ben

My Trac projects
My Wiki
[Broken] - My music