With the V1.07 of the launcher now released, it seems I have reached a turning point, or a fork so to speak.
When I had a look at the the Witcher launchers side by side, my design lacked. Don't get me wrong, it still is close to the originals, but it lacks the spikiness, the certain edge I love about the Witcher launchers.
My plan always was to first provide the functionality, then the original design.
So what I intended, was to simply update the startup page like this:
Whilst this is actually working even in the application format I'm currently using, it's not the solution I'd like. If you enlarge the picture you'll immediately notice the jagged edges and severe lack of shadows and the missing opacity. You can't even click in between the spikes, which you can do with both CDProjekt launchers. Simple conclusion is, I can not provide the experience I have in mind with a windows forms application.
This can only mean one thing. I have to recreate the launcher as a windows presentation application, which provides me with way advanced rendering techniques.
What does that mean for you?
Nothing much for now. You will still receive updates to the old launcher as I see fit - either because CDProjekt released a patch or there is a bug in my code. But I won't actively add new functions to the old form application, but recreate it and all of it's functionality as a presentation application.
When this is ready (And it will be faster than the original launcher, as most of my functions now are copy and paste) I will release that new graphically updated launcher to the public.
As always, when the launcher is somewhat working, I'll link the Github repository for you to grab the latest developer snapshot.
Until then, have Fun!
Kad
