Tool Others F95Checker [WillyJL]

[chainedpanda]

Just found this AMAZING tool, can't believe I've lived without this monster in my life.

While it is incredibly useful for finding updated games, would be nice if I can completely drop my spreadsheet with this program. That said, a couple of suggestions to help with that:

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[WillyJL]

Just found this AMAZING tool, can't believe I've lived without this monster in my life.

While it is incredibly useful for finding updated games, would be nice if I can completely drop my spreadsheet with this program. That said, a couple of suggestions to help with that:

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sorting will probably stay like it is now, but i will make a new window (like the one for changing UI colors) for filtering the list. with this i will add personal ratings and tag fetching. so in the main list ill add the star ratings either after the name or before the version number, and the tags will be visible when you click on a game, probably between the header image and the changelog. in the filtering window you will be able to filter by installed / played / completed / on hold / abandoned / personal rating / tags, and ill leave the current name and version filtering like it is now (you can start typing a name / version in the add input box at the bottom and it will filter only games with matching names / versions)
also side note, you can write some notes about any game right now, when you click on a game it opens the changelog window and on the bottom you have a notes section. in the meantime i guess you can use that.

prolly should note it will take a bit before i get to doing this stuff

 

[weirdscix]

anything without a certificate will be flagged as malware if it doesn't have a huge userbase. certificates cost upwards of 100$, and im not spending that much on an update checker for nsfw games, sorry.

either you trust its safe and add it to exclusions (you can also read all the code on github if thats what you want to do) or you dont use it.

Honestly, there's something wrong here, and the lack of a certificate isn't the cause. I'm a big fan of open-source software, I prefer to use it whenever possible, so I often download files from GitHub, even from small projects with very few users. I have never had Firefox flag a download as containing malware.

Even a third of vendors flag your product as suspicious, which means either malicious code has been introduced somewhere by a bad actor, or you're using code or assets which produce this false positive.

Either way, you're going to be consistently questioned about it unless the code is cleaned up.





This is not me accusing you of any wrong doing, just pointing out the facts.

 

[mokak77989]

It would be great to add a column with the date of the last update.

At the moment, sorting by last updated is not working for me at all (seems like a random order). Displaying the date would help to locate the problem.

 

[WillyJL]

Honestly, there's something wrong here, and the lack of a certificate isn't the cause. I'm a big fan of open-source software, I prefer to use it whenever possible, so I often download files from GitHub, even from small projects with very few users. I have never had Firefox flag a download as containing malware.

Even a third of vendors flag your product as suspicious, which means either malicious code has been introduced somewhere by a bad actor, or you're using code or assets which produce this false positive.

Either way, you're going to be consistently questioned about it unless the code is cleaned up.

View attachment 1239524

View attachment 1239525

This is not me accusing you of any wrong doing, just pointing out the facts.

the problem is that antiviruses are touchy and cry when something is even slightly suspicious. take a look at

You must be registered to see the links

. 6 detections. wanna know what changed? 1 line in a plain text shell script (a simple cd command) and i merged a new basic feature (1 single new button in gui and 1 new variable, nothing touching the host system).

antiviruses are stupid. no two ways about it. the issue here is that this is a python script, an interpreted language, so the antivirus cannot easily know what it does and just cries because the program asks to be run as administrator.
i mean seriously! how can i take that test seriously when one program says "suspicious archive" and another "possible threat"?!
at least one on them says it clearly that its sole reason for flagging is "python"

in these cases antiviruses just go based off of what the weather is like outside the window and how many users a program has had. i can do nothing about this. i simply wrote a tool for myself and later decided to make it public, with only positive intentions. if what 60 retarded pieces of software think is so important to you, just install python and run the .py files instead. they wont bitch about that.

i wrote this in python because its faster to code like this. its not a small program and im not rewriting in another language. im sorry but there is just nothing i can do

as i already said, antivirus software is stupid. flags genuine pieces of trustworthy and harmless software as bad and lets through ransomware that completely obliterates your machine. the only true protection you have is yourself and your brain.

 

[WillyJL]

It would be great to add a column with the date of the last update.

At the moment, sorting by last updated is not working for me at all (seems like a random order). Displaying the date would help to locate the problem.

last update refers to the last time your tool detected an update, so if you just added the games it will be random. it will start to make sense as games receive updates

 

[Valex]

Greetings,
With the latest release [8.3h3], upon opening the program, i keep getting the following error :



Error loading Python DLL , LoadLibrary: The specified module could not be found.
Trying to find and copy/pasting the mentioned .dll into the program's folder gives "The parameter is incorrect" error.

So, is it safe to assume that Windows 7 is NOT supported anymore?

 

[WillyJL]

Greetings,
With the latest release [8.3h3], upon opening the program, i keep getting the following error :

View attachment 1248479

Error loading Python DLL , LoadLibrary: The specified module could not be found.
Trying to find and copy/pasting the mentioned .dll into the program's folder gives "The parameter is incorrect" error.

So, is it safe to assume that Windows 7 is NOT supported anymore?

cant say about windows 7, but with the last 2 releases (and from this point on) the compilation process is different to avoid being flagged by antiviruses. i setup the build process to remove many .dll and .pyd files leftover in the package as the program ran just fine on my machine without them and no one said anything about them missing. i have seen the file, not hard to restore it... ill dm you a tester build you can try to see if it works for you

 

[XCore]

Feature Request : Bulk Add , Import From Text and Export to Text / XLSX

 

[SmurfyBlue]

Since... 2 updates ago (I believe) I've been getting strange timeout errors. The whole program freezes and then it suddenly starts spitting out an insane amount these popups. Multiples for each game too. (Only adding one screenshot because they're all exactly the same except for the game name)


I checked as much as I could myself, so I've ruled out that the problem is my internet connection or anything like that. So I've kinda ran out of things I can think of that could cause this issue.

WillyJL any idea what could cause this issue?

 

[firefiredire]

WillyJL Is there any reason to not extend this application to downloading/storing game metadata and downloading game files? Like is there a rule on this forum around creating tools like this?

 

[WillyJL]

WillyJL Is there any reason to not extend this application to downloading/storing game metadata and downloading game files? Like is there a rule on this forum around creating tools like this?

I have no idea about rules, it’s a reason of my own. I made this tool as an easier and less complex alternative to the very extensive game list manager that is pinned in this forum. Having to add game downloading would mean in the first place many complications for me as the coder, since I have never dealt with big downloads and I’d have to make this able to resume if it stops because of bad / slow internet. Furthermore, many games have a lot of download links, which could bring up the problem of which one to choose because of expired links, slow speeds and download limits etc... And lastly the games are packaged in very diverse ways, and it would be hard to make an algorithm that manages all these 3 things decently. Also for the user it might increase complexity and raise more questions than answers with where the games are stored and how they are downloaded etc...

What I suggest is using F95Checker to manage the game updates and when you need to download open the game webpage and copy the download link and add it to Jdownloader. Why I recommend Jdownloader is because it is the best I have tried so far, it can pause and resume as many times as you want, you can shutdown your pc and resume later, often you can resume even if the download fails.
Another reason for not adding this myself is because there are already much better tools for handling downloading. What I might do is add the download links directly to the checker, probably in the game details screen, above the changelog I guess

 

[WillyJL]

Since... 2 updates ago (I believe) I've been getting strange timeout errors. The whole program freezes and then it suddenly starts spitting out an insane amount these popups. Multiples for each game too. (Only adding one screenshot because they're all exactly the same except for the game name)
View attachment 1256271

I checked as much as I could myself, so I've ruled out that the problem is my internet connection or anything like that. So I've kinda ran out of things I can think of that could cause this issue.

WillyJL any idea what could cause this issue?

Ive seen that before, and as far as I know it’s caused by having a lot of games to check. How many games do you have in your list? Try lowering the refresh threads, something like 50 or lower if you still get it.

PS: afaik it’s caused by having too many games because the tool tries to start checking all of them at once, and with my testing it hasn’t been an issue up to ~150 games but I don’t know for different configurations and game counts. It starts causing issues when all of them have started the connection but can’t close it within the timeout time period because of the backlog, so some of them get checked while the others throw a timeout error

PS2: if it still persists after lowering the thread count I’d suggest trying with 1 single game and seeing if that still fails, becauseat that point it might be a problem with the new compilations method including an incompatible http library for your system and the connections never actually initiationg. You can make a backup of your f95checker.json at %appdata%\f95checker\f95checker.json, remove all gamesexcept for 1 and when you’ve tested replace the file with the backup (while the tool is closed)

 

[SmurfyBlue]

*snip*

I might have a little more than 150 games. But I can try lowering the threads next time it happens and see if that helps.
But it might be a good idea to look into staggering how many games the tool tries to check at one time...

 

[WillyJL]

But it might be a good idea to look into staggering how many games the tool tries to check at one time...

thats what the refresh threads are for... same or higher number of threads compared to the number of games means 1 thread per game and consequently all games checked at the same time; if you put half as many threads as the number of games then they will be checked in 2 batches and so on... i didnt make a system that changes the thread number automatically because most users wont get to the point of needing it... what i might do is put up a warning instead telling you to lower the threads

PS: you probably already noticed but if you have more than 100 games the number of threads adjusts automatically to the number of games so that they all refresh at once, to disable this simply put a number of threads under 100 and it will stop autoadjusting

 

[SmurfyBlue]

thats what the refresh threads are for... same or higher number of threads compared o number of games mean 1 thread per game and consequently all games checked at the same time; if you put half as many threads as the number of games then they will be checked in 2 batches and so on... i didnt make a system that changes the thread number automatically because most users wont get to the point of needing it... what i might do is put up a warning instead telling you to lower the threads

Ah... Yeah I guess so. But yeah, a small warning somewhere could be useful.

 

[Rhodanos]

Hi WillyJL,

first of all I need to say that your tool is awsome. Keep up the nice work. I've already used some other tools and this is my favourite so far because it's fast and somewhat minimalistic. However, since the latter I have got some feature requests that might be interesting to have.

My setup:
My games are all located inside one GAMES folder and each game name corresponds to the games thread name including the current game version e.g. "GAMEN NAME [v.X.Y.Z]". If there is a walkthrough (pdf, doc) I save it inside the game folder.

Now to my feature requests (suggestions):

1. Add right click support to the game name filed that opens a context menu with the following actions (there might be more)
- Open game folder
- Open walkthrough (if *.pdf or .doc is present in game folder, automatic detection)
- Check (Rename game folder to thread name including version, set game flags)

2. Add global GAMES directory support. The dir can be used to checked for new games or old versions (see 3 and 4)
- Support recursive directory iteration. People might use subfolders (Good, bad game, like, awesome etc.) to organize games on a folder basis

3. When adding a game manually (using the add button) checked if the game is already present in the games directory.
- Update the game version flag accordingly.

4. Bulk add new games - this might extend the refresh functionality. (Prerequisite: On or multiple new games have been downloaded to to the game directory)
- Iterate the games folder and add not yet listed games to the list (no need for adding each game individually)
- Automatically detect the current game version flag
- maybe add a "new game" icon to the list name for the next couple of tool starts (maybe based on date stamp)

5. Automatically find the game executable for each game so it can be started right away without the need for manually locating the exe in the game folder when clicking the start button.
- Let the user choose the default bit version (64bit or 32bit) should be included in the exe name, if both are present in the game folder.

6. Track when a game was last started using the tool. Add this information to the game tooltip page or the list (sortable). This way everybody might track when the game was last played. (play "old" games again)

7. Manually select browser location. I've firefox installed and running, but i can't use the firefox button to select it as default to open games thread pages.

Thats all for now. I hope some of the features are worth having a look at

Cheers!!

 

[WillyJL]

Rhodanos thanks for the kind words and the suggestions!
Here's what I have to say:


1. Yes a right click menu is a very good idea going forward to avoid clutter in the UI, will keep that in mind. Furthermore, this just made me realize that a force check button (not final name of course) is needed, because as it is now the tool only checks for changes when the title of the thread changes, so often it can't detect a game going abandoned and (when I'll add the functionality) tag changes... So yea a right click option to force a full refresh of the game and then possibly force a full refresh automatically when refreshing but only once every week or so to keep refresh times down.

2. 3. 5. I'm sorry but the tool managing folders is exactly the reason why I decided to make my own tool instead of using GameList, i simply wanted a minimal tool to check if games had received updates, nothing more and no confusion, and having the tool manage folders and executables would go against the main purpose I set for it. I feel you with the struggle of selecting the executable for each game but I'm not adding directory stuff, sorry. this is meant as a standalone tool just to check for updates, the rest is added functionality because someone requested it and it made sense to me.

4. The bulk add functionality will be added, but not with directory support as stated above. What I'm planning is to extend the functionality of the edit button (maybe rename it to manage?) to show 3 new buttons just above the text box and add button: one to bulk add games, one to bulk export your list and one to clear the game list completely. Importing and exporting will likely work with thread links, so that users can simply bulk add by copying thread links manually.

6. Last played is indeed a good idea. I don't know about a full column dedicated to it but a sort option for that is in order for sure.

7. Sounds to me like either something went wrong during the installation of Firefox, or it was installed a long time ago so stuff changed, or you might have some issues in your registry. You can make it work by merging this registry file: View attachment Firefox.zip I dumped this from my registry so it's appropriate for my installation. If you have your Firefox in a place other than C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe you will have to edit the .reg file (it's a basic text file, simply replace the path occurrences with the correct ones)

 

[phnthnhnm]

Is it normal that there is no pop up to log in when I first start the program cause this is what I get when I try to add a game?

 

[WillyJL]

Is it normal that there is no pop up to log in when I first start the program cause this is what I get when I try to add a game?
View attachment 1276229

thats weird... do you normally use a vpn to access F95Zone?