Knight is my latest project, coded in a week. It is meant to be a Mod Manager for the 21st century! It starts up fast, runs fast, and goes away when you don't need it.

I have released Beta 1 today.



Using Knight is quite simple. By default it can detect your retail and Steam games. If it does not, a folder icon appears next to the game. Click it and browse to your game.

Knight will then populate the list of mods automatically. It does so quickly, and even faster after the first run once it has had a chance to cache all the mod names it's mining from their GOBs.

You can switch between views of mods for the supported games by clicking the game name. It's an outlook-esque slide. If you don't like it, you can switch to a simpler, single list of all your mods under Options.

To play a DF/JO/JA mod, you simply double click it, or click it and click the little arrow by the game name. For JK/MotS, double click to activate or deactivate mods. Then click the play button.

Other features of note:

• You can put mods in ZIPs (the installer has some notes on this) to save disk space.
• The simple list mode doesn't allow you to activate multiple mods at once but it makes it quicker to run them.
• Support for DarkXL, although it doesn't work with any mods I've tested at the moment.
• Options for all games, mostly command line switches.
• Untested support for UAC, please try it (in the options' dialogs when you see a shield icon). Should run well on standard user accounts. Game/mod directories will require write access without UAC though.
• Cool animations in my Outlook-esque control thing!
• Give mods custom names by renaming them!

Please let me know if you have any problems, especially problems that result in crashes. Make sure to grab the error text and the stack trace for me if you know how.

You can download Knight Beta 1 here: http://downloads.mzzt.net/Knight_1.0_Beta_1.exe

Now a BONUS: Two other projects I have decided to release into beta today as well.

First we have Portable Taskbar.



I made this as a portable version of the Windows taskbar and Start Menu. Here's how it matches up:

• Keeps track of windows running from your portable drive on the taskbar.
• Pin any apps to the quick launch menu.
• Pin Internet and E-mail to the Start menu
• Put any files or folders in Places (browse folders in a menu hierarchy).
• Browse Programs in a Vista/7 like tree. Drag and drop to reorder, right click to add programs one at a time or en masse automatically.
• Import PortableApps.com programs automatically.
• Keeps track of programs you launch often and puts them right on the front of the Start Menu.
• start orb hovers on top of windows, just like the real one!
• Search your programs list, or type in a directory name to see the contents in the search pane.
• Fully [mostly] themeable!

Download here: http://downloads.mzzt.net/PortableTaskbar_1.0_Beta.7z.exe

Lastly, we have WiimoteScript.

Some of you might have heard of GlovePIE, or at least of the idea of using a Wiimote with your PC. Unfortunately it's not as easy as pairing the two via Bluetooth since there are no proper Wiimote drivers. However it is possible for applications that are "Wiimote aware" to talk to the Wiimote.

An obvious extension of this is to get such an application to translate that input into faked keyboard and mouse input, thus allowing for easier control. However nothing simple will be a good solution; every program and game is controlled differently and would need a different configuration. What you need is a flexible solution.

And then GlovePIE added Wiimote support! It's a scripting app that can map inputs from devices to others using scripts. However the Wiimote support was poor, and as you can see from the page the current release has problems which were never resolved. In addition it required a proprietary Bluetooth stack... you either needed to get a bluetooth received that came with the software, pirate the software, or live with a trial version that ripped out Windows' Bluetooth guts. The built-in Windows Bluetooth support was not supported.

I had always wanted to make such a program with better compatibility, but I never found a good library. Eventually I did though, and so I started. The basics were not hard... I spent more time tweaking everything and bug fixing and writing a framework for scripts to use than I spent actually working with Wiimote data and script compiling, thanks to the Wii Device Library and to .NET's built-in compiler classes.

If you said "tl;dr" and skipped down to the pic... basically, my program allows you to use your Wiimote with games on your PC if you have a bluetooth adapter.



Don't worry, it supports C# scripts too.

Some notes are needed on this:

To use, connect your Bluetooth adapter before starting up WiimoteScript. Then hold 1 and 2 (make sure your Wii is off first or it'll pair with that) briefly and WiimoteScript will detect and pair your Wiimote.

If the lights don't flash on your Wiimote when you hold 1 and 2 (if a single led is lit you paired it with your Wii most likely, this is if they're all out) and WiimoteScript doesn't show it in it's list of devices, check Control Panel > Bluetooth Devices (might be "Devices and Printers" on 7), and if it's listed there unpair it from there. WiimoteScript shouldn't let this happen but if it crashes or something you'll have to unpair it by hand like this.

If you're finding control sluggish or delayed, especially on a single-core machine, open the error list with the second button from the right on the toolbar, and set the priority to Above Normal. Thus the game won't be able to hog the CPU and slow the script down.

I have included scripts for all games in the Dark Forces series as celebration! I couldn't get mouse emulation to work for JK/MotS though, but if you install PPJoy (Google for it) you can emulate a joystick instead.

Some of the scripts are a bit rough and may require tweaking, sorry. But at least it's fun to play with. I was just playing some JA and I kept trying to shake my Wiimote to swing my saber like in TFU. :saddowns:

Download here: http://downloads.mzzt.net/WiimoteScript_1.0_Beta.7z.exe

All three of these programs should be portable but I haven't tested WiimoteScript or Knight in a portable environment yet.

Acknowledgements:

Most of the icons used in these apps are from here: http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/

Knight icon from here: http://www.iconarchive.com/category/game/chess-icons-by-iconmuseo.html

Portable Taskbar themes were converted from themes for PortableApps Suite: http://portableapps.com/suite

I asked the guy if I could do that but he never answered me. I asked multiple times and sent him pretty pictures of it, too!

Knight ZIP support made possible by: http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SharpZipLib/

WiimoteScript uses the Wii Device Library: http://www.softwarebakery.com/ It needs some work, but it's not bad overall.

WiimoteScript also uses a couple components from SharpDevelop (Google for it, I'm out of links).

All of that is totally cool.

Reuploaded Knight to fix a crash bug on startup. VS Express needs remote debug, and .NET in general needs to be able to show stack traces on crash on machines without MDM.

Plus it would be nice if the Application.ThreadException handler would actually catch unhandled exceptions like it was supposed to before it dumps the useless aforementioned crash dialog.

Those of you who are already successfully running Knight... try the updater and see if it works. If Knight closes and restarts itself it worked.

[Edit: Oh yeah Portable Taskbar's eject button needs this: http://quick.mixnmojo.com/usb-disk-ejector which works very good at allowing for programmatic ejection of drives. If you don't use the eject button you don't need it, but I like it.]

[Edit: There are still crashes apparently, though not on startup anymore which is good. Tomorrow I will try and see if I can code a more useful crash dialog that can tell more useful info than just "I crashed somewhere").]

Wow

Dude.

Awesomesauce.

Very nicely done. Can't wait to give it a shot.

awesome, Mega.

Ummm.. although I get blue screen when I click the link for knight.

Nevermind!

Pretty cool, even though I've always been lazy and have created separate folders for fancier mods and ran them with .bats.

I've released another small update for Knight which should fix a couple crashes as well as it adds a small new feature to address ZeqMacaw's whining.

You can use the Help > Check for Updates to update or just redownload the installer.

Ok Mega, any reason why the mods don't show up for me? Running vista and Steamed JK series

Great work man!

Outlaw: If the game is grayed out, click the folder button to set your game path.

If it is not, and you don't keep your jk mods in jkpatch (since that's where it looks), you can change the location. Click the drop down arrow, and click Options. Then the window that pops up will have a button for changing the mod folder.

Oh yeah keep in mind if you have both Steam and retail JK installed, Knight can only detect the most recent one, you'll have to switch it to the other one by hand if your mods are there.

http://www.jkhub.net/project/show.php?projid=511§ion=downloads

I made a quick tool out of an idea Emon gave me. Basically, LucasArts' JK 1.01 patch is actually a replacement EXE, so I made a tool to download it and extract the EXE, so that people with Steam JK can have the original binary legally. In addition, my tool will download patches to 1.00 and JKUP and apply them. Then it pops open the folder with all three versions for you to do with as you please.

I recommend dropping them in Jedi Knight\patches so Knight can use them. (The JK-Extension.dll is part of JKUP and needs to go in your Jedi Knight dir).