It’s definitely possible to shrink the images, but I’m not sure if it takes 5 seconds or 5 minutes to fix.
Electron (the framework I’m using) uses html files for the UI so it’s basically a website shown in a window. That’s why I asked if you were familiar with that. So basically if you know how to make a website it can be put into the launcher and it will look exactly the same it does in chrome.
I think the launcher is now ready for testing, so here are the windows and linux release zips: https://boostslair.com/files/temp/thrive-launcher/
Will the launcher be able to update itself too?
There would need to be a separate executable on windows for that to work, so no.
But with all the version data being downloaded it should be rare for the launcher to need updating, but I’ve added a popup box that tells the user that there is a new version, which they can ignore if the launcher can still understand the current version file.
Of course it is possible to add self updating later.
Should the launcher handle the options in ogre.cfg?
Once I do the options menu there’s not going to be an ogre.cfg anymore. Even then it would be quite difficult to modify the settings from the launcher. So I think the best choice is for thrive to automatically detect a “good” resolution when started without an existing configuration file. The player can then use the options menu to tweak things, pretty much how it is in most games.