I think improving the visuals of the launcher would be alright if anyone wants to design it. But the programming resources for actually implementing the change is very limited, because despite my best efforts I think we’ve had a grand total of 1 or 2 contributions to the launcher (whereas Thrive itself sees that many per week).
I think there’s not enough space for community icons, because the launcher window tries to be compact and putting more stuff in it will just steal the little breathing room there is on the bottom row.
Back in the day when the launcher used Electron it displayed images in the news feed. I’ve opened an issue about re-adding that:
If any programmer wants to help out with that.
I think it is quite clearly placed. Without a big overhaul I think about the only thing that could be done is taking focus away from the version selector but I don’t really want to do that as in the past we’ve had issues with players playing an old version without realizing. So the version number selector also needs to have very prominent focus.
I think this has quite a big problem: you’ve removed the DevCenter connection button which is actually a disguised link to getting our Patreon! Because you can only link the devcenter if you are our patron or a developer. So I think that part needs to be kept very visible and not sacrificed for a socials bar.
Also while some elements do make it look more modern here, I also quite distinctively get a 2000s flash game vibe from the play button and the way the feed header bars look.
So if we are going to rework the launcher look, I think we need to do a few more iterations of the design.
But also we need to consider the implementation feasibility of the design because for example that rounded play button is going to be super hard to make with Avalonia or at least my current skill level doesn’t immediately tell me how I could achieve that rounded button placed like that next to the version selector.