importer Flashpoint Importer for Launchers 0.7.3.1

I hope it is okay for me to ask this, and that I have not missed anything important, if that is the case I apologise, but english is not my first language.

Does this utility make it possible to stop using flashpoint altogether? As in can I import games into launchbox and play them the same way that flashpoint does? While I like the fact that flashpoint preserves games, I don't have the space to keep the entire ultimate edition on my pc next to my other programs/games/software. 

This would not be a problem if they offered an "empty version"  of ultimate to download which you could just "put games into",  because while I can play some flash games without flashpoint, I would really like to keep the "offline fake server" part that makes it so that no games go online.

They do have infinity, but it is not the same as ultimate, and some games are even broken in it compared to ultimate, and you have to play games first for it to download everything you need.

If not, do you have any idea on how this can be done?
 

Thanks in advance


 

 

On 6/6/2021 at 7:20 PM, Archmage_R said:

I hope it is okay for me to ask this, and that I have not missed anything important, if that is the case I apologise, but english is not my first language.

Does this utility make it possible to stop using flashpoint altogether? As in can I import games into launchbox and play them the same way that flashpoint does? While I like the fact that flashpoint preserves games, I don't have the space to keep the entire ultimate edition on my pc next to my other programs/games/software. 

This would not be a problem if they offered an "empty version"  of ultimate to download which you could just "put games into",  because while I can play some flash games without flashpoint, I would really like to keep the "offline fake server" part that makes it so that no games go online.

They do have infinity, but it is not the same as ultimate, and some games are even broken in it compared to ultimate, and you have to play games first for it to download everything you need.

If not, do you have any idea on how this can be done?
 

Thanks in advance


 

 

I think I understand what you're asking for, but if so, no this tool does not make that possible, at least not directly, though let me make sure to clarify.

Flashpoint is essentially two things:

1) A collection of software, configuration, a database, and a launcher that enables a relatively straightforward way of playing "internet" games from a variety of formats on one local computer without the need to actually connect to the internet (other than downloading the content for Infinity).

2) The hoard of games themselves.

I'm not 100% sure, but it sounds like you're asking if you can essentially download Flashpoint Ultimate (to avoid the pitfalls of Infinity), use this importer to import a small selection of games you want to actually use into LaunchBox, and then when it's done discard Flashpoint Ultimate entirely so that you're basically left with a subset of 2) from the above, but with none of 1). As if the games were simply running independently from LaunchBox with no need of the original LaunchBox install.

Unfortunately this is basically not feasible. Despite their impressive pile of games that have been archived, the part of the collection that more so makes Flashpoint special/important is the compilation and finally tuned configuration of software that allows you to play games designed for a web browser used in a client/server setup on an independent, offline desktop. When you start Flashpoint you are running what is known as the Launcher, which is just a relatively small front end for browsing the collection, but there is also a slew of programs in the background that are continuously starting and stopping depending on your game choices that actually make playing those games possible. While it's imperfect, the system works pretty well overall considering the variety of platforms it supports and is constantly being improved by a team of people. Trying to recreate that from scratch as an individual would be insane.

This tool is essentially two in one, but you can essentially think of it as a way to replace the Flashpoint frontend with LaunchBox instead, but this says nothing about the gigabytes of other software that is required to actually play any games. This tool still relies on that the same way that the official Flashpoint frontend does and therefore won't function without Flashpoint still being installed.

Unfortunately the closest you can get to what you want right now is using Infinity. The "alternative" is to download Ultimate and then work backwards by deleting every game that you don't want, but obviously this is a herculean and unrealistic task. To make matters worst, the files of many titles in FP are tightly integrated with some of the backend software it uses which makes removing said games a challenge even with an automated tool.

Flashpoint is starting to move over to a different system for storing games called Game Zips/Data Packs which does actually make writing a tool to remove games from ultimate more feasible, but only practical once all titles have been upgraded to the new system. Currently only a smaller portion of titles use this system.

Until this new system becomes the only system I wouldn't even begin to consider making a tool that can strip down Ultimate like you required, and even then I'm not sure it would be worth it because Flashpoint makes a lot of backend changes with every major release that require me to make significant changes to my tools to keep them working and I don't know if I'm up to actively maintaining a third tool related to this project. I'd consider it if after Game Zips are fully complete the system the use to store games becomes fairly static otherwise.

While I do use Ultimate myself, I've actually had pretty good luck with the more recent versions of Infinity, though I don't know how recently you've used it yourself. The only caveat with this tool is that you have to have to make sure you run a game once through the Flashpoint launcher  and then perform the import into LaunchBox or there will be no images, though I'm toying with figuring out how to make this step not required.

At the end of the day, you're essentially asking for a third edition of Flashpoint, "Custom Ultimate", that would prepare a packing up front with all the games you select instead of downloading them on the fly. Like I said, once the Game Zip system is the only one in Flashpoint I'll consider making a tool to more or less make this possible, but otherwise this is something that it would be way easier for the Flashpoint team to implement directly, yet I doubt they will given that most are satisfied with the current system and it would still be a huge undertaking even for them.

The project has come a long way technically though in a fairly short amount of time so I'd also hold out hope that Infinity will become good enough to meet your standards in time as well.

Edited November 15, 2023 by oblivioncth

I was really excited to use this utility, but when I run the utility, it doesn't actually do anything.

As far as I can tell everything is set up correctly, but it doesn't add or import anything to launchbox. Nothing is showing up in launchbox.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but it looks like the readme file example 

Please help.

Edited June 7, 2021 by GrahamWarden

59 minutes ago, GrahamWarden said:

-snip-

Huh, odd. 

When you get a chance, zip up your Data folder in your LaunchBox directory, upload it somewhere and get me a link. That way I can get a sense of what may be going on.

36 minutes ago, oblivioncth said:

Huh, odd. 

When you get a chance, zip up your Data folder in your LaunchBox directory, upload it somewhere and get me a link. That way I can get a sense of what may be going on.

I PMed you here with the link

On 6/7/2021 at 2:16 AM, oblivioncth said:

I think I understand what you're asking for, but if so, no this tool does not make that possible, at least not directly, though let me make sure to clarify.

Flashpoint is essentially two things:

1) A collection of software, configuration, a database, and software that enables a relatively straightforward way of playing "internet" games from a variety of formats on one local computer without the need to actually connect to the internet (other than downloading the content for Infinity).

2) The hoard of games themselves.

I'm not 100% sure, but it sounds like you're asking if you can essentially download Flashpoint Ultimate (to avoid the pitfalls of Infinity), use this importer to import a small selection of games you want to actually use into LaunchBox, and then when it's done discard Flashpoint Ultimate entirely so that you're basically left with a subset of 2) from the above, but with none of 1). As if the games were simply running independently from LaunchBox with no need of the original LaunchBox install.

Unfortunately this is basically not feasible. Despite their impressive pile of games that have been archived, the part of the collection that more so makes Flashpoint special/important is the compilation and finally tuned configuration of software that allows you to play games designed for a web browser used in a client/server setup on an independent, offline desktop. When you start Flashpoint you are running what is known as the Launcher, which is just a relatively small front end for browsing the collection, but there is also a slew of programs in the background that are continuously starting and stopping depending on your game choices that actually make playing those games possible. While it's imperfect, the system works pretty well overall considering the variety of platforms it supports and is constantly being improved by a team of people. Trying to recreate that from scratch as an individual would be insane.

This tools is essentially two in one, but you can essentially think of it as a way to replace the Flashpoint frontend with LaunchBox instead, but this says nothing about the gigabytes of other software that is required to actually play any games. This tool still relies on that the same way that the official Flashpoint frontend does and therefore won't function without Flashpoint still being installed.

Unfortunately the closest you can get to what you want right now is using Infinity. The "alternative" is to download Ultimate and then work backwards by deleting every game that you don't want, but obviously this is a herculean and unrealistic task. To make matters worst, the files of many titles in FP are tightly integrated with some of the backend software it uses which makes removing said games a challenge even with an automated tool.

Flashpoint is starting to move over to a different system for storing games called Game Zips/Data Packs which does actually make writing a tool to remove games from ultimate more feasible, but only practical once all titles have been upgraded to the new system. Currently only a smaller portion of titles use this system.

Until this new system becomes the only system I wouldn't even begin to consider making a tool that can strip down Ultimate like you required, and even then I'm not sure it would be worth it because Flashpoint makes a lot of backend changes with every major release that require me to make significant changes to my tools to keep them working and I don't know if I'm up to actively maintaining a third tool related to this project. I'd consider it if after Game Zips are fully complete the system the use to store games becomes fairly static otherwise.

While I do use Ultimate myself, I've actually had pretty good luck with the more recent versions of Infinity, though I don't know how recently you've used it yourself. The only caveat with this tool is that you have to have to make sure you run a game once through the Flashpoint launcher  and then perform the import into LaunchBox or there will be no images, though I'm toying with figuring out how to make this step not required.

At the end of the day, you're essentially asking for a third edition of Flashpoint, "Custom Ultimate", that would prepare a packing up front with all the games you select instead of downloading them on the fly. Like I said, once the Game Zip system is the only one in Flashpoint I'll consider making a tool to more or less make this possible, but otherwise this is something that it would be way easier for the Flashpoint team to implement directly, yet I doubt they will given that most are satisfied with the current system and it would still be a huge undertaking even for them.

The project has come a long way technically though in a fairly short amount of time so I'd also hold out hope that Infinity will become good enough to meet your standards in time as well.

Hey, thanks for posting a really detailed and informative reply.
I have not found anywhere else where someone have explained it in such great detail, and so efficiently, you really understood what I meant and got straight to the point.

I see now that what I want is just not feasible (currently), and I really appreciate you taking the time to explain it to me. (Tbh this should be stickied somewhere/on a faq ). 

If Infinity "improves"/gets to a point where it works just as well as Ultimate, then I'd love to see what you can do with the importer in regards to that. (You said you were toying with a solution for the images).

Btw I know there is a third version of flashpoint used for curators, and that one is pretty "bare bones", what is the difference with that one compared to the two others? (From a technical standpoint, not the general description).
Don't have to explain a lot to me again if it is pretty much repeating yourself, I am thankful for your previous answer none the less :).
 

Edited June 8, 2021 by Archmage_R

On 6/8/2021 at 7:34 PM, Archmage_R said:

Hey, thanks for posting a really detailed and informative reply.
I have not found anywhere else where someone have explained it in such great detail, and so efficiently, you really understood what I meant and got straight to the point.

I see now that what I want is just not feasible (currently), and I really appreciate you taking the time to explain it to me. (Tbh this should be stickied somewhere/on a faq ). 

If Infinity "improves"/gets to a point where it works just as well as Ultimate, then I'd love to see what you can do with the importer in regards to that. (You said you were toying with a solution for the images).

Btw I know there is a third version of flashpoint used for curators, and that one is pretty "bare bones", what is the difference with that one compared to the two others? (From a technical standpoint, not the general description).
Don't have to explain a lot to me again if it is pretty much repeating yourself, I am thankful for your previous answer none the less :).
 

I'm happy to share detailed information with those who actually care about it haha.

Yea so unfortunately as you noted there isn't an ideal setup right now.

When it comes to the Infinity images, I'm basically just going to setup the importer to have an option to force download the images during the import, which I expect to not be too hard, I just need to get to it.

Flashpoint Core is basically just Flashpoint Ultimate but is sometimes a few versions behind and only comes with a few games that are there to act as examples, but otherwise comes with no games/animations.

 

16 minutes ago, oblivioncth said:

Flashpoint Core is basically just Flashpoint Ultimate but is sometimes a few versions behind and only comes with a few games that are there to act as examples, but otherwise comes with no games/animations.

 

So if it haden't been for it being a few versions behind it would "almost kinda" be a bare bones flashpoint ultimate to import into hehe.

7 hours ago, Archmage_R said:

So if it haden't been for it being a few versions behind it would "almost kinda" be a bare bones flashpoint ultimate to import into hehe.

Sort of, except you'd have to add in all the games you want which as I mentioned before are a bit of a pain to pull from FP ultimate. At that point you mind as well just going for cutting down Ultimate since it would be needed anyway.

Just a quick info. the new Version of your importer gives me a warning that My Flashpoint Version is not 10.1, even though I downloaded 10.1. I don't know why this occurs. When I start Flashpoint it clearly says it's 10.1. I didn't use the updater tool, I completely redownloaded 10.1 and replaced 10.0.

The import process seems to have worked anyway.

9 minutes ago, SiriusVI said:

Just a quick info. the new Version of your importer gives me a warning that My Flashpoint Version is not 10.1, even though I downloaded 10.1. I don't know why this occurs. When I start Flashpoint it clearly says it's 10.1. I didn't use the updater tool, I completely redownloaded 10.1 and replaced 10.0.

The import process seems to have worked anyway.

EDIT: 
Also, I have a suggestion for future updates. Sometimes new Flashpoint releases don't have the same Playlists as the old ones, e.g. "Flashpoint Hall of Fame" and "Flashpoint Super Hall of Fame". It would be great if you plugin automatically removed the older playlists otherwise users must compare which playlists are still there and which must be deleted.

 

It's because there was an issue with the initial release and so they pushed a sma update to the site. It's still marked as 10.1 but the checksum of the launcher is different. I didn't really think about updating it since it will still work, but whatver I mind as well to avoid confusion.

The issue with the playlists is that the tool only knows for sure that one of your LaunchBox playlists came from Flashpoint if it sees that Flashpoint has the same playlist. When they change the playlist name, in a pure vacuum with no further content, there's technically no way to tell if the old playlist was a past Flashpoint playlist, or a completely unrelated playlist you made yourself.

I could do something like including a list of all playlist names that FP has ever had within the tool and have it remove any on that list that it sees are no longer in the current version; however, this isn't perfect. While not the most likely, it's still conceivable that they could remove a more generically named playlist like "Daily Distractions", which would get added to the list, and then a new user who happens to have a playlist already named that goes to import FP and has that playlist deleted.

Perhaps there could be a confirmation dialogue or something like that, but basically I had left this issue alone until I found a solution I felt was effect, but also had no risk of unintentionally deleting user content, since that would be well... bad.

It is still something I do wish to improve.

EDIT:

The update taking into account the small change in version number due to the FP patches (again no functional differences so your import is fine) is live.

Edited December 19, 2021 by oblivioncth

i am getting this error when i run

@dsnyd22

Do me a favor and upload that file in question so I can examine it. I don't use the parenting feature extensively and so it's possible there's some fields that I didn't account for in some user's installs.

The file should be at <Launch Box Directory>\Data\Parents.xml

Also, just out of curiosity are you using "Selected Platforms Only" or "Force All" for the Playlist Game Mode?

Edited July 26, 2023 by oblivioncth

Parents.xml  Thanks attached. I was using Selected Platforms Only

15 minutes ago, dsnyd22 said:

Parents.xml  Thanks attached. I was using Selected Platforms Only

Ok yea I figured as much... The format of this file in particular is really annoying.

I'll work on a fix.

@dsnyd22

Give the latest release a try.

1 hour ago, oblivioncth said:

@dsnyd22

Give the latest release a try.

Worked perfectly! thanks a ton

44 minutes ago, Syllius said:

Just started down what I know will be a very challenging road, hope you're ready for me! 😃 So, using 12.1 Infinity (Until Thursday, when I'll be switching all future testing to Ultimate) and doing a trial run, I downloaded and successfully loaded Text Twist, completing first initial run. Closed FP, loaded FPIL and upon selecting the Flashpoint Install, which I pointed to the root install folder of FP, got JSON Error: Could not retrieve key 'onDemandImagesCompressed'. The key does not exist.  

Lemme know what you need! Can't wait to participate!

Hey, so the current build of Ultimate that the team put out has a number of issues, and given I'm pretty busy currently I haven't yet been sure I have the time to get it working with FIL/CLIFp in said state. If I end up freeing up a bit ill go for it but you may need to wait on the next release/update for Ultimate compatibility to return.

As for the error you mentioned, it was fixed in a more recent version that I had forgot to upload here, but now have.

Edited October 16, 2023 by oblivioncth

Tried updating the current install, but it didn't resolve the error. I have CLIFp_v.0.9.6 ready to go, can you please inform me where it should be located to resolve the issue? I've also gone ahead and installed 12.0 (dunno how I missed the multiple warning about the targeted version lol) in case I need to pursue that avenue instead. Any help will be greatly appreciated, but I absolutely understand about hectic schedules. Thanks so much for all you've contributed so far! 

6 minutes ago, Syllius said:

Tried updating the current install, but it didn't resolve the error. I have CLIFp_v.0.9.6 ready to go, can you please inform me where it should be located to resolve the issue? I've also gone ahead and installed 12.0 (dunno how I missed the multiple warning about the targeted version lol) in case I need to pursue that avenue instead. Any help will be greatly appreciated, but I absolutely understand about hectic schedules. Thanks so much for all you've contributed so far! 

Thanks for the appreciation.

First, did you actually have a build of Flashpoint that was labeled as 12.1 before? As far as I'm aware the latest version of Flashpoint is still just "12" unless that just changed real recently.

With the issue you're having, not sure if you saw I edited my post. I realized I was being stupid and in this case just updating CLIFp isn't enough as you'll still get the error when adding the FP install within FIL.

To confirm, when you made sure you were up to date, was it FIL 0.7.1.2 you tried? Or was it older. That version shouldn't have that issue but if it still does for some reason it would be good to know.

I also dropped the CLIFp 0.9.6 executable, along with all the other files it came with, in the root directory, as that seems to be where the deploy CLIFp menu option puts the version you're using. Still no luck in any imports. I feel like I maybe missing something, but I'll keep doing some testing and trying to figure out where I went wrong. 

 

Ah, I was using FIL_v0.7.1 Windows Static x64. The Infinite build I downloaded was labeled 12.1, but after reading that it was targeted to 12.0, I went and downloaded that separately (could not even complete a search and installed to an "undesirable" location). If there are versions of FIL, CLIFp and an older available version of Ultimate available at any location that have been known to work together, I'll gladly put in the work to collect and have at least an older stable working version through LaunchBox. Lol, that guy said his girlfriend loved you for it, trying to get some of that affection over here! 😃 Hey, thanks again, anytime you have to bail or get sick of me, please just tell me to cool it. I've been loving every aspect of this front end since I found it and I'm having such a great time collecting and nostalgia tripping on all the games I played growing up. I know I can be eager, sometimes too much, but I certainly do appreciate all the help and I hope to be more active in these forum and the discord so I can help pay it forward someday!

Okay, this maybe progress. Failed to parse Flashpiont playlist icon. Invalid value for type.... It's all this Irish luck rubbing off on everyone else's hard work. -smh- Today has been a rollercoaster. Doing backups on all the drives, running into errors there I've never seen before. When it rains, it pours!

 

Fergot to add this:

 

JSON Node Stack:

- File: M:/Flashpoint/Data/Playlists/Test - 1697427593874.json

- Document

- Object

- Key: icon

 

Failed to parse Flashpoint playlist icon.

 

Invalid value for type.

 

 

--- I can see that from the .json that it's a test playlist I created. Deleting it now, will attempt again shortly and return results here! Thank you for the help, I promise, lol, I'll only ask when I'm terrified to touch it or am legitimately confused... Which is often.

 

Success! My sincerest gratitude, friend! Give me a few minutes, though, gotta figure out what to break next. 

Edited October 16, 2023 by Syllius

Wow, there it is. I'm in a bit of shock right now. lol So, once my drive arrives and I get 12.1 Ultimate, can I ask what type of errors that you anticipated when you mentioned earlier about the latest version's compatibility issues? This one seems to work now and I'm wondering if I should try to locate an archive of a more robust older working version or trying to build out a library through what I have a result with now. Any advice is appreciated and considered heavily!  Again, I can't thank you enough, I needed a win tonight!