DarkBlizz

Have you tried specifiying the game version the launcher will use upon playing the game?

Thanks a bunch for this new update... choosing starting race and team color... woot!

The GUI went bigger and so did the memory use. Just understandably proper but the new GUI layout is a step back in development, IMHO. I thought you guys are going to add pop up option panels and such to make the initial GUI launcher compact and light. Like maybe it starts as a "tall" rectangle (imagine IMs like YM, MSN, XFire, etc.) with protruding/inserted tabs at one side. Upon clicking a tab, it pops out the side or the GUI front display changes to display the chosen tab's contents. Tabs could probably be Play, Options, Folders, Replays. (I'm not much good at paint programs so I chose to just describe it with words )

Also, I would like to suggest that the devs include by default a folder for the original AI so that it can be easily seen from the list of AI scripts available and also to eliminate the need for the "Restore" button. (Hence, more free space on the GUI. I have this folder in my setup from the time I started using this launcher and have never used the "Restore" button ever.)

EDIT:
About the launcher app exiting upon game launch (after pressing PLAY), that's nice. But there are some people who prefer that it doesn't but instead be minimized after pressing PLAY. Another option perhaps? Like a checkbox for "Minimize upon PLAY" with the default being to exit upon PLAY.

I'm not sure if this could help but it's worth a try. Try updating to the latest Windows Installer.

http://softwarepatch.com/windows/wininstallnt.html

Great improvements from the previous version! Fantastic! Kudos to the two of you, guys. *two thumbs up*

Memory use had been reduced by more than 50% (around 20ish mb on my pc, WinXP SP3) but I'm sure it could still be lowered by I don't know how many percent. *wink*

On the launcher connecting to the net and the error it may cause, may I suggest that you add in the upcoming new "Options" panel a new batch of settings. Upon launch, let the launcher do a check first if it is allowed to connect online or not. If ever you're going to add a "Check for New Updates" option in the near (or far) future, then this definitely should be implemented. The 'check' would be against the settings that was chosen by the app user.

If I may suggest the following connection option tags:
- 'Always offline' -- (obviously, this one doesn't let the launcher to go online at all, even if there is an active online connection)
- 'Always online' -- (the current default behavior of the launcher, up to you if you'll change it on future versions)
- 'Ask me first' -- (this one has a nag screen that will always pop up upon running the launcher, useless maybe to some but I prefer giving users a CHOICE, up to them what they will do with it)

Contents of the StarCraft II Beta enUS 13891 Installer:
- Installer Tome 1.MPQ -- (1,749,425,993 bytes)
- Installer UI 1.MPQ -- (4,910,495 bytes)
- Installer UI 2.MPQ -- (2,885,915 bytes)
- Installer.exe -- (2,315,856 bytes)

Make sure you've got all four of them in one location. If you do have them all, you probably have one (or more) corrupt files.

First thing first. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THIS ATTRACTIVE GUI LAUNCHER. 

Now onto the "faulty parts" of v0.19.

- The two "Change" buttons are misleading and draws unwanted attention to them. It is most likely to be clicked instead of the dropdown list if the user wants to adjust the AI and the map setting. TPAM already stated what would happen if the user didn't mean to clicked them. May I please suggest a different method to change the folder locations. Perhaps an extra option on the dropdown list to CHANGE the settings.

- Putting the Map/AI folder settings in a simple text-based file (.ini/.cfg) is much easier (cleaner?) than putting them in the Windows Registry, don't you think?

- The launcher is a bit too wide for my taste but I prefer the wide version over the previous tall versions.

- The launcher just stays open at the background after you run the game. That's unnecessary and uses up memory that could be better used on something else (like more for the game). May I please suggest that the launcher automatically minimize (if not exit) after initiating to launch the game.

- For a launcher, 40mb+ in memory is quite big. When minimized, memory use goes down to 2mb+. I'm not sure what objects in the .NET Framework is using that much memory (since I, myself, don't meddle on such environments). Any possibility on transferring to an AutoIT-based application?

Open Notepad (or whatever text editor you prefer) and put the following in:

Quote[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Blizzard Entertainment]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Blizzard Entertainment\StarCraft II]
"InstallPath"="<DRIVE>:\\<FOLDER PATH>\\"
"GamePath"="<DRIVE>:\\<FOLDER PATH>\\StarCraft II.exe"

NOTE:
<DRIVE> -- the drive letter
<FOLDER PATH> -- the exact path of the SC2 Beta folder
ex. You copied the SC2 folder on the root folder of drive F. So it would become:
F:\\SC2 Beta\\  and F:\\SC2 Beta\\StarCraft II.exe

Name the file whatever you want but make sure that it has a ".reg" extension.

The method to integrate this SC2 reg file is all up to you.

After integrating the above data in the Windows Registry, make sure that you run "StarCraft II.exe" once before you run your preferred SC2 launcher. This is to force SC2 to recreate the cache folder inside the "Documents and Settings" folder of WinXP.

That's it.

And, oh yeah, run your SC2 launcher and play.