Replay Switcher Tool - Making replays "Just Work™"

[uberge3k]

Update 11/11/2011: V2 is now released, featuring a massively streamlined setup process. The download link has been updated!

Credit to ToejamS for coming up with the idea for this!

1. What is this?

The FA Replay Switcher is an application which is used to ease the managing of replays of SCFA games when one has replays both from GPGNet games and FAF games.

After installing this tool, you can simply double click on any replay in Windows Explorer. The tool will automatically launch the proper FA executable depending on the version of the replay. This is necessary due to the fact that FAF uses a new patch, and thus the FAF ForgedAlliance.exe cannot be used with replays from 3599, and vice versa.

2. How does it work?

The FA Replay Switcher (hereafter referred to as 'FARS' for brevity) is a simple C# console application, which takes a replay path as an argument. It then opens the replay file and scans the first few bytes of it to determine which patch version it is running from the header. If it is 3599, it will launch the 3599 ForgedAlliance.exe with the replay as a paramater, immediately starting the replay. Otherwise, it launches the FAF ForgedAlliance.exe, also immediately starting the replay. Therefore, you no longer need to figure out which replay is using what patch and launch ForgedAlliance yourself, and use it's cumbersome interface to find the replay you wanted to watch.

3. How do I install it?

1) Unzip the file to the location of your choosing.
2) Launch Setup.exe.
3) Enjoy.

Now you can double click any .scfareplay file and it will automagically launch the proper ForgedAlliance.exe!

4. I used a prior version of FARS! Will this still work?

Yes!
Simply follow the instructions as per normal, and if you get a dialog box telling you that .scfareplay files have already been assigned, tell it OK to automatically update them to point to the new tool.

Get it here:

FAReplaySwitcher.zip

(144.68 KiB) Downloaded 2268 times

Happy replay viewing!

[Zock]

that doesnt work for me, the program is crashing when i start a replay/when it opens.

i followed excatly the instructions.

[FunkOff]

yay it works, thank you

[uberge3k]

After some debugging, I discovered that Zock's problem was due to bad input. I've uploaded a new build which has additional error handling and helpful messages in case you enter invalid input.

[Moritz]

3) A folder to use for temporary storage of the replay you are watching. This CANNOT, repeat CANNOT, have spaces in the filename due to some strangeness in how FA handles filenames. C:\replays\ is a good choice.

My replay launcher doesn't have this problem, are you first copying the replay to the temp folder to launch it?

[FunkOff]

I think you should make it more user friendly so it's easy to setup without reading the readme. I actually had to read that for this installation and I consider that a grave error of the design team ;-p

[Ze_PilOt]

You can use the registry key used by FAF to get the FA folder, and complete the /bin and /binFAF from there.

[Moritz]

You can load any replay from anywhere without copying it to a folder without spaces, you can use " in the command line (can't you?):

"C:\Program Files.....\ForgedAlliance.exe" /replay "C:\Downloaded Replays\Folder with spaces\My game.SCFAReplay"

[uberge3k]

You can load any replay from anywhere without copying it to a folder without spaces, you can use " in the command line (can't you?):

"C:\Program Files.....\ForgedAlliance.exe" /replay "C:\Downloaded Replays\Folder with spaces\My game.SCFAReplay"

Thanks for the tip - I did not know to include quotes in the path I sent in the parameter. I'll add this in.

[uberge3k]

The new version is finished. I've updated the original post with new (simpler!) instructions.

Thanks to Moritz and Ze_PilOt for the tips!