FreeIsaac - Play WotL separately - Golden God bug fixed!

[chyyran]

Thanks to ./DosBoss/'s launcher for inspiration..

Update: Version 2.0b released 7/23/2013

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I am one of those people that recently bought the new Humble Bundle. The version of BoI that comes with the Humble Bundle, includes the DLC, which apparently makes it harder. Me, being a Binding of Isaac noob, as well as a bit of a perfectionist, didn't like this very much.

I stumbled upon ./DosBoss/'s Launcher after a bit of googling, and it was nice, helped me restore the original version, it was functional, and did it's job well, but the UI was a bit out of place, so I rewrote it.

This version is written in C# and uses WPF, and requires .NET 4.0, you probably already have this installed.

Achievements and such, have been tested, as a side note, the installer also includes the option to install 1nvisible~'s achievement fix.

Installation is simple, choose where Binding of Isaac is installed, select if you want the achievement fix or not, and it'll check to make sure you have the Wrath of the Lamb DLC installed, restore the Vanilla version, and install the launcher.

The launcher will only install if you have Wrath of the Lamb installed
If you don't have WotL, what are you doing reading this thread, go play Binding of Isaac!


Here is a screenshot of the launcher[punyman.com].

If you encounter any bugs, feel free to tell me, the launcher should be pretty bug free though.

Downloads

2.0 Beta (Fixes achievements accidentally unlocking i.e. Golden God bug)
Download from my website[punyman.com]

Upgrading from 1.0 to 2.0

Backup your existing "the binding of isaac" folder before upgrading!!
Go into the "the binding of isaac" folder, and run "uninstall.exe" to uninstall the existing installation. Choose to keep Wrath of The Lamb. Afterwards, verify the game cache with Steam, and disable Steam Cloud for The Binding of Isaac (Properties > Updates > Steam Cloud) then install version 2.0

Changes

Version 2.0 includes support to isolate save files from different versions of The Binding of Isaac. This means that achievements and stats in both the vanilla Binding of Isaac and Wrath of The Lamb are kept separate. This fixes the bug where achievements are accidentally unlocked due to incompatibilities between WotL and vanilla BoI. Steam achievements should still be unlocked between them, however, because save files are kept separate, achievements may not show in the achievements screen in-game. For example.
if you unlock an achievement in vanilla BoI, it will show in the vanilla BoI in-game achievements screen, your Steam profile, but not in the WotL achievement screen, and vice versa.

Save isolation works by exploiting the way Binding of Isaac saves it's data, it does so twice. The first is in the serial.txt file located in the same directory as the BoI executable, and the second is the in so.sol shared cache file. As far as I know, only the Windows and OSX versions of Binding of Isaac write the serial.txt file, therefore, this does not work on Linux or the pure SWF file. The launcher blocks Binding of Isaac from accessing the so.sol file, forcing it to read and save from serial.txt instead. This breaks Steam Cloud saving.

(Links are shortened with Google and ow.ly to track how many times it's been downloaded, if you prefer direct links, Version 1.0[punyman.com], and Version 2.0[punyman.com])

Anyone having trouble selecting the install path, please redownload the installer, the issue has been fixed

Just in case (You probably don't need to download this)
.NET Framework 4 Web Installer[www.microsoft.com] (Download this if you're getting errors about missing .NET Framework)

Source Code

The source code is available here at GitHub[github.com] and is licensed under GNU GPL v3.

Uninstallation

If at any time you want to uninstall the launcher, go into where Binding of Isaac was installed, and run uninstall.exe. Choose whether you want to keep Wrath of the Lamb or Vanilla, and it will uninstall for you

OSX/Linux versions

Because this makes use of WPF, which hasn't been ported to Mono yet, the only way for this to be ported over is if the UI code is completely redesigned in C++. The existing XAML is useless for porting, and has to be rewritten in C++. Unfortunately, I know zero C++ (hoping to learn though), but I've left the source code in case anyone wants to take on the challenge.

Thanks to..

./DosBoss/ for the original launcher
1nvisible~ for coding the achievements fix

Play Battlefield 3? Check out Battlelogium , it makes BF3 work great with Steam.

**Note: The Installer Executable does not allow you to pirate Binding of Isaac. It only contains the binary differences between vanilla and Wrath of the Lamb. An original copy of the Wrath of the Lamb EXE is required for the patch to be successful

**Note: FreeIsaac does not contain code from ./DosBoss/'s Binding of Isaac Launcher. The source code is completely written from scratch

[GrudgeMentalist]

thank you so much for this!

[Aularong]

Thanks, man. Very useful!

[hydreux]

thanks for this launcher! it helps a lot when i'm in the mood for some vanilla Isaac.

is it possible to add feature which would make the launcher auto-launch the previously selected option (either vanilla BoI or WotL) when no input is detected for a period of say, 10-15 seconds?

[chyyran]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από hydreux:

thanks for this launcher! it helps a lot when i'm in the mood for some vanilla Isaac.

is it possible to add feature which would make the launcher auto-launch the previously selected option (either vanilla BoI or WotL) when no input is detected for a period of say, 10-15 seconds?

Sure, it's possible. I'm actually thinking of rewriting this in Adobe AIR, so it supports OSX. I'll do it when I'm finished with my current project, Snowflake[github.com], which is a frontend for emulators.

[Fazer [PL]]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Ron:

Sure, it's possible. I'm actually thinking of rewriting this in Adobe AIR, so it supports OSX. I'll do it when I'm finished with my current project, Snowflake[github.com], which is a frontend for emulators.

Binding of Isaac also works on Linux, think about portability for it too. I would suggest using Qt.

[hydreux]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Ron:

Sure, it's possible. I'm actually thinking of rewriting this in Adobe AIR, so it supports OSX. I'll do it when I'm finished with my current project, Snowflake, which is a frontend for emulators.

thanks for the reply, i'm glad you're open to adding more features.

also good luck on your current project!

[chyyran]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Fazer PL:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Ron:

Sure, it's possible. I'm actually thinking of rewriting this in Adobe AIR, so it supports OSX. I'll do it when I'm finished with my current project, Snowflake[github.com], which is a frontend for emulators.

Binding of Isaac also works on Linux, think about portability for it too. I would suggest using Qt.

Like I said, I don't know any C(++). I could try to tackle PyQt though, I'm getting pretty good at Python.

[gizmo]

this is amazing. Wrath of the Lamb just seems like a way to shove a bunch of extra unnecessary ♥♥♥♥ into the game. The original is perfect as it is.

[MarineShadow]

I used the launcher to play isaac without WotL, and it gave me the "Golden God" Achievement....

[chyyran]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Shadow:

I used the launcher to play isaac without WotL, and it gave me the "Golden God" Achievement....

It shouldn't mess with achievements at all. All it does is launch the original Binding or Isaac or the Wrath of The Lamb executable, depending on your choice.

With the achievement fix, all achievements you've already unlocked ingame (viewable in the achievements screen in BoI) will unlock on Steam as well if it hasn't already. If you've unlocked the achievement in game, it will show on your Steam profile

[neoman4426]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Ron:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Shadow:

I used the launcher to play isaac without WotL, and it gave me the "Golden God" Achievement....

It shouldn't mess with achievements at all. All it does is launch the original Binding or Isaac or the Wrath of The Lamb executable, depending on your choice.

With the achievement fix, all achievements you've already unlocked ingame (viewable in the achievements screen in BoI) will unlock on Steam as well if it hasn't already. If you've unlocked the achievement in game, it will show on your Steam profile

It's a known issue with playing non WotL after WotL launching in any way (possibly only under certain conditions, if the vanilla version goes by number of items rather than which items getting more than the number of items in the vanilla game regardless of how many come from each?), happens (or at least used to, I'm not sure if there's been a fix) ./DosBoss/'s version too, and presumably when launching the executables by themselves and may be why Edmund/Florian didn't include the functionality to switch between them.

[Fazer [PL]]

That was a one long sentence.

[chyyran]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από neoman4426:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Ron:

It shouldn't mess with achievements at all. All it does is launch the original Binding or Isaac or the Wrath of The Lamb executable, depending on your choice.

With the achievement fix, all achievements you've already unlocked ingame (viewable in the achievements screen in BoI) will unlock on Steam as well if it hasn't already. If you've unlocked the achievement in game, it will show on your Steam profile

It's a known issue with playing non WotL after WotL launching in any way (possibly only under certain conditions, if the vanilla version goes by number of items rather than which items getting more than the number of items in the vanilla game regardless of how many come from each?), happens (or at least used to, I'm not sure if there's been a fix) ./DosBoss/'s version too, and presumably when launching the executables by themselves and may be why Edmund/Florian didn't include the functionality to switch between them.

Well, that certainly is an issue. If I get the time, I'll dig out the old source code and maybe write an isolation mode feature to isolate each save file. That is, if I can find where BoI saves it's files.

On the downside, that might mess up ingame achievements between both games since you're now juggling 2 save files, but anything you unlock on Steam will stay on Steam.

[neoman4426]

the main "so.sol" save is located at "%appdata%\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\<some random string>\localhost\" there's also serial.txt in the install folder that I'm not sure what it does.

[chyyran]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από neoman4426:

the main "so.sol" save is located at "%appdata%\Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects\<some random string>\localhost\" there's also serial.txt in the install folder that I'm not sure what it does.

I did some research, BoI stores its save files in 2 formats, so.sol, which is standard flash shared object format, and serial.txt, which seems to be a csv of sorts. Deleting either one should not affect the save file. Anything I collected seems to stay even after I prevent it from creating so.sol, forcing it to read from serial.txt. So, I'm working on it :)