[Cactus] 2.4.0 Now Available! Drag & Drop Reordering, Polishing & Stability & Safety Improvements

[fearedbliss]

Hello all,

Cactus 2.4.0 is now available. This release primarily focused on final polishing, stability, and safety improvements and I finally was able to implement Drag & Drop Reordering support so you no longer _have to_ press the \"Up\" and \"Down\" buttons to re-order your entries. That alone will be a massive quality of life improvement, especially as you add more and more entries. There will most likely only be minor maintenance and bug fix updates from here on out. I have a small list I still want to implement but those will be minor version updates (2.4.X). I don’t foresee any further features I want to implement so hopefully we have a long period of 2.4.X, but only time will tell . You’ll notice as part of the polishing, I also added hinting to our Add and Edit windows so it further guides you in what you may want to place in those textboxes. There are also more strict checks enforced like not being able to add or edit any entries when you don’t have your \"Diablo II Root Directory\" set. Whenever Cactus detects this, it will stop all modifications until that is set up properly. Cactus will also check that a platform exists before allowing you to add, edit, or launch it (Before it only did it at launch).

Finally, this release required me to upgrade to .NET Framework 4.6.2 (we were running 4.6.1 before) in order for me to use the GongSolutions.Wpf Drag & Drop Library (their minimum was 4.6.2). However, since we are now on .NET Framework 4.6.2, we automatically get some nice improvements like Cactus automatically having Per-Monitor DPI support. Which means that if you have two different monitors with different scaling options, Cactus should look good on both of them. We also now have \"Long Path Support\" which means you should be able to have paths longer than 260 characters. I don’t think most people were affected by this but it’s worth mentioning.

You can read more about the .NET Framework 4.6.2 changes here.

As always, you can Download Cactus at the mentioned link. Make sure to backup your Diablo II directory before moving forward just in case. Let me know if y’all experience any issues.

Screenshots

Add Window - Hinting

Edit Window - Hinting

Changelist

New Features
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- Drag & Drop Reordering Functionality

Cactus now has the ability to re-order entries by dragging and dropping them in the Main Window. This saves you a lot of time since you don’t have to click the \"Up\" and \"Down\" buttons multiple times to get your entries into a particular position. Especially if you have many of them. Carpal Tunnel clicks should only be saved for Diablo II, not for Cactus. I’ll be keeping the \"Up\" and \"Down\" buttons to provide various workflows. This is the same as being able to either click the \"Launch\" button or double click an entry.

- Cactus is now targetting the .NET Framework 4.6.2.

This was done primarily to allow the use of the GongSolutions.WPF.DragDrop library, which has a minimum of 4.6.2, luckily we were at 4.6.1 so testing wasn’t that bad. Everything just worked. A benefit of us upgrading to .NET Framework 4.6.2 is that now Cactus has Per-Monitor DPI support, so moving Cactus between two monitors that have different scaling options should just work. Cactus also now supports longer path names that are over 260 characters. There are a ton of more improvements, but I believe these are the two biggest that users may see immediate benefits for.

For more information about the new .NET Framework 4.6.2 changes, please check the following link:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/announcing-net-framework-4-6-2/?WT.mc_id=dotnet-35129-website

Improvements
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- Added hinting to all fields in the Add and Edit Windows.

- Cactus will only allow you to Add or Edit entries if the Diablo II Root Directory is set. So this further enforces that the first thing you should do is to set that path appropriately.

- Cactus will now verify that the corresponding platform exists before adding an entry or allowing an edit to an existing entry. Before, this check was only done when you tried to \"Launch\" the game.

- The \"Fix Whitespace Labels\" check that we introduced in the last version will now always run at start up in all cases as part of our Integrity Check system.

- Cactus will now keep track if you’ve migrated to the new format explicitly. It will also automatically back up your files before the migration and will delete them if the migration is successful. In the even there is a migration failure, you’ll still have the original files for your inspection (with a .bak extension). New users will automatically start with the new migration format and will be marked accordingly as well. 2.3.0 Users will also have the migration setting appropriately set as well.

- A message will now be displayed if you try to \"Reset\" your directory, but don’t have a \"Last Ran\" entry.

- The Assembly Info for the application now includes the Cactus version, allowing you to easily check what the version is without having to open it.

Bug Fixes
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- Fixed some weird edge cases with the migration as part of our migration improvement and stabilization work.