Today Dan Kinney announced the next Beta Build of the Station Launcher, v 1.0.5, to be released December 19.

Release 1.0.5 (Beta) Highlights:

• Games marked Keep Up To Date will now update in the background.  When you leave your machine idle (the current timeout is 10 minutes), Station Launcher will check for patches that need to be applied.  There will be a pop-up window near the system tray to allow you to cancel the update if it’s inappropriate.
• Updating is no longer interrupted when leaving the Game Update screen (e.g. clicking on "Show All Games").  When on another Game Update screen, you can see update status messages from the other game.

 

Additional Fixes in Release 1.0.5 (Beta):

• The scanning/update process does not hang when switching between server versions
• When you change the install location of a game, it will now update in the dialog immediately after applying the change
• The updater now supports zero byte files (which seems to be used in some games)
• Fixed URL to forums on Abnormal Shutdown dialog
• The output log is not as verbose so it will be smaller and easier to spot errors
• The URLs on the EverQuest II News Feed are now correct; clicking on one will take you directly to the news item instead of the news home page. 

Known Issues that we’re working on:

• Some players still report that they are able to login using LaunchPad, yet cannot login with Station Launcher
• Application occasionally hangs when the network has been changed (hardline to wireless, VPN start/stop)
• On certain machines, the game scanning can be very slow.  This is still being investigated.
• If you “Keep Up to Date” multiple server versions of a game that has overlapping files, you may get into an update loop where it constantly overwrites these files in the background. [workaround: only keep one version of a game up to date]
• "Automatic Login" may encounter a endless "processing" loop [workaround: cancel, then login]
• If you resize the window after clicking on "Log In" and before you complete the login process, the application will no longer accept input events
• Station Launcher must be run from an account with administrator privileges
• One cannot add Friends from Russian EverQuest II servers
• One cannot add Friends from test servers for EverQuest or Star Wars Galaxies
• Status updates for friends playing Vanguard can be unreliable
• The Game Support link for EverQuest II is incorrect; it takes one to the EverQuest Knowledge Base
• Deleted characters from Star Wars Galaxies may still appear in your Friends list
• Character state from Vanguard does not always update in a timely fashion
• The TestCenter server configuration Star Wars Galaxies is incorrect [workaround: use the TCPrime configuration]
• When clicking on “Show All Games”, one is taken to the first tab (“MMO”) on the Game Select screen instead of the tab that you may have been on (e.g. “Strategy” or “Casual”).