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Releases: terrymacdonald/DisplayMagician

DisplayMagician v1.1.1

22 May 22:52
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This is a bugfix release to fix the fact that Game Shortcut Hotkeys were broken. They now work in this release.

Also stopped the annoying 'bing' each time that Windows Notifications were created as DisplayMagician went through it's normal operation. These have all now been silenced (except for when there is an error that needs your attention).

RELEASE NOTES:
Fixed: Game Shortcut Hotkeys now work!
Fixed: Windows Notifications are now silenced unless really needed

DisplayMagician v1.1.0

21 May 03:19
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This release adds quite a lot of new functionality, all of it requested by the awesome people using DisplayMagician!

Firstly, DisplayMagician now has Hotkeys! You can choose a combination of keys to press while DisplayMagician is running, and the Hotkey will perform the task you associated the Hotkey with. You can have Hotkeys for:

  • Running a Game shortcut (click on the Hotkey button when editing the Shortcut)
  • Changing to a different Display Profile (click on the Hotkey button when you've selected the Display Profile in the Display Profile window)
  • Opening the Shortcut Library window (set this in Program Settings)
  • Opening the Display Profile window (set this in Program Settings)
  • Opening the main DisplayMagician start window (set this in Program Settings)

You can also clear all the Hotkey's at any time by going into the Program Settings and clicking the 'Clear All Hotkeys' button. There is one big caveat to the Hotkey feature: If another application has the same Hotkey, and you're using that application, then that application you're using will it may grab the Hotkey and it will never reach DisplayMagician. In this case my recommendation is to choose a different Hotkey within DisplayMagician as that will make it far more likely to work!

Secondly, you can add as many Start Programs to a shortcut as you want. No more limit of four, you get to add as many as you want. You can also change the priority of the Start Programs you add using the arrow keys or drag-and-drop, as well as temporarily stop them from starting (say if you want to stop them for now but they have some weird and wonderful command line parameters you don't want to lose) which should save everyone some time.

Thirdly, I've recreated the Game Selection window within the Edit Shortcut window. It was always bugging me that it was so ugly and the selection process was a two-step affair, so I've made it a lot larger and hopefully easier to use.

As a side effect of this I had to revisit all the Icon extraction logic for Games, Shortcuts and Display Profiles. The older logic was flawed and didn't always extract the highest resolution images. It turns out that Icons and bitmaps are a real pain to process within Windows 10! After a lot of trial and error 've now found the icon sweet spot and DisplayMagician always extracts the best quality Icon it can find. If the icon looks bad, it is most likely the fact the game just doesn't have a high quality icon within it. DisplayMagician does it's best, but it can't make a high quality icon if there isn't one there :).

Fourthly, you can now quickly and easily create a debug log with the C:\Program Files\DisplayMagician\DisplayMagician.exe --debug command line, and you can create a trace log file with the C:\Program Files\DisplayMagician\DisplayMagician.exe --debug command line. This should make it far simpler to generate a log file to submit if you have any issues!

Fifthly, I've added a Help button. This will send you to the DisplayMagician Wiki page. There I hope to add some documentation to help people use DisplayMagician. While I try to make it intuitive to use, there is just so many features that I've added that I think I'll need to help provide guidance on how to use it!

And lastly, I've also made a lot of robustness improvements. The icon logic can now cope with nearly everything going wrong. The monitor detection code now tells the user when their monitor isn't communicating properly. The AutoUpdater logic copes with a wider range of scenarios, and the control masking while running a program works more efficiently. And DisplayMagician tells you when it starts (if it can) if another application has registered a Hotkey that it's trying to register.

That's all a lot of work!

RELEASE NOTES:
Added: Hotkeys
Added: Unlimited Start Programs
Updated: Game selection is much easier
Updated: Icon extraction logic is more reliable
Added: Debug and Trace command line parameters
Updated: Errors are communicated to user through UI where they are important enough
Updated: Errors are logged through log file where not as important. Go there first if something isn't working.

DisplayMagician v1.0.6

30 Apr 09:41
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This release is just for bugfixing.

The bug was a couple of missed Origin Library references which caused errors detecting, creating and loading Origin Games (thanks @ngoetje for helping). Now fixed, and should stop any game loading issues.

I took the opportunity to make the running of game shortcuts much more reliable. It has multiple checks to make sure both the game library and game itself are running before going into monitoring mode, and it also has some error checking to handle it when things don't run when they are supposed to. It also reports any issues to the end user through notification toasts so you should get more visibility into what is happening.

I also added a LOT more logging into the Origin Library code, so it will now be able to help me troubleshoot remotely if you put the DisplayMagician logging mode into 'Full Application Trace' mode, and restart the application.

Also as an FYI, NVIDIA has released new 466.27 drivers. I'm hoping they correct the faulty 466.11 driver that didn't correctly get hardware information from the NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti video cards, and that everything returns to normal. I reported the issue to NVIDIA in the hope they'd produce a fix. Let's see.

If NVIDIA have fixed the NVIDIA 466.27 driver , then you will need to perform the following steps to fix your Display Profiles so they work again:

  • Delete the old Display Profiles
  • Recreate each DisplayProfile again from scratch
  • Go through each of your Game Shortcuts to use one of the newly created Display Profiles.

Unfortunately that's the only way to regenerate the DisplayProfileIdentifiers and make everything match up again :(. Thanks NVIDIA.

RELEASE NOTES:

Fixed: Missed Origin Library references which caused errors detecting, creating and loading Origin Games (thanks @ngoetje for helping)
Changed: Made the game shortcut execution and game monitoring more reliable. Handles missing alternative executables properly now.
Added: Lots more logging in the Origin Library.

DisplayMagician v1.0.5

23 Apr 06:19
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This release includes a some cool new features, and a couple of bugfixes.

One new feature is support for the Origin/EA Game Library. This took a while to sort out, but works well, and hopefully helps make it easier to add shortcuts for games you have in Origin.

Another new feature is the ability to monitor a different executable to the game you start from a game library. Previously this feature was only available if you selected the game executable directly through the game executable mode. Now you can choose to monitor another .exe other than the game and only revert things back when that changes. Gives you a lot more flexibility to have things exactly as you want them.

And lastly you can now doubleclick on the notification/system tray icon and the main application window will open. I'm not sure how I missed adding that until now, but there you go.

Two bugs were also fixed. The first one was the the Display Profiles and Audio/Microphone settings weren't reverted when the user asked them to be. That was my mistake, but now it's been fixed.

The second one is a bit more nuanced. The latest NVIDIA 466.11 drivers don't correctly get hardware information from the NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti video cards, so I've had to build some protection around the information gathering code to attempt to keep this application working even if the NVIDIA code fails.

If you have installed an earlier version of DisplayMagician, have created some Display Profiles, you have an NVIDIA RTX 2080Ti video card, and you have subsequently upgraded your NVIDIA driver to v466.11, then you will need to perform the following steps to fix your Display Profiles so they work again:

  • Delete the old Display Profiles
  • Recreate each DisplayProfile again from scratch
  • Go through each of your Game Shortcuts to use one of the newly created Display Profiles.

Unfortunately that's the only way to regenerate the DisplayProfileIdentifiers and make everything match up again :(.
Note: When NVIDIA realises and fix their driver you will need to perform these steps again.

RELEASE NOTES:

Fixed: DisplayMagician workaround to work with broken NVIDIA 466.11 driver for RTX 2080Ti video cards. Thanks to @m0ellemeister
Fixed: Display Profile and audio/microphone weren't being left as is when the user asked them to be
Changed: Massive refactor of GameLibrary and Game code to make it easier to add new GameLibraries
Changed: Standardised the Game running logic as much as possible to make it more reliable
Added: Origin/EA Game Library support
Added: Can specify alternative executable to monitor for games run through game library
Added: Can open Main application window by doubleclicking the sytem tray/notification icon
Changed: Clicking on the 'Start DisplayMagician minimised in notification area when computer starts' checkbox now sets the minimise setting and the start on boot setting all in one go.

DisplayMagician v1.0.4

10 Apr 10:40
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This release is primarily a bug fix, removing a swathe of bugfixes and implementing a whole lot of robustness improvements that should make it far less likely that something will go wrong. And if it does, there is now a lot more chance of finding the issue thanks to the logs written to the DisplayMagician Logs folder within your AppData directory.

Big thanks to @joeymanson23 and @stringfieldmark for reporting the issues, and giving me tons of information to help me repair things.

IMPORTANT!!!: If you are upgrading from an earlier version of DisplayMagician, I recommend that you edit each Ubisoft shortcut, and reselect the game you wanted in that shortcut, and then save the shortcut. Earlier versions of DisplayMagician used the wrong Ubisoft Game ID, and will error if you use them.

RELEASE NOTES:

Fixed: Both Steam and Uplay library logic would error when the library was installed, but didn't have any installed games. Thanks to @joeymanson23 for the report.
Fixed: Steam library processing was missing the default steam library. This meant that only people with additional steam libraries were detecting games. Thanks to @stringfieldmark for the report.
Fixed: Attempting Audio detection on unsupported hardware chipset would cause an exception.
Fixed: Attempting Audio detection when no active audio devices or microphones would cause an exception.
Fixed: Uplay library parsing extracted the incorrect Game ID.
Fixed: Audio volume settings weren't applied unless the audio device was changed.
Fixed: Game process detection was failing on Steam and Uplay due to logic flaw. Now corrected.
Fixed: Didn't create the required DisplayMagician AppData folders on boot. Does now.

DisplayMagician v1.0.3

28 Mar 09:36
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Does each game you have require a different screen setup? Do you need to run multiple different helper applications manually every time you want to play your favourite flight sim? Do you want to always make sure you use your HDMI audio for a particular game?

DisplayMagician automates all this with a single mouse click.

DisplayMagician allows you to setup up multiple different display profiles, and then reuse those different display profiles with your Steam or Uplay games, or your executable applications.

You can:

  • Choose the display configuration and save it as a Display Profile - works with Windows API or NVIDIA Surround.
  • Create a shortcut that will change your audio device, change your display to match the display profile, run what ever applications you want, then run the game you want, then control what happens when the game ends.
  • Save a desktop shortcut that will perform all the changes you want, then run the game, and then revert it all back to what it was when the game is shutdown - all from a single click.

RELEASE NOTES:

  • Fixed: Upgrades now successfully restart explorer.exe
  • Fixed: Can close the ApplyProfile window if display change errors (was getting locked in rare cases)
  • Fixed: Improved game process detection in rare cases
  • Fixed: DisplayProfile matching is improved

DisplayMagician v1.0.1

17 Mar 09:43
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Does each game you have require a different screen setup? Do you need to run multiple different helper applications manually every time you want to play your favourite flight sim? Do you want to always make sure you use your HDMI audio for a particular game?

DisplayMagician automates all this with a single mouse click.

DisplayMagician allows you to setup up multiple different display profiles, and then reuse those different display profiles with your Steam or Uplay games, or your executable applications.

You can:

  • Choose the display configuration and save it as a Display Profile - works with Windows API or NVIDIA Surround.
  • Create a shortcut that will change your audio device, change your display to match the display profile, run what ever applications you want, then run the game you want, then control what happens when the game ends.
  • Save a desktop shortcut that will perform all the changes you want, then run the game, and then revert it all back to what it was when the game is shutdown - all from a single click.

RELEASE NOTES:

  • Fixed: UI closing when saving shortcut
  • Fixed: Included missing shortcut writing DLL so that now works
  • Fixed: Setup now removes prior versions of DisplayMagician correctly
  • Added: Ability to only run start programs if they aren't already running
  • Fixed: System Tray notification icon is correctly updated

DisplayMagician v1.0.0

14 Mar 08:49
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Does each game you have require a different screen setup? Do you need to run multiple different helper applications manually every time you want to play your favourite flight sim? Do you want to always make sure you use your HDMI audio for a particular game?

DisplayMagician automates all this with a single mouse click.

DisplayMagician allows you to setup up multiple different display profiles, and then reuse those different display profiles with your Steam or Uplay games, or your executable applications.

You can:

  • Choose the display configuration and save it as a Display Profile - works with Windows API or NVIDIA Surround.
  • Create a shortcut that will change your audio device, change your display to match the display profile, run what ever applications you want, then run the game you want, then control what happens when the game ends.
  • Save a desktop shortcut that will perform all the changes you want, then run the game, and then revert it all back to what it was when the game is shutdown - all from a single click.

RELEASE NOTES:
This is the first fully featured release! \o/

The day I've worked towards has finally happened! It's been a solid year of developing, testing and coming up with new features, but it's been fun. This software is a labour of love, and has been what I've been working on in all my spare time. I'm hopeful that it will make at least one other person's life easier. And that's all I can ask.

Special thanks goes out to Soroush Falahati who initial nugget of gold that DisplayMagician has been fashioned from.

DisplayMagician v0.2.1

28 Dec 09:16
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Does each game you have require a different screen setup? Do you need to run multiple different helper applications manually every time you want to play your favourite flight sim? Do you want to always make sure you use your HDMI audio for a particular game?

DisplayMagician automates all this with a single mouse click.

DisplayMagician allows you to setup up multiple different display profiles, and then reuse those different display profiles with your Steam or Uplay games, or your executable applications.

You can:

  • Choose the display configuration and save it as a Display Profile - works with Windows API or NVIDIA Surround.
  • Create a shortcut that will change your audio device, change your display to match the display profile, run what ever applications you want, then run the game you want, then control what happens when the game ends.
  • Save a desktop shortcut that will perform all the changes you want, then run the game, and then revert it all back to what it was when the game is shutdown - all from a single click.

RELEASE NOTES:
This update is quite an extensive one. It is primarily focused on improving user feedback, utilising the windows toast functionality to keep users informed of what the application is doing. It also improves reliability for monitoring games, and introduces a programme setting UI to allow you to make changes without editing text files :).