This is the new support forum section dedicated to the
Ape Apps Launcher, a new desktop application for managing and launching all Ape Apps desktop applications.
The Ape Apps Launcher is available for free on the Ape Market for Windows (7/8/10 32 or 64 bit), macOS, and Linux. You can find the download page here:
https://market.ape-apps.com/ape-apps-launcher.html
What is the Ape Apps Launcher?
The Ape Apps Launcher serves several purposes. First, it makes it easier to download and install all Ape Apps desktop applications. Everything is contained and can be launched from a single application, and there is only one main program to download from the Ape Market website. After the initial download, everything is automatically managed and updated from the Launcher, so basically once you download the Ape Apps Launcher, it should be the last manual download from the Ape Market that you need to make.
The Ape Apps Launcher also keeps all Ape Apps desktop programs up to date on the latest "core" code base. More popular stand-alone desktop applications like My Colony and Antiquitas are usually manually updated fairly often, but this is often not the case for the less popular programs. Using the Ape Apps Launcher shares the core code base between all apps, keeping everything automatically up to date.
Since resources are shared between apps, individual game download sizes are greatly reduced. As an example, My Colony downloaded from the Ape Market by itself clocks in at about 180mb. Through the Ape Launcher, the download is only 10mb. That is a massive reduction, and makes updating faster for the user and less bandwidth intensive for the Ape Apps server.
Finally, from my perspective, the Ape Apps Launcher is infinitely easier to maintain and support. Packaging and distributing desktop applications for all of my apps and games is a time intensive process. Because of this, I often don't keep the Desktop versions of my games up to date with the Web and Mobile versions, especially on titles with lower usage. The Ape Apps Launcher solves this by automatically packaging and installing each app based on the latest
stable Web code (not in-development code). Your desktop apps will always be up to date, even if an individual package has not been distributed on the Ape Market.
The Ape Apps Launcher is still new, and more features will be added along the way. Please use this new forum section for questions and feedback, and to give suggestions on how the launcher can be expanded and improved. Ideally, I would like the launcher to replace all of the stand-alone Desktop applications, as they really do take quite a bit of time to prepare, package, and distribute. Time which can be better served working on the actual games themselves! But that will all depend on user feedback and adoption. I'm not going to force people to use something they do not like, so give it a try and let me know how I can make it better and what direction the development should take!