JKHub Downloader Alpha (0.1)

[Syko]

Hey guys, I started working on a JKHub Downloader. What is a JKHub Downloader you ask? It's this project I started working on to make it easier to download mods. Have you ever been browsing JKHub's mod section and found it annoying to have to manually download and extract and click + drag of the .pk3 files in your base folder at once? It's even more annoying if you want to download multiple mods. Well fear not, for I have made this thing. 

 

It basically just shows you the list of mods you can download on JKHub, and by clicking one time, the program automatically downloads and extracts the zip file to your base folder, so you can one-click download all of your JKHub mods easily. 

 

This is what it looks like: 

 

 

 

Some things to know about it: 

 

The Good

• It's written in Java. This means that it's already cross-platform and will run on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
• I could make it into an applet that will run in your browser. You can one-click and install mods right in your browser.
• I could use what I've written so far in making a JKHub Android app.
• I've made it open source
• It's extremely easy to use (provided it works)

The Bad

• It's written in Java. It can be slow as hell.
• It's an Alpha release, which means that the number 1 thing I focused on when I developed it was making it functional. The interface is sluggish and not that great looking.
• It's somewhat buggy. A few mods that I tried to download did not work for some reason, and it has to do with the way the mods were packaged when they were uploaded to JKHub. The vast majority of the mods I tested worked.

Other things to know:

• It's dependent on JSoup.
• It can clutter your base folder with a lot of stuff. It extracts mod zip files directly to your base folder, so if these zips contain images the mod or readme .txts they are going in the base folder as well.
• When you click 'Download', nothing tells you that the mod is downloading until it's complete. Although it looks like the program has frozen, it's really just downloading the mod. It will pop up with a dialogue when it's complete. If you didn't get a dialogue, it didn't download anything.
• It stores a JKHubDownloaderCache.dat file in your user directory (hope that won't bother anyone!) that just stores your Jedi Academy base folder path so you don't have to enter it in every time you boot the program.

Want to try it out? I made a Jar file that you can use. 

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/29055962/JKHubDownloader.jar

 

Rest assured, I haven't written a virus. Here's the source code: 

 

https://github.com/TheInsaneSyko/JKHub-Downloader

 

It's not complete and I plan to work on it more when I get free time. All of the bare-bones functionality I wanted to implement is there though. Hope this will be of use to someone.

 

In the future I want to make it something like the Steam workshop. I’d like to have one-click mod downloads in addition to it checking if there’s an update to a mod, and updating it appropriately. I also plan to have the interface display more info about the mod than just the title, like adding thumbnail screenshots and being able to view the mod’s description right in the interface.

[Onysfx]

Interesting idea. Never been a fan of java myself, but I suppose it's useful to make it multi platform.

[Circa]

Interesting. Not something I'd use but once it's completed I'm sure some people would love it.

[eezstreet]

I like the idea. It would be even better with a server browser with one-click joining. Now that being said, the source code is a bit...messy and the interface could use some work. But it's definitely a good effort so far.

[Mandalorian]

Awesome! is their a way to make mods extract to a different folder than base?

[Syko]

I like the idea. It would be even better with a server browser with one-click joining. Now that being said, the source code is a bit...messy and the interface could use some work. But it's definitely a good effort so far.

Messy syntactically (there's a ton of extra line breaks I didn't clean up) or messy in the way it's designed? What suggestions would you have for me to improve the code?

 

Awesome! is their a way to make mods extract to a different folder than base?

Yes, you can choose the folder you want the downloader to extract everything into.

[Sturg29]

awsome idea great when your loaded and mass downloading maps lol

[Link]

Love it, great idea Syko.

[Syko]

So some kind sir by the name of dan2077 fixed a major bug where if the downloader loads the cached file path to the browse box downloading doesn't work. That was one of the first things I intended to fix but I haven't found time to work on it, so thanks dan, you the man.