12.Aug.2026
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Game launcher: Pocket Launcher
Pocket Launcher by José Manera, the author of the MacumbaEditor, works similarly to iGame to launch WHDLoad games, which can be selected not only by their list entry but also by their cover art. What makes it special: It requires no external libraries, no MUI, no datatypes or any other dependencies. Pocket Launcher runs already on an Amiga 500 - the only requirement is AmigaOS 2.x.
The author writes in more detail about his project on Discord: "I wanted to share what I have been working on over the past few months. This actually started as part of the slow but steady development of MacumbaEditor. The story is a bit curious: I started by building this launcher, it grew so much that it eventually led to the idea for MacumbaEditor, and once the editor was moving forward, I returned to the launcher to finish it.
The basic idea is simple. It automatically scans the folders where your WHDLoad games are installed, builds a catalogue and lets you launch them from a list with cover images. In other words, it does what any launcher is supposed to do. But the real goal became something else: to see how far I could take a launcher with only the essential features, while still including most of the useful functionality found in iGame, without relying on any external libraries at all. No MUI, no datatypes, no guigfx, and no extra dependencies. It is a single executable that you can copy to almost any Amiga and run. That ended up being the most interesting challenge of the project. From the beginning, one of my main goals was precisely that: it should not depend on anything else.
While cataloguing, it reads the information embedded in WHDLoad slaves and also uses igame.data files when available. This allows it to automatically retrieve the title, genre, year, chipset, arguments and other metadata. It also detects whether each entry is a game, demo, magazine, cracktro or application. It supports multiple sources at the same time, with up to 16 folders or volumes, detects which volumes are currently mounted, avoids duplicates, and can update the index incrementally by adding only newly found slaves instead of rescanning the entire collection. It also includes an integrity check that removes entries whose slaves are no longer present.
I also added several features that I always found useful: configurable naming modes, search, a low-memory mode, optional thumbnails, image scaling, Multi-IFF support, an integrated ToolTypes editor for modifying .info files without opening IconEdit, automatic launch at system startup and a fullscreen mode.
Image support does not depend on datatypes either. It decodes IFF images natively, supports interlaced, progressive, and RTG images and lets you browse through all the IFF files found inside a game folder, rather than being limited to a single image. The interface is designed to be practical: a sortable table with title, platform, genre, year and number of players, together with name search and combinable filters for language, platform - OCS/ECS, AGA, CD32 and CDTV - and software type. The window works in both PAL and NTSC, includes a fullscreen mode with Left Amiga + F, can be iconified as an AppIcon and supports global hotkeys.
Anyone who would like to test it is more than welcome to do so, and please feel free to share and distribute it. For larger collections, I recommend an Amiga with at least 8 MB of Fast RAM. It should also work on more modest systems, since it includes a slower operating mode designed to use much less memory. Still, for WHDLoad setups, 8 MB of Fast RAM is probably the most practical starting point nowadays. Any bug reports, suggestions, ideas, or comments are very welcome. Please send them by e-mail to: josemanera [at] gmail [dot] com. Thank you!" (snx)
[News message: 12. Aug. 2026, 21:25] [Comments: 0]
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