gamelauncher

A simple game launcher for Windows, now ported to C# as a .NET console application.

Overview

• Switches Windows power schemes before launching a game
• Restores the original power scheme after the game exits
• Supports launching any executable or .lnk shortcut
• Command-line interface

The repository contains a .NET solution and a ConsoleApp project that implements the launcher.

Build & run (local)

Prerequisite: install the .NET SDK (recommended .NET 9+ to match the project target) and run on Windows.

Build the solution:

dotnet build .\gamelauncher.sln -c Release

Run directly with the CLI (use from the repo root):

dotnet run --project .\ConsoleApp -- -p "High performance" /run "C:\Path\To\Game.exe"

If you prefer a single distributable executable, publish a self-contained build for Windows:

dotnet publish .\ConsoleApp\ConsoleApp.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true
# The resulting exe will be in ConsoleApp\bin\Release\net9.0\win-x64\publish\

Usage

Examples:

# Launch an exe with the "High performance" power scheme
dotnet run --project .\ConsoleApp -- -p "High performance" /run "C:\Path\To\Game.exe"

# If you published, run the produced exe directly:
.\ConsoleApp\bin\Release\net9.0\win-x64\publish\ConsoleApp.exe -p "Balanced" "C:\Path\To\Game.lnk"

• If no power scheme is specified, the launcher defaults to "Balanced".
• Any additional arguments provided after the target path are forwarded to the launched process.

Command-line Arguments

• -p, --power-scheme: Specify the power scheme to use (e.g., "High performance", "Balanced").
• The last positional argument is the path to the executable or shortcut to launch. Any further arguments are passed through to the launched process.

Requirements

• Windows (the launcher interacts with Windows power schemes and shortcuts)
• .NET SDK 9.0+ to build from source (the project targets net9.0)

Contributing

This repository was recently ported from Python to C#. Development and the console app live in the ConsoleApp folder. Small improvements, bug fixes, and tests are welcome — please open issues or pull requests.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU GPL v3.

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