Thanks Leo, it works great now, excellent plugin, I was really missing this function in XBMC. All games launch very smooth now!
I have added a lot of games and it looks and works fantastic. I shall post a few screenshots later...
While working with Launcher I found some confusing things, that are probably mentioned before, and maybe Launcher is too early in development, but I will mention them here anyway.
1. Why can't I install it in my installed XBMC folder on a portable HDD?
I've got a 2TB external HDD with games and movies that I take to friends sometimes.
2. I'm missing some tags in the xml file for the future of Launcher, like:
<app> would be better than <application> much shorter
<genre> puzzle / rpg / shooter </genre> (enables sorting in the future)
<trailer> online or offline link to Flash video files .flv </trailer>
<box> path to image file (I use folder.jpg) </box>
Instead of <thumb> I rather see screenshots: (max 5 shots)
<screen1><screen2><screen3><screen4><screen5>
It's quite flexible with 5 shots, like a title, select screen or some game play shots. Skinners could animate/rotate/slide the screenshots, show the box in front, use box as thumb, show trailer somewhere. You get the idea...
3. And yet again, I'm not very happy with the location of launchers.xml, separate files like games.xml, apps.xml and roms.xml would be very helpful. My launchers.xml is over 3000 lines now and I have not even started with roms. I even removed all redundant tags to save lines...
That makes sense right?
4. Will the Launcher be a core function of XBMC in the future?
5. And it would be awesome, if Flash video trailers could be added in the future with the <trailer> tag.
Anyway the plugin works great so far, and I hope my suggestions make any sense and are not too much to ask.
I'm adding the rest of my games to xbmc now