LAUNCHERPROTOCOL.md

The Launcher

• All info is based off of observations from Launcher.log and extracting launcher.zip.
• The launcher is a C++ application (// call out to C++) with a JavaScript frontend.

// Send a query to the browser process.
function sendMessage(msg) {
    // Results in a call to the OnQuery method in binding_test.cpp
    window.cefQuery({
        request: 'Binding:' + msg,
        onSuccess: function (response) {
            //document.getElementById('result').value = 'Response: ' + response;
        },
        onFailure: function (error_code, error_message) { }
    });
}

There doesn't appear to be anything useful the JS code. Luckily, the update process very simple.

Two Stage Update Process

The whole update process appears to be split in two, which I've numbered 1 and 2:

• Stage 1: Done by Launcher.exe, updates the game's executables and itself
• Stage 2: Done by Warframe.exe, run as a subprocess of Launcher.exe, updates the game's assets (textures, models, sounds, lua code, etc)

DX10 and DX11 assets are always downloaded, even if disabled. As well as all of the language-specific files, always downloaded.

64-bit assets however are not, they don't get downloaded if it's not enabled.

Stage 1 Update Process

This is the one done by Launcher.exe.

Table of contents: origin.warframe.com/origin/<hexvalue>/index.txt.lzma
<hexvalue> appears to just be a randomized 8 digit hex value, likely for cache busting.

lzmadec'd, the file looks like:

/Tools/Launcher.exe.F336FD22FDF21024C75FF46FE8F7A06E.lzma,313612
/Tools/Windows/x86/msvcr110.dll.4BA25D2CBE1587A841DCFB8C8C4A6EA6.lzma,351188
/Tools/Windows/x86/steam_api.dll.A83ADE32811F1419685E90F592ADF505.lzma,77655
/Tools/Windows/x86/symsrv.dll.64DEA54A4457371DEC27A4CFAE6EFB50.lzma,47951
/Warframe.exe.3BB594902B2E8037901ED9B2419E8FD5.lzma,6998205

The file paths all appear to correspond to files at origin.warframe.com, ex you can download origin.warframe.com/Tools/Launcher.exe.F336FD22FDF21024C75FF46FE8F7A06E.lzma.

The 32-digit hexadecimal number there is a MD5 hash of the extracted file.

The number after the comma is the size of the compressed file in bytes.

> /Tools/Launcher.exe.F336FD22FDF21024C75FF46FE8F7A06E.lzma,313612
$ wget content.warframe.com/Tools/Launcher.exe.F336FD22FDF21024C75FF46FE8F7A06E.lzma | grep Length
Length: 313612 (306K) [application/octet-stream]

List Contents

Interestingly, the list contains the giant game asset files too:

/Cache.Windows/F.TextureDx9.cache.09F145B086119F595F1D32047FCB9A2B.lzma,8541175817

Yes, it's 8145.5MB. However, Launcher.exe doesn't appear to ever touch these files. Only Warframe.exe touches them. Probably because they're massive and can be incrementally downloaded and updated by Warframe.exe, but (apparently) not by the launcher.

Stage 2 Update Process

This is the one done by Warframe.exe.

Honestly, I can't see any value in doing this manually.

The .toc and .cache files are a custom format. You can find a forum post with a tool here, (mega mirror of the tool because the site is broken, courtesy of this reddit user). However, there's no real harm in running Warframe.exe to update. WF.exe might stall all the time, but it is the reference implementation of how to deal with these files. And it's not a standard file format.