Jolt Country

Forgive me if I have missed this somewhere, but when distributing a game created in Hugo, is it always necessary to first of all direct the potential user to a seperate download of the Hugo Interpreter (and instructions on what bits to select).

Is it possible to include just the player in the compiled executable so that the user only has a single download?

This is one of those things on the Could Be Done/Haven't Been Done Yet list.

The main reason is probably the desire that Hugo and its games maintain their cross-platform compatibility. Distributing games as .exe files sort of undermines that goal on Mac, Linux, Palm, Pocket PC, etc. Now, since one method of binding the executable to the data is to simply concatenate the data to the end of the executable and make the executable load the executable itself (and have some way to find the offset of the data), it presumably wouldn't be too hard to make it so that the engine on any platform would be able to do the same thing. But that doesn't strike me as the most graceful thing (for those other platforms).

Another big reason is that it forever (well, at least until the bound executable/game is updated) keeps that version of the engine in play, whereas it's nice to see improvements to performance, display, bug fixes, etc. Now, it wouldn't matter quite so much in this case since (a) that version of the engine would hopefully have been verified to be bug-free enough to work close-to-perfectly with the bundled game, and (b) it would only be for that game.

For probably these two reasons the thing I have most often suggested (and which people like Robb have done, and which the demo for FB will do) is to bundle hewin.exe and the game data in a single zip file which unzips into its own directory, and have a batch file or small Win32 executable to launch the game.

Anyway, that's sort of an overview where my thinking is on the topic: it could be done, but hasn't been yet.

NOTE: I did propose an idea to some folks a while back about creating an all-systems/all-platforms game launcher (probably written in wxWidgets, so you'd get Windows, Mac, and Linux ports at the same time) that would manage downloading, installing, and launching of games for every system. It's not something that I have the time to create write now, but *damn* isn't it a good idea?

Kent wrote:Another big reason is that it forever keeps that version of the engine in play, whereas it's nice to see improvements to performance, display, bug fixes, etc. Now, it wouldn't matter quite so much in this case since (a) that version of the engine would hopefully have been verified to be bug-free enough to work close-to-perfectly with the bundled game, and (b) it would only be for that game.

I used to live in fear of the opposite: that a new version of the Hugo run-time engine would introduce some show stopping glitch into Fallacy of Dawn or something, and then all of a sudden years from now people are saying, "What the hey, this sucks, I can't finish it, one star (out of five)."

But this hasn't happened. It may never happen. Probably never happen. In all honesty, I don't worry about it any more.

For probably these two reasons the thing I have most often suggested (and which people like Robb have done, and which the demo for FB will do) is to bundle hewin.exe and the game data in a single zip file which unzips into its own directory, and have a batch file or small Win32 executable to launch the game.

Yeah, it's not that Win32 people are stupid, but they are less familiar with the guts of their OS and going out and getting software and things, which is why I liek to give them an installer or whatnot.

The Necrotic Drift discs have hewin.exe on them and the story file, and also a "setup.exe" thing going -- either way gets you to the same place, which is (as it has been made clear to me) killing as many homeless people as possible in as quick a time as can be.

Nullsoft has a free installer, but it uses a script and hilariously they provide little documentation on getting a script to work to actually produce anything. The second option is an installer I made, which has no documentation whatsoever, no web presence, no command line interface or GUI and not even a public beta. I expect Nullsoft to get jealous and then huffy and then attempt to buy me out any day now.

The thing I used to make a setup.exe installer, then, was "Tarma Installer." It's good and free and you can upgrade it if you want to get some silly addons but you won't need to do that.

NOTE: I did propose an idea to some folks a while back about creating an all-systems/all-platforms game launcher (probably written in wxWidgets, so you'd get Windows, Mac, and Linux ports at the same time) that would manage downloading, installing, and launching of games for every system. It's not something that I have the time to create write now, but *damn* isn't it a good idea?

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: The thing I used to make a setup.exe installer, then, was "Tarma Installer." It's good and free and you can upgrade it if you want to get some silly addons but you won't need to do that.

I did a search for Tarma Installer and it is $99

Do you have an example of the script that you used with this?

Ta

zoot wrote:

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote: The thing I used to make a setup.exe installer, then, was "Tarma Installer." It's good and free and you can upgrade it if you want to get some silly addons but you won't need to do that.

I did a search for Tarma Installer and it is $99

Do you have an example of the script that you used with this?

Ta

You betcha. Although, I don't think I used a script -- I think it had a "Wizard" of some sort.

This is a link I found to what seems to be the free version: http://www.tucows.com/preview/287992.html -- while they'd like me to register, I think I was able to make it go without a hitch in free mode.

Tell you what, I will upload the version I have to JC tonight so you can use that regardless of whether or not the one on Tucows is all right.

I use Inno Setup for the Hugo and Future Boy! installers.

Kent wrote:I use Inno Setup for the Hugo and Future Boy! installers.

I utterly failed to get the version of Tarma Installer that I had up and running, so I would second the Inno Setup installer, zoot. Kent's installations are seamless and problem-free and for all I know the Necrotic Drift discs give you PC crabs when you click on the setup.exe file. =(