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Create an installer for your game
This tutorial is for the final part of game development, the presentation of the final product.
Note: You need Windows xp to use this tool. Other versions of Windows have not been tested so I am unsure if Iexpress is available in other versions.
So you have a finished game that you've been working on for ages and now you want to show it off to people. You could just send them your compressed file pack, but that usually means that they will need whichever program you used to create the game in order to play it. There are some tools available on the internet that are sometimes free, but usually cost money, so here is a simple tool available in Windows XP called 'Iexpress' that is free to use.
Although this tool is simple, it's free. Anyways, onto the tutorial!
To access Iexpress, click on the start menu, then 'run'.
On the run command, type in 'iexpress'
You should see a window welcoming you to iexpress. There should also be two options available:
'Create a new Self Extraction Directive file' and,
'Open existing Self Extraction Directive file'
Unless you already have one saved that you wish to edit, we'll select to create a new SED file and click 'next'.
Next is the package purpose screen. Here we will want to select either 'Extract' or 'Extract and install', depending upon your preference. I personally use 'Extract and install'. Once you make a selection, hit 'next'.
The next few steps you choose the following (in order):
- The installer name (the name of your exe file being created).
- A prompt or message for the user when they open the exe file. This can be something like "Do you want to install (game name)?". You can select 'no prompt' for no message.
- You can select a license file to be shown that the user must agree to before they install the game. You can browse for this file or select to not use one.
Once these details are taken care of, you select all of the files that you want putting into the installer exe file by clicking 'add' and then browsing to the files you want to add. Once you have selected all of the files you want, click 'next' again.
Now you can select what program included in the files you added will be installed and any post-installation processes. The file to be installed is going to be your game exe, so select that from the drop-down menu. I haven't quite figured out how to get post-installation processes running properly yet, but I imagine that they can be used to do things like add a desktop shortcut after installation (I'm working on it). Once the program to install is selected, hit 'next' again to move on.
Now you can select:
- Installation details window display.(This is entirely up to you, it won't make much difference).
- Post-installation message. This is the message displayed when the installation is complete, give them a nice 'thank you for installing' or something, you can type your own message or select to not have a message at all. Once your done, hit 'next' again.
- Select a place to put the final installer exe and give it a name.(Preferably somewhere where you can find it ^^;)
The next screen allows you to set an automatic re-start after installation. I personally have this at 'Only re-start if needed' and I never tick the 'Do not prompt user before restarting' box (It would really annoy me, so I don't do it to others xD)
The next window allows you to save the exe installer to be edited at a later date (in case you go wrong, remember at the beginning of the tutorial? There was another option along with 'create a new file', this is what it is for). Save if you want to (I recommend you do) and move onto the last window which simply tells you it will now start the process.
Click next to start the process and you should see a small dos window while it processes the data.
Once done, the exe should be where you specified it to be and run as you set it to, complete with messages and license. ^^
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This tool isn't great, but it's free and does the job. It might take one or two tries to get it right (mine went wrong once or twice T_T) but it shouldn't be too much trouble. One of the main problems with this method is that the user then has to go to the install directory and manually create a shortcut from there instead of the installer creating it.
Hope this helped some people pack their games up (even though it was badly written ^^;) Any ideas or comments are welcome and I'd love to know how to get the installer to automatically create shortcuts on the desktop, so if anyone finds out, let me know please.
TL
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Details
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Tutorial:
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Create an installer for your game |
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Date Listed:
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Sat, 19 Dec 2009 06:47:49 -0500 |
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Author:
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TwistedLogic
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Total Hits:
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1273 |
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