Compiling Games

[Evrim]

Hello, I'm new here and I know a little Lua (from some other game to develop plugins)

I would like to know if we can get .love files to .exe s to be able to get anyone to run it


Otherwise I won't even start developing one

[bmelts]

Try reading Game Distribution.

[Evrim]

Thanks alot for your help

I'm going to read some tutorials now!

[Ensayia]

As much of a Windows advocate as I am, I highly recommend you distribute your game in .love form as well. One of the best things about LOVE is that games in .love format work on any OS. You lose this is you distribute only an .exe as these don't work on other operating systems.

[Robin]

You lose this is you distribute only an .exe as these don't work on other operating systems.

Not really true: a .exe with a .zip appended is still a valid zip-file, so it'll run on other platforms.

It is nice to provide a .love though, for smaller game size if nothing else.

[Jasoco]

I would recommend offering:

A) An .EXE for Windows people
B) A packaged .APP for OS X people
C) A .LOVE for the rest

Making an OS X app is very easy. And if you have a friend with a Mac, or one of us can do it, it is as easy as opening the package and dropping the file inside and changing some data. But if you don't have any Mac friends, at least offer a .EXE and a .LOVE alternatively. When the time comes for me to distribute a game I've made, I'll probably make a .EXE myself using Parallels and a .APP for the OS X people and offer the .LOVE file too. The only problem is I don't know how the EXE would be made and what files would need to be distributed with it. Unlike the OS X version all the libraries aren't packaged inside one single file. Not that I need to know now. But when the time comes, I'll probably look it up.

[Evrim]

Thanks all, as soon as I get the game to a public release, I will probably first distribute as .love

[Ensayia]

The easiest way to avoid all of this confusion is to simply distribute a .love file. Even if you package it into an EXE and distribute, users that do not have LOVE installed will be missing required DLLs to run the game.

Long story short, .love is the way to go.

[nevon]

Even if you package it into an EXE and distribute, users that do not have LOVE installed will be missing required DLLs to run the game..

You'll just have to distribute the dlls along with the exe.

[Evrim]

If I distributed with an .exe, will I add .dlls into the .exe? or have a seperate download