I Have An Idea

[Puzzlem00n]

Wow, it's been a while since I've been on here. I ended up preferring Twitter, I guess. Well, I have an idea that I want to make sure is good. But it feels too obvious, so I have a suspicion that if it were good, it would have been done already. I'm here so you can put those suspicions to rest. Or not.

I was thinking of modding LÖVE to, instead of taking the .dlls in the same folder as it, pulling them from an AppData-like folder. If the .dlls aren't there, it downloads them from the net to put them there, like a launcher. This way, when distributing for Windows (and Linux, I think), instead of making .zips with the .dlls in them, you can just distribute your game's executable and the .dlls will take care of themselves.

So, do you like the idea? While typing this, I've already realized this would be a problem when trying to start the game offline. Are there any more catches I'm unaware of? Thanks.

[michcioperz]

Hi, I'm new to the forums but I made some games in LOVE, and this idea looks good to me. Packaging libraries makes stuff more complicated, while making LOVE download them would be painful but only until it's implemented (I guess the code would need some bootstrap layer or something). But according to Linus's Law, given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow, right?

[Ranguna259]

Can an executable really run by itself without any dll dependencies ?

[Puzzlem00n]

Can an executable really run by itself without any dll dependencies ?

I'm not saying that this idea would have no dll dependencies, I'm saying the dlls would be in LÖVE's save folder instead of in the same folder as the .exe. If you mean "Can it run before the dlls are downloaded," then yeah, I'm pretty sure. It won't have all of LÖVE's full features until it does though.

[jjmafiae]

Can an executable really run by itself without any dll dependencies ?

i have seen that before, so yes.

But it would require a .dll for downloading files i think.

[mickeyjm]

I just found a way to do something similar to what you want. You can create a self extracting exe of all the files (*.exe, love.dll, lua51.dll, etc). This creates a single file the user can run which acts just like extracting the files from a zip then running the exe.

Here's how to do it on windows, for other OSes google it

Code: Select all

-BACKUP THE ORIGINAL FILES
-Search for IExpress.exe in the start bar (and run it)
-Select "Create new Self Extraction Directive File"
-Select "Extract files and run an installation command"
-Enter a title (It doesn't matter what you call it as AFAIK it doesn't actually show up anywhere)
-Select "No prompt"
-I recommend clicking "Do not show a license" as it would display every time you launch the game, but you can if you want
-Click "Add" and find the decompressed files for your game (*.exe, love.dll, lua51.dll, etc)
-From the drop down for "install program" select your game's exe, leave post install blank
-Select "Hidden"
-Select "No message"
-Select your game's exe and tick "Hide file extracting progress animation from user"
-Select "No restart"
-Choose "Save" if you want to modify this later in case you messed up
-Create the package
-And you should be done, your exe has been (annoyingly) replaced by the SED file you can run the game with

Note, if you have ResHacked your exe you will have to redo it with the new file.