Distributing your games (making a .love file)

[CaptainMaelstrom]

I think I might be having the same issue as omniome. I'm trying to create a windows fused .exe for my game.

I open the Windows command prompt and navigate to the correct folder and type in:

Code: Select all

copy /b love.exe+midnight.love midnight.exe

where midnight.love is my working .love file.
When I double click midnight.exe on my computer, it works. When I try it on my fiance's computer, it gives me the error: "love.dll is missing, try reinstalling the program..."

I've also tried creating a release.bat with the following contents:

Code: Select all

copy /b love.exe+%1 "%~n1.exe"

I get the same outcome. It works on my computer, gives the missing love.dll error on my fiance's. Isn't the whole purpose of having a fused .exe to avoid having to install LOVE2D?

[HugoBDesigner]

I heard once you could add in these files inside the own .exe, so you wouldn't need to distribute the .dll files along with the game. Is that possible? That's be just... Marvelous!

[bartbes]

The reason the dll files are separate (in general) is because it either allows for extensibility, or there'd be licensing issues otherwise. Honestly, the easiest is just distributing the dlls as well.

[tio]

I tried using the "cat love.exe supergame.love > supergame.exe" and "cat love.exe supergame.zip > supergame.exe" but they both don't work for me. =/ Git bash says it cannot find supergame.love or supergame.zip. For some reason, copy /b love.exe + supergame.love supergame.exe still doesn't work. Thanks though!

Just to make sure, have you tried to do that exactly as said on wiki?

Code: Select all

copy /b love.exe+SuperGame.love SuperGame.exe

(there's no space around the plus sign)

[Morzan]

Hello everyone!

I've benn learning mostly LÖVE since a couple days. But i don't have an idea why my .love file does not work. Because if i run my program with a shortcut it'll work. Anyways, here's the .love file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1afn0kychtrepfd/breakout.love

Thanks!

[gamehound]

Just to make sure, have you tried to do that exactly as said on wiki?
CODE: SELECT ALL
copy /b love.exe+SuperGame.love SuperGame.exe

(there's no space around the plus sign)

I have done it exactly as it said in your post and on the wiki. It successfully makes the game, but is prevented from running because love.dll is missing. Is there a way to fix this?

PS I am new to the command line, so keep it simple

[gamehound]

Sorry. It turns out that it is important to have love.exe in the same folder as your game. And the dlls in the same folder as the new exe.

[tio]

Sorry. It turns out that it is important to have love.exe in the same folder as your game. And the dlls in the same folder as the new exe.

Exactly. Making the fused binary does not make the .exe works alone. You still need the same DLLs that LÖVE uses.

[murks]

Hi there.
We've created our first game and packaging it for all three OSes worked fine. For Linux I provided the .love file, for OSX the .zip file including all the OSX specific stuff and for Windows I created a fused .exe, all from Linux.
It is important to me that people can easily get at the source code. It is there in all cases and while it is relatively easy to access in case of Linux and OSX I wonder how to get the source out of the fused .exe, especially on Windows.

EDIT: Nevermind, I should have experimented first. It seems unzipping the fused .exe yields all the sources, only the love.exe doesn't reappear, I guess it simply gets ignored by unzip.

[tio]

Hi there.
We've created our first game and packaging it for all three OSes worked fine. For Linux I provided the .love file, for OSX the .zip file including all the OSX specific stuff and for Windows I created a fused .exe, all from Linux.
It is important to me that people can easily get at the source code. It is there in all cases and while it is relatively easy to access in case of Linux and OSX I wonder how to get the source out of the fused .exe, especially on Windows.

EDIT: Nevermind, I should have experimented first. It seems unzipping the fused .exe yields all the sources, only the love.exe doesn't reappear, I guess it simply gets ignored by unzip.

You can delivery the .love file together with love.exe, and run the game using the command "love.exe \path\to\game.love".
Or you can even run the source code directly, passing the path of the folder with main.lua file.