Plan for Distribution menu

This plan is DONE (except for maybe future improvements to Linux packages - see Portable GNU-Linux binaries)

The Distribution menu will be a menu in custom that allows you to easily and automatically package your game for distribution in various ways on various platforms.

All (or most) of these distribution methods will require some helper application to be installed. Some of these could only work on certain platforms.

There should also be some kind of option for managing your README.txt file, and perhaps the ability to create a new one based on a template.

LICENSE-binary.txt will also be included along with any copy of game.exe

Zip file

Create a zip file containing:

• a copy of your RPG file
• a copy of game.exe renamed to match your game's filename
• LICENSE-binary.txt
• your README.txt

Windows Installer

Using either Innosetup or NSIS, create a Windows installer of your game. This would include the same files as the zip file, and would add your game to the program files menu, and have an option to add shortcuts to the desktop.

There should be an option for whether the fullscreen command line argument should be included in the shortcuts.

Mac App Bundle

Make a renamed copy of OHRRPGCE-Game.app with your rpg file inside it. Optionally select an icon. The OSX icon format is .ics; it would be nice to accept either this or .bmp/.png etc. which would require packaging a conversion tool. Also, change the name of the application menu (currently "OHRRPGCE Game") to match the game's name.

Package the app along with your README.txt in a dmg compressed volume.

hdiutil is the commandline tool for creating dmg files. .dmg is a propriety format, and only 3rd party tools to read it appear to exist, so other platforms will have to use something else, like zip files.

The tar.exe tool on Windows can't create tar balls with sym links. Our temporary solution is to have a special build of OHRRPGCE-Game.app for distributing from Windows, but this needs improvement: it created inflated .app packages and at the very least, it should be built nightly

Tarball

Just like the ZIP file, but as a .tar.gz or a .tar.bz2

Debian/Ubuntu .deb

Build a .deb file that will install your game and create a menu shortcut to it. This should not include a copy of the ohrrpgce-game binary, instead it should set the .deb file to depend on the ohrrpgce package being installed with a new enough date version number

Stand alone Linux builds

It is the norm these days for closed source games to distribute GNU/Linux 32 bit and 64 bit binaries which are standalone, statically linked with nearly everything so that they run on nearly any machine, and not meant to be installed into the file system but just sitting in a folder full of resource files. I think this is a better option than .deb files and the best we can offer. 64 bit support is close.